Raeburn was a true son of his fathers, possessed by natural inheritance of the finer instincts of aristocratic rule, including a deep contempt for mob-reason and all the vulgarities of popular rhetoric; steeped, too, in a number of subtle prejudices, and in a silent but intense pride of family of the nobler sort.

He followed with disquiet and distrust the quick motions and conclusions of Hallin's intellect.

Temperament and the Cambridge discipline made him a fastidious thinker and a fine scholar; his mind worked slowly, yet with a delicate precision; and his generally cold manner was the natural protection of feelings which had never yet, except in the case of his friendship with Edward Hallin, led him to much personal happiness.
Hallin left Cambridge after a pass degree to become lecturer on industrial and economical questions in the northern English towns.
Raeburn stayed on a year longer, found himself third classic and the winner of a Greek verse prize, and then, sacrificing the idea of a fellowship, returned to Maxwell Court to be his grandfather's companion and helper in the work of the estate, his family proposing that, after a few years' practical experience of the life and occupations of a country gentleman, he should enter Parliament and make a career in politics.
Since then five or six years had passed, during which he had learned to know the estate thoroughly, and to take his normal share in the business and pleasures of the neighbourhood.

For the last two years he had been his grandfather's sole agent, a poor-law guardian and magistrate besides, and a member of most of the various committees for social and educational purposes in the county.

He was a sufficiently keen sportsman to save appearances with his class; enjoyed a walk after the partridges indeed, with a friend or two, as much as most men; and played the host at the two or three great battues of the year with a propriety which his grandfather however no longer mistook for enthusiasm.