Mr. Hennessey Vivian was now a man of thirty-eight, of excellent fortune, of fine connections, and of admirable disposition. He had become an orphan as soon as it was in his power to do so, having lost his father--Captain Vivian of Her Majesty’s Tenth Lancers--some months before, and his mother--who had been a Merillia of Chipping Sudbury--a few minutes after his birth. In these unfortunate circumstances, over which he, poor infant, had absolutely no control--whatever unkind people might say!--he devolved upon his mother’s mother, the handsome and popular Mrs. Merillia, who assumed his charge with the rosy alacrity characteristic of her in all her undertakings. With her the little Hennessey had passed his infantine years, blowing happy bubbles, presiding over the voyages of his own private Noah--from the Army and Navy Stores, with two hundred animals of both sexes!--eating pap prepared by Mrs. Merillia’s own _chef_, and sleeping in a cot hung with sunny silk that might have curtained Venus or have shaken about Aurora as she rose in the first morning of the world. From her he had acquired the alphabet and many a ginger-nut and decorative bonbon. And from her, too, he had set forth, with tears, in his new Eton jacket and broad white collar, to go to Mr. Chapman’s preparatory school for little boys at Slough. Here he remained for several years, acquiring a respect for the poet Gray and a love of Slough peppermint that could only cease with life. Here too he made friends with Robert Green, son of Lord Churchmore, who was afterwards to be a certain influence in his life. His existence at Slough was happy. Indeed, so great was his affection for the place that his removal to Eton cost him suffering scarcely less acute than that which presently attended his departure from Eton to Christchurch. Over his sensations on leaving Oxford we prefer to draw a veil, only saying that his last outlook--as an undergraduate--over her immemorial towers was as hazy as the average Cabinet Minister’s outlook over the events of the day and the desires of the community. But if the moisture of the Prophet did him credit at that painful period of his life, it must be allowed that his behaviour on being formally introduced into London Society showed no puling regret, no backward longings after echoing colleges, lost dons and the scouts that are no more. He was quite at his ease, and displayed none of the high-pitched contempt of Piccadilly that is often so amusingly characteristic of the young gentlemen accustomed to “the High.”