r natural heir, was
Harley L'Estrange; and if he was contented, no one had a right to
complain. The tie of blood between herself and the Leslies of Rood Hall
was, as we shall see presently, extremely distant.

It was not till after his marriage that Mr. Egerton took an active
part in the business of the House of Commons. He was then at the most
advantageous starting-point for the career of ambition. His words on the
state of the country took importance from his stake in it. His talents
found accessories in the opulence of Grosvenor Square, the dignity of
a princely establishment, the respectability of one firmly settled in
life, the reputation of a fortune in reality very large, and which
was magnified by popular report into the revenues of a Croesus. Audley
Egerton succeeded in parliament beyond the early expectations formed
of him. He took, from the first, that station in the House which it
requires tact to establish, and great knowledge of the world to free
from the charge of impracticability and crotchet, but which, once
established, is peculiarly imposing from the rarity of its independence;
that is to say, the station of the moderate man who belongs sufficiently
to a party to obtain its support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged
from a party to make his vote and word, on certain questions, matter of
anxiety and speculation.

Professing Toryism (the word Conservative, which would have suited
him better, was not then known), he separated himself from the country
party, and always avowed great respect for the opinions of the
large towns. The epithet given to the views of Audley Egerton was
"enlightened." Never too much in advance of the passion of the day, yet
never behind its movement, he had that shrewd calculation of odds
which a consummate mastery of the world sometimes bestows upon
politicians,--perceived the chances for and against a certain question
being carried within a certain time, and nicked the question between
wind and water. He was so good a barometer of that changeful weather
called Public Opinion, that he might have had a hand in the "Times"
newspaper. He soon quarrelled, and purposely, with his Lansmere
constituents; nor had he ever revisited that borough,--perhaps because
it was associated with unpleasant reminiscences in the shape of the
squire's epistolary trimmer, and in that of his own effigies which
his agricultural constituents had burned in the corn-market. But the
speeches that produced