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On the whole, it struck them that they would not make a particularly creditable display in hall that evening, and therefore they partook instead of a sumptuous repast in the rooms of Lord Fitzurse, who made up for the dirt which they had been eating by the splendour of his entertainment. "I'll be even yet with that fellow Home," muttered Brogten, as they were parting.
The restlessness which had prevented him from doing the paper, the half sullen silence through the day, the horse-whipping of Brogten, the second outburst of unchecked feeling at the loss of the scholarship, and finally, this treatment of Hazlet, caused Lillyston a deep regret that his friend should have strayed so widely from his usual calm and manly course.
The very instant the sound of the gun reaches his ear, those oar-blades will flash like lightning into the water, and "smite the sounding furrows" with marvellous regularity and speed. He is the favourite, and there are some heavy bets on his success; Bruce and Brogten and Lord Fitzurse will be richer or poorer by some twenty pounds each from the result of this quarter of an hour.
The wine-party soon broke up, for Bruce could neither give new life to the conversation, nor recover his chagrin. "So-ho!" said Brogten, when they were left alone, "I shall win my bet." "Hanged if you shall," said Bruce, with an oath of vexation.
"What is the matter, De Vayne?" said Kennedy tenderly, as he knelt down and supported the young man in his arms. But there was no answer. "Here D'Acres, or somebody, for heaven's sake fetch a doctor; he must have been seized with a fit." "What have you been doing, Bruce?" thundered Brogten. "Bruce doing!" said Kennedy wildly, as he sprang to his feet.
"That strain I heard was of a higher mood!" thought the auditors, for it was quite a new thing to hear Brogten talk like this, and in such a solemn, manly, sober voice. "Fancy," said Kennedy, sighing, "an everlasting memory!" The others went away, but Brogten still lingered in Kennedy's rooms, and, rising, took him by the hand.
That evening he found in his own letter-box a slip of paper. "De Vayne is coming to wine with me to-morrow. Come, and the foul fiend take you. I have filled my decanters half-full of water, and won't bring out more than one bottle. Brogten read the note and chuckled, partly with the thought of Kennedy, partly of Bruce, partly of De Vayne. Yet the chuckle ended in a very heavy sigh.
He looked Brogten firmly in the face, whenever they chanced to meet, and never gave him the triumph of perceiving that his small arts of vexation had taken the slightest effect. He merely smiled when the hot-headed Kennedy suggested retaliation, and would not allow Lillyston to try the effect of remonstrance.
"I didn't shoot him," said Kennedy. "No, you very leerily managed to make the other fellow shoot him. Preserve me from my friends, must have been his secret reflections." "Have you kept the guns, Kennedy? You must let me have a look after hall." While this kind of talk was going on, Brogten, who was nearly opposite to Kennedy, sat silent, and watched him.
I should be infinitely better for it; and I will be better, too." And as he thus reasoned with himself, Brogten began to yearn for better things, and for Julian's friendship as a means of helping him to higher aims; and he remembered the lines "I would we were boys as of old, In the field, by the fold; His outrage. God's patience, man's scorn, Were so easily borne."
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