im for Eton?"

"I scarcely know,--I make plans only to abandon them," said Glencore,
gloomily.

"I'm greatly struck with him. He is one of those fellows, however,
who require the nicest management, and who either rise superior to all
around them, or drop down into an indolent, dreamy existence, conscious
of power, but too bashful or too lazy to exert it."

"You have hit him off, Upton, with all your own subtlety; and it was to
speak of that boy I have been so eager to see you."

Glencore paused as he said these words, and passed his hand over his
brow, as though to prepare himself for the task before him.

"Upton," said he, at last, in a voice of deep and solemn meaning, "the
resolution I am about to impart to you is not unlikely to meet your
strenuous opposition; you will be disposed to show me strong reasons
against it on every ground; you may refuse me that amount of assistance
I shall ask of you to carry out my purpose; but if your arguments were
all unanswerable, and if your denial to aid me was to sever the old
friendship between us, I 'd still persist in my determination. For more
than two years the project has been before my mind. The long hours
of the day, the longer ones of the night, have found me deep in the
consideration of it. I have repeated over to myself everything that my
ingenuity could suggest against it; I have said to my own heart all that
my worst enemy could utter, were he to read the scheme and detect my
plan; I have done more,--I have struggled with myself to abandon it;
but in vain. My heart is linked to it; it forms the one sole tie that
attaches me to life. Without it, the apathy that I feel stealing over me
would be complete, and my existence become a mournful dream. In a word,
Upton, all is passionless within me, save one sentiment; and I drag on
life merely for a '_Vendetta_.'"

Upton shook his head mournfully, as the other paused here, and said,--

"This is disease, Glencore!"

"Be it so; the malady is beyond cure," said he, sternly.

"Trust me it is not so," said Upton, gently; "you listened to my
persuasions on a more--"

"Ay, that I did!" cried Glencore, interrupting; "and have I ever ceased
to rue the day I did so? But for _your_ arguments, and I had not lived
this life of bitter, self-reproaching misery; but for you, and my
vengeance had been sated ere this!"

"Remember, Glencore," said the other, "that you had obtained all the
world has decreed as satisfaction. He met