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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 THE TWENTY-SECOND.

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, men liked him so little as to feel for him far less than they otherwise should have done. His worst error never caused any one half the pain of Kennedy's most venial fault. Must I then tell a sad tale of Kennedy too-my brave, bright, beautiful, lighthearted 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 writing of Camford—not of a divine Utopia or a sunken Atalantis.

Bruce, so far from being troubled by his own evil deeds, was proud of a success which supported a pet theory of his infidel opinions. He made no sort of

secret of it, and laughed openly at the fool whom he had selected for his victim.

"But after all," said Brogten, who had plenty of common sense, your triumph was very slight."

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"How do you mean? I chose the most obtrusively religious man in St. Werner's, and, in the course of a very short time, I had him, of his own will, roaring drunk."

"And what's the inference ?"

"That what men call religion is half-cant, half the accident of circumstances."

"Pardon me, you're out in your conclusion; it only shews that Hazlet was a hypocrite, or at the best a weak, vain, ignorant fellow. The very obtrusiveness and uncharitableness of his religion proved its unreality. Now I could name dozens of men who would see you dead on the floor rather than do as you have taught Hazlet to do-men, in fact, with whom you simply daren't try the experiment."

"Daren't! why not"

"Why, simply because they breathe such a higher and better atmosphere than either you or I, that you would be abashed by their mere presence."

"Pooh! I don't believe it," said Bruce, with an uneasy laugh; "mention any such man.'

"Well, Suton for instance, or Lord De Vayne." "Suton is an unpleasant fellow, and I shouldn't choose to try him, because he's a bore. But I bet you what you like that I make De Vayne drunk before a month's over."

"Done! I bet you twenty pounds you don't."

Disgusting that the young, and pure-hearted, and amiable De Vayne should be made the butt of the machinations of such men as Bruce and Brogten ! But so it was. Things quite as painful and startling as this, are not strange to the experience of many. I can conceive a man's private wickedness, the wickedness which he confines within his own heart, and only brings to bear upon others so far as is demanded by his own fancied interests; I can imagine, too, an open and willing partnership in villany where hand joins in hand, and face answereth to face. But that any knowing the plague of their own hearts, should deliberately, endeavour to lead others into sin, coolly and deliberately, without even the blinding mist of passion to hide the path which they are treading,—this, if I had not known that it was so, I could not have conceived. The murderer who, atom by atom, continues the slow poisoning of a perishing body for many months, and dies amid the yell of a people's execration,-in sober earnest, before God, I believe he is less guilty than he who, drop by drop, pours into the soul of another the curdling venom of moral pollution; than he who feeds into full-sized fury the dormant monsters of another's evil heart. Surely the devil must welcome a human tempter with open arms!

Of course Bruce had to proceed with Lord De Vayne in a manner totally different from that which he had applied to Jedediah Hazlet. He felt himself that the task was far more difficult and delicate, especially

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as it was by no means easy to get access to De Vayne's company at all. Julian, Lillyston, Kennedy, and a few others, formed the circle of his only friends, and although he was constantly with them, he was rarely to be found in other society. But this was a difficulty which a man with so large an acquaintance as Bruce could easily surmount, and for the rest he trusted to the conviction which he had adopted, that there was no such thing as sincere godliness, and that men only differed in proportion to the weakness or intensity of the temptations which happened to assail them.

So Bruce managed, without any apparent manœuvring, to see more of De Vayne at various men's rooms, and he generally made a point of sitting next to him when he could. He had naturally a most insinuating address and a suppleness of manner which enabled him to adapt himself with facility to the tastes and temperaments of the men among whom he was thrown. There were few who could make themselves more pleasant and plausible when it suited them than Vyvyan Bruce. De Vayne soon got over the shrinking with which he had at first regarded him, and no longer shunned the acquaintance of which he seemed desirous. It was not until this stage that Bruce made any serious attempt to take some steps towards winning his wager. asked De Vayne to a dessert, and took care that the wines should be of an insidious strength. But the young nobleman's abstemiousness wholly defeated and baffled him, as he rarely took more than a single glass. "You pass the wine, De Vayne; don't do that."

He