If you do so, I shall look upon your career in life as assured.
Your affectionate friend, and sincere well-wisher, A.E.
The reader will remark that in this letter there is a certain tone of formality.

Mr.Egerton does not call his protege "Dear Randal," as would seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, "Dear Mr.Leslie." He hints, also, that the boy has his own way to make in life.

Is this meant to guard against too sanguine notions of inheritance, which his generosity may have excited?
The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind from the others.

It was long, and full of such little scraps of news and gossip as may interest friends in a foreign land; it was written gayly, and as with a wish to cheer his friend; you could see that it was a reply to a melancholy letter; and in the whole tone and spirit there was an affection, even to tenderness, of which those who most liked Audley Egerton would have scarcely supposed him capable.

Yet, notwithstanding, there was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the fine tact of a woman would detect.