“The youth has ample means for educational purposes, and to establish him in some profession.  Of course, he cannot indulge in any of those university extravagances and dissipations that are the destruction of so many fine young men; but, then, he is not that kind of lad; a steady, studious boy, brought up by—­a widowed mother and a priest,” answered the duke, with just a slight faltering in his voice, in the latter clause of his speech.

“Such boys are more apt than others to develop into the wildest young men,” replied the lady; and circumstances proved that she was right.

John Scott, at Trinity College, Oxford, passed as the grand-nephew of the Duke of Hereward, and the next in succession, after the young Earl of Arondelle to the dukedom.

The young Earl of Arondelle was still at Eton.  And the duke determined to send him from Eton to Cambridge, instead of Oxford, where John Scott was at college; for the father of these two boys wished them never to meet!

At Oxford, John Scott, as the grand-nephew of the Duke of Hereward, bearing an unmistakable likeness to the family, and being, besides, a young man of pleasing address, soon won his way among the most exclusive of the aristocrats there; and pride and vanity tempted him to vie with them in extravagant and riotous living!

His income only was limited, his credit was unlimited.  When his money fell short, he ran into debt; and at the end of the first term his liabilities were alarming, or would have been so to a more sensitive mind.

It is true, the amount was much greater than his inexperience had led him to expect; but he only smiled grimly when he had all his bills before him, and had estimated the sum total, and he said to himself: 

“If my allowance will not support me here like a gentleman, my father must make up the deficiency, that is all!”

The Duke of Hereward was indeed confounded when his ward wrote to him and told him boldly that he wanted fifteen hundred pounds for immediate necessities—­namely, twelve hundred for the liquidation of debts, and three hundred for traveling expenses.

But could he scold the poor, disinherited boy, who, kept to himself at Oxford, had doubtless fallen among thieves and been mercilessly fleeced.

No; he would pay these debts out of his own pocket, and write the young man a kind letter of warning against the university sharks.

The duke carried out this resolution, and John Scott, freed from debt, and with three hundred pounds in his possession, went on a holiday tour through the country.

He had heard at Oxford of the rising glories of Lone, and determined to take his holiday in that neighborhood.

It happened that the Duke and Duchess of Hereward, with the Marquis of Arondelle, and their attendants, went that summer to Baden-Baden; so when the Oxonion arrived at the “Hereward Arms,” in the hamlet of Lone, and, from his age and his exact likeness to the family, was mistaken for the heir, there was no one to set the people right on the subject.