Under Two Flags eBook  hands of a stranger; but no one among
them ever thought that this was the inevitable end to which they
surely drifted with blind and unthinking improvidence.  The old
Viscount, haughtiest of haughty nobles, would never abate one
jot of his accustomed magnificence; and his sons had but imbibed
the teaching of all that surrounded them; they did but do in
manhood what they had been unconsciously molded to do in
boyhood, when they were set to Eton at ten with gold dressing-
boxes to grace their Dame’s tables, embryo Dukes for their
cofags, and tastes that already knew to a nicety the worth of
the champagnes at the Christopher.  The old, old story—­how it
repeats itself!  Boys grow up amid profuse prodigality, and are
launched into a world where they can no more arrest themselves
than the feather-weight can pull in the lightning stride of the
two-year-old, who defies all check and takes the flat as he
chooses.  They are brought up like young Dauphins, and tossed
into the costly whirl to float