costs me an _effort_, a
_strong_ effort to call you `dear,' you may judge of the depth of my
anger. I cannot trust myself, nor will I condescend to say much to
you. Suffice it for you to know that your shameful transactions are
detected, and that I am now aware of the means, the treacherous
dishonest means you have adopted to procure money, which, since I give
you an ample and liberal allowance, can only be wanted to pander to
vice, idleness, and I know not what other forms of sin.

"I tell you that I do not know what to say; if you can act as you have
acted, you must be quite deaf to expostulation, and dead to shame.
You have done all you can to cover me and yourself with dishonour, and
to bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.

"Oh Edward, Edward! if I could have foreseen this in the days when you
were yet a young and innocent and happy boy, I would have chosen
rather that you should die.

"It must be a long time before you see my face again. I will not see
you in the coming holidays, and I at once reduce your allowance to
half of what it was. I cannot, and will not supply money to be wasted
in extravagance and folly, nor shall I again be deceived into granting
it to you on false pretences--Your indignant, deeply-sorrowing father,
T. KENNEDY."

Kennedy read the letter, and re-read it, and laid it down on the table
beside his untouched breakfast. There was but one expression in his
face, and that was misery, and in his soul no other feeling than that of
hopeless shame.

He did not, and could not write to his father. What was to be said? He
must bear his burden--the _burden of detection and of punishment_--
alone.

And the thought of Violet added keener poignancy to all his grief. For
Kennedy could not but observe that her letters were not so fondly,
passionately loving as they once had been, and he knew that the fault
was his, because his own letters reflected, like a broken mirror, the
troubled images of his wandering heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

KENNEDY'S DESPAIR.

"When all the blandishments from life are gone,
The coward slinks to death;--the brave live on!"

Of all the sicknesses that can happen to the human soul, the deadliest
and the most incurable is the feeling of despair--and this was the
malady which now infected every vein of Kennedy's moral and intellectual
life.

Could he but have conquered his pride so far as to take bu