An Episode in High Life by Grant Allen — Read

Sir Henry Vardon, K. C. B., electrician to the Admiralty, whose title, as everybody knows, was gazetted some six weeks since, is at this moment the youngest living member of the British knighthood. He is now only just thirty, and he has obtained his present high distinction by those remarkable inventions of his in the matter of electrical signalling and lighthouse arrangements which have been so much talked about in _Nature_ this year, and which gained him the gold medal of the Royal Society in 1881. Lady Vardon is one of the youngest and prettiest hostesses in London, and if you would care to hear the history of their courtship here it is.

When Harry Vardon left Oxford, only seven years ago, none of his friends could imagine what he meant by throwing up all his chances of University success. The son of a poor country parson in Devonshire, who had strained his little income to the uttermost to send him to college, Vardon of Magdalen had done credit to his father and himself in all the schools. He gained the best demyship of his year; got a first in classical mods.; and then unaccountably took to reading science, in which he carried everything before him. At the end of his four years, he walked into a scientific fellowship at Balliol as a matter of course; and then, after twelve months' residence, he suddenly surprised the world of Oxford by accepting a tutorship to the young Earl of Surrey, at that time, as you doubtless remember, a minor, aged about sixteen.