After leaving school, Washington was much more frequently at Belvoir than before. Lord Fairfax, the owner of the estate, was now an inmate of the house, having come to inspect his possessions, and determined to make Virginia his home. He was much impressed by the fertility and beauty of the country, and also, gossip had it, having never recovered from a wound to his heart and pride, inflicted in his youth by a fickle beauty, who preferred a ducal cornet to his more modest rank after the wedding dress was made, was glad to escape from England to the freedom and retirement of Virginia. Lord Fairfax was not far from sixty years of age, tall, erect, and vigorous in figure; kind-hearted, generous but eccentric, and not a man to take every comer into his friendship and confidence. He at once showed a marked liking for the tall, handsome, reserved and dignified young man, whom he so often met at Belvoir. No one longer regarded Washington as a boy, though he was but fifteen years of age. Lord Fairfax was a devoted sportsman, and set up his hunters and hounds at Belvoir, as he had been accustomed in England. Had anything been necessary to confirm his friendship for Washington, it was only to find, as his lordship did, that the latter was as hard and intrepid a rider as he, and would follow a fox over the dangerous and difficult hunting grounds of Virginia with as little faltering or fatigue. So this oddly assorted couple became close friends and constant companions, in the hunt and elsewhere. The old nobleman, _litterateur_, and man of the world, treated the sturdy young man as a social and intellectual equal, and, from the fullness of experience, unconsciously added, day by day, to his slender knowledge of the world; while the latter, probably quite as unconsciously, in a measure repaid the debt, as his knowledge of the country and of colonial life enabled him to do. One important effect of his intimacy was that it resulted in securing to Washington his first opportunity for testing his new-found freedom, by undertaking an independent enterprise. This happened incidentally, yet was the starting-point of the young man’s fortunes.