ariably did, from his unsuspecting comrades, he manifested the
deepest regret and keenest remorse. No one suspected that it was through
his instrumentality they were seduced into error and ruin.

Louis, the impulsive, warm-hearted, and confiding Louis Gleason, was
drawn as if by fascination towards this young man. There was a luminous
atmosphere around him, that dazzled the judgment, and rendered it blind
to his moral defects. Dissipation appeared covered with a golden tissue,
that concealed all its deformity; and reckless prodigality received the
honors due to princely generosity.

When Clinton accompanied Louis to his father's house, and beheld the
beautiful Mittie, gilt, as he first saw her by the rays of the setting
sun, he gave her the spontaneous homage which beauty ever received from
him. He admired and for a little time imagined he loved her. But she was
too easy a conquest to elate his vanity, and he soon wearied of her too
exacting love. Helen, the shy, child-like, simple hearted Helen, baffled
and interested him. She shunned and feared him, and therefore he pursued
her with increasing fervor of feeling and earnestness of purpose.
Finding himself terribly annoyed by Mittie's frantic jealousy, he
resolved to absent himself awhile till the tempest he had raised was
lulled, and urging Louis to be his companion, that he might have a plea
for returning, departed, as has been described, not to his pretended
home, but to haunts of guilty pleasure, where the deluded Louis
followed, believing in his infatuation that he was only walking side by
side with one sorely tempted, reluctantly transgressing, and as oft
repenting as himself.

With the native chivalry of his character, he refused to criminate his
_friend_, and justify his father's anger. It was to Clinton _his debts
of honor_ were chiefly due, and it was for this reason he shrunk from
revealing them to his father.

When Clinton found himself excluded from the presence of Helen, whose
love he was resolved to win, his indignation and mortification were
indescribable; but acknowledging no obstacles to his designs, he watched
his opportunity and entered Miss Thusa's cabin, as we have related in
the last chapter. He was no actor in that interview, for he really felt
for Helen, emotions purer, deeper and stronger than he had ever before
cherished for woman. He had likewise all the stimulus of rivalry, for he
believed that Arthur Hazleton loved her, that calm, self-p