It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came of age, should represent the borough of Lansmere (which said borough was the single plague of the Earl's life). But this wish was never realized. Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or three years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him. He withdrew entirely from society--he left unanswered the most pressing three-cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed the table of a young Guardsman; he was rarely seen anywhere in his former haunts--when seen, was either alone or with Egerton; and his gay spirits seemed wholly to have left him. A profound melancholy was written in his countenance, and breathed in the listless tones of his voice. At this time the Guards were achieving in the Peninsula their imperishable renown; but the battalion to which Harley belonged was detained at home; and whether chafed by inaction or emulous of glory, the young Lord suddenly exchanged into a cavalry regiment, from which a recent memorable conflict had swept one half the officers. Just before he joined, a vacancy happening to occur for the representation of Lansmere, he made it his special request to his father that the family interest might be given to his friend Egerton--went down to the Park, which adjoined the borough, to take leave of his parents--and Egerton followed, to be introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable epoch in the history of many personages who figure in my narrative, but at present I content myself with saying, that circumstances arose which, just as the canvass for the new election commenced, caused both L'Estrange and Audley to absent themselves from the scene of action, and that the last even wrote to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention of declining to contest the borough.
Fortunately for the parliamentary career of Audley Egerton, the election had become to Lord Lansmere not only a matter of public importance, but of personal feeling. He resolved that the battle should be fought out, even in the absence of the candidate, and at his own expense. Hitherto the contest for this distinguished borough had been, to use the language of Lord Lansmere, "conducted in the spirit of gentlemen"--that is to say, the only opponents to the Lansmere interest had been found in one or the other of two rival families in the same county; and as the Earl was a hospitable, courteous man, much respected and liked by the neighboring gentry, so the hostile candidate had always interlarded his speeches with profuse compliments to his Lordship's high character, and civil expressions as to his Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to successive elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and its actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the Bench; the head of the other family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable agreement with the Lansmere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in the power of any sitting member to be amidst the passions of an intractable committee. Accordingly, it had been hoped that Egerton would come in without opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly left the place, a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R.N., Baker-street, Portman-square," announced, in very spirited language, the intention of that gentleman to emancipate the borough from the unconstitutional domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view to his own political aggrandizement--indeed, at great personal inconvenience--but actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and patriotic passion for the purity of election.