Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which a boy can obtain,--namely, that among his own contemporaries, the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when he grew to be a man.

As a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes, and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something" became more defined,--it was "something in public life" that this young man was to do.
While he was yet at the University, both his parents died, within a few months of each other.

And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and indeed had once been so; but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his heir, and about L1500 a year was all that sales and mortgages left of an estate that had formerly approached a rental of L10,000.
Still, Audley was considered to be opulent; and he did not dispel that favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony.

On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him, and he woke one morning to find himself, not indeed famous--but the fashion.

To this fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value, he associated as much as possible with public men and political ladies, he succeeded in confirming the notion that he was "born to ruin or to rule the State." The dearest and most intimate friend of Audley Egerton was Lord L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton, and who now, if Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.
Harley, Lord L'Estrange, was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied, by intermarriages, to the loftiest and most powerful families in England.