y saw the
list with his own eyes. It was quite by accident, and not with any view
of being sworn in as a scholar the next morning, that he had returned to
Saint Werner's on that day at all. Kennedy bore the bitter, but not
unexpected disappointment with silent stoicism, and showed an unaffected
joy at the happy result which had crowned the honest exertions of his
best-loved friends.

He bore it in stoical silence, until he reached his own rooms; and then,
do not blame him--my poor Kennedy--if he bowed his head upon his hands,
and cried like a little child. There are times when the bravest man
feels quite like a boy--feels as if he were unchanged since the day when
he sorrowed for boyish trespasses, and was chidden for boyish faults.
Kennedy was very young, and he was eating the fruits of folly and
idleness in painful failure and hope deferred. In public he never
showed the faintest signs of vexation, but in the loneliness of his
closet do not blame him if he wept--for Violet's sake as well as for his
own.

So once more he was separated from Julian and Lillyston in hall and
chapel, for they now sat at the scholars' table and in the scholars'
seats.

He was beginning to get over his feeling of sorrow when he received a
letter, which did not need the coronet on the seal to show him that his
correspondent was De Vayne. He opened it with eagerness and curiosity,
and read--

"_Eaglestower, April_ 30, 18--, _Argyllshire_.

"My Dear Kennedy--How long it is since we saw or heard of each other!
I am getting well now, slowly but surely, and as I am amusing my
leisure by reviving my old correspondence with my friends, let me
write to you whom I reckon and shall ever reckon among that honoured
number.

"I am afraid that you consider me to have been slightly alienated from
you by the sad scene which your rooms witnessed when last we met in
health, and by the connection into which your name was dragged, by
popular rumour, with that unhappy affair. If such a thought has ever
troubled you, let me pray that you will banish it. I have long since
been sure that you would have been ready to suffer any calamity rather
than expose me to the foreseen possibility of such an outrage.

"No, believe me, dear Kennedy, I am as much now as I always have been
since I knew you, your sincere and affectionate friend. Nor will I
conceal how deep an interest another circumstance has given me in your
welfa