on--can I ever bear it?"

"Why not, Edward? They cannot affect _you_ by their opinion. I heard
you say the other day that your heart was becoming an island, and the
waters round it broadening every day. If the island itself be beautiful
and happy, it need not reck of the outer world."

"You are right, Violet. I will return if need be, and bear all meekly
which I have deserved to bear. The one sorrow will be gone," he said,
as he drew her nearer to his side, "that drove me into--Yes, you are
right. I will go away home to-morrow, when Julian starts, and begin
from the very first day to read with all my might. Hitherto I have had
only the bitter lessons of Camford; let us see if I cannot gain some of
her honours too."

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

BRUCE IN TROUBLE.

"Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles,
Nec dudum vetiti me laris augit amor."
Milton.

Bruce, when expelled from Saint Werner's, thought very little of his
disgrace. It hardly ruffled the calm stream of his self-complacency,
and, for some reasons, he was rather glad that it had happened. He did
not like Camford; he had never taken to reading, and being thus debarred
from all intellectual pleasures, he had grown thoroughly tired of late
breakfasts, boating on the muddy Iscam, noisy wines, and interminable
whist parties. Moreover, he had made far less sensation at Camford than
he had expected. Somehow or other he had a dim consciousness that men
saw through him; that his cleverness did not conceal his superficiality,
nor his easy manners blind men's eyes to his ungenerous and selfish
heart. Even his late phase of popular scepticism was less successful at
Camford than it would have been at places of less steady diligence and
less sound acquirements. In fact, Bruce imagined that he was by no mean
appreciated. The sphere was too narrow for him; he was quite sure that
in the arena of London society and political life he was qualified to
play a far more conspicuous part.

Nor did he believe that Sir Rollo Bruce would care for his expulsion any
more than he did himself; he fancied that his father was quite above the
middle-class prejudices of respect and reverence for pedantry and
pedagogues, and was too much a man of the world to be disturbed by a
slight contretemps like this. He wrote home a careless note to mention
the fact that his Saint Werner's career was ended, and attributed this
result to a mere escapade at a wine-party, w