ted the same process
soon after.

"Come, De Vayne, no heel-taps," he said playfully, as he filled his
glass for him.

"Thank you, I'd really rather not have any more."

"Why, you must have been lending your ears to--

"`Those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
Praising the lean and sallow abstinence;'

"You take nothing. I shall abuse my wine-merchant."

"You certainly seem as anxious as Comus that I should drink, Bruce,"
said De Vayne, smiling; "but really I _mean_ that I wish for no more."

Bruce saw that he had overstepped the bounds of politeness, and also
made a mistake by going a little too far. He pressed De Vayne no
longer, and the conversation passed to other subjects.

"Anything in the papers to-day?" asked Brogten.

"Yes, another case of wife-beating and wife-murder. What a dreadful
increase of those crimes there has been lately," said De Vayne.

"Another proof," said Bruce, "of the gross absurdity of the
marriage-theory."

De Vayne opened his eyes wide in astonishment. Knowing very little of
Bruce, he was not aware that this was a very favourite style of remark
with him,--indeed, a not uncommon style with other clever young
undergraduates. He delighted to startle men by something new, and
dazzle them with a semblance of insight and reasoning. "The gross
absurdity of the marriage-theory," thought De Vayne to himself; "I
wonder what on earth he can mean?" Fancying he must have misheard, he
said nothing; but Bruce, disappointed that his remark had fallen flat,
(for the others were too much used to the kind of thing to take any
notice of it), continued--

"How curious it is that the _whole_ of the arguments should be against
marriage, and yet that it should continue to be an institution. You
never find a person to defend it."

"`_At quis vituperavit_?' as the man remarked, on hearing of a defence
of Hercules," said De Vayne. "I should have thought that marriage, like
the Bible, `needed no apology.'"

"My dear fellow, it surely is an absurdity on the face of it? See how
badly it succeeds."

Without choosing to enter on that question, De Vayne quietly remarked,
"You ask why marriage exists. Don't you believe that it was originally
appointed by divine providence, and afterwards sanctioned by divine
lips?"

"Oh, if you come to that kind of ground, you know, and abandon the
aspect of the question from the side of pure reason, you've so many
preliminaries to prove; _e g_, the genuinen