ronly
honour? Oh, Hazlet, I have heard you talk about missionary societies,
and seen your name in subscription lists, but believe me you could not,
by myriads of such conventional charities, cancel the direct and awful
quota which you are now contributing to the aggregate of the world's
misery and shame."

It took a great deal to abash a mind like Hazlet's. He said that he was
going to be a clergyman, and that it was necessary for him to see
something of life, or he would never acquire the requisite experience.

"Loathly experience!" said Julian with crushing scorn. "And do you ever
hope, Hazlet, by centuries of preaching such as yours, to repair one
millionth part of the damage done by your bad passions to a single
fellow-creature? Such a hateful excuse is verily to carry the Urim with
its oracular gems into the very sty of sensuality, and to debase your
religion into `a procuress to the lords of hell.' I have done; but let
me say, Hazlet, that your self-justification is, if possible, more
repulsive than your sin."

He pushed back his chair from the fire, and turned away, as Hazlet, with
some incoherent sentences about "no business of his," left the room, and
slammed the door behind him.

What are words but weak motions of vibrating air? Julian's words passed
by the warped nature of Hazlet like the idle wind, and left no more
trace upon him than the snow-flake when it has melted into the purpling
sea. As the weeks went on, his ill-regulated passions grew more and
more free from the control of reason or manliness, and he sank
downwards, downwards, downwards, into the most shameful abysses of an
idle, and evil, and dissipated life.

And the germ of that ruin was planted by the hand of the clever, and
gay, and handsome Vyvyan Bruce.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

DE VAYNE'S TEMPTATION.

"And felt how awful goodness is, and virtue
In her own shape how lovely."
Milton's _Paradise Lost_.

Shall I confess it? Pitiable and melancholy as was Hazlet's course, I
liked him so little as to feel for him far less than I otherwise should
have done. His worst error never caused me half the pain of Kennedy's
most venial fault. Must I then tell a sad tale of Kennedy too--my
brave, bright, beautiful, light-hearted Kennedy, whom I always loved so
well? May I not throw over the story of his college days the rosy
colourings of romance and fancy, the warm sunshine of prosperity and
hope? I wish I might. But I am wri