re. You perhaps did not know that I too loved your affianced
Violet; how long, how deeply I can never utter to any living soul. I
did not know that you had won her affections, and the information that
such was the case, came on me like the death-knell of all my cherished
hopes. But I have schooled myself now to the calm contemplation of my
failure, and I can rejoice without envy in the knowledge, that in you
she has won a lover richly endowed with all the qualities on which
future happiness can depend.

"I write to you partly to say good-bye. In a fortnight I am going
abroad, and shall not return until I feel that I have conquered a
hopeless passion, and regained a shattered health. Farewell to dear
Old Camford! I little thought that my career there would terminate as
it did, but I trust in the full persuasion that God worketh all things
for good to them who love Him.

"Once more good-bye. When I return, I hope that I shall see leaning
on your arm, a fair, a divine young bride.--Ever affectionately yours,
De Vayne."

Kennedy had written home to announce that his name was _not_ to be found
in the list of Saint Werner's scholars. The information had disgusted
his father exceedingly. Mr Kennedy, himself an old Wernerian, loved
that royal foundation with an unchanging regard, and ever since that day
Edward had been playing in his hall a pretty boy, he determined that he
should be a Saint Werner's scholar at his first trial. He knew his
son's abilities, and felt convinced that there must be some radical
fault in his Camford life to produce such a disastrous series of
failures and disgraces. Unable to gain any real information on the
subject from Edward's letters, he determined to write up at once, and
ask the classical and mathematical tutors the points in which his son
was most deficient, and the reason of his continued want of success.

The classical tutor, Mr Dalton, wrote back that Kennedy's failure was
due solely to idleness; that his abilities were acknowledged to be
brilliant, but that at Camford as everywhere else, the notion of success
without industry, was a chimera invented by boastfulness and conceit.
"Le Genie c'est la Patience."

"You seem, however," continued Mr Dalton, "to be under the mistaken
impression that your son read with me last term, and even `read double.'
This is not the case, as he has ceased to read with me since the end of
the Christmas term: I was