Francis Oliphant Tregear

Mr Francis Oliphant Tregear was a young man who might not
improbably make a figure in the world, should circumstances be
kind to him, but as to whom it might be doubted whether
circumstances would be sufficiently kind to enable him to use
serviceably his unquestionable talents and great personal gifts.
He had taught himself to regard himself as a young English
gentleman of the first water, qualified by his birth and position
to live with all that was most noble and most elegant, and he
could have lived in that sphere naturally and gracefully were it
not that part of the 'sphere' which he specially affected requires
wealth as well as birth and intellect. Wealth he had not, and yet
he did not abandon the sphere. As a consequence of all this, it
was possible that the predictions of his friends as to that figure
which he was to make in the world might be disappointed.

He had been educated at Eton, from whence he had been sent to
Christ Church; and both at school and at college had been the most
intimate friend of the son and heir of a great and wealthy duke.
He and Lord Silverbridge had been always together, and they who
were interested in the career of young noblemen had generally
thought he had chosen his friend well. Tregear had gone out in
honours, having been a second-class man. His friend Silverbridge,
we know, had been allowed to take no degree at all; but the
terrible practical joke by which the whole front of the Dean's
house had been coloured scarlet in the middle of the night, had
been carried on without any assistance from Tregear. The two young
men had then been separated for a year; but immediately after
taking his degree, Tregear, at the invitation of Lord