He would rather not have thought so, for it upset his preconceptions and threatened a revolution in his ideas.

For this reason he followed the Duke, and tried, if possible, to correct, or at least chasten the impressions he had of possessing a glaring advantage over the nobleman.
The Duke's second notice of him was hardly a nod.

'Well!' Mr.Raikes reflected, 'if this is your Duke, why, egad! for figure and style my friend Harrington beats him hollow.' And Raikes thought he knew who could conduct a conversation with superior dignity and neatness.

The torchlight of a delusion was extinguished in him, but he did not wander long in that gloomy cavernous darkness of the disenchanted, as many of us do, and as Evan had done, when after a week at Beckley Court he began to examine of what stuff his brilliant father, the great Mel, was composed.

On the contrary, as the light of the Duke dwindled, Raikes gained in lustre.