Of course Bruce had to proceed with Lord De Vayne in a manner totally different from that which he had applied to Jedediah Hazlet. He felt himself that the task was far more difficult and delicate, especially as it was by no means easy to get access to De Vayne’s company at all. Julian, Lillyston, Kennedy, and a few others, formed the circle of his only friends, and although he was constantly with them, he was rarely to be found in other society. But this was a difficulty which a man with so large an acquaintance as Bruce could easily surmount, and for the rest he trusted to the conviction which he had adopted, that there was no such thing as sincere godliness, and that men only differed in proportion to the weakness or intensity of the temptations which happened to assail them.
So Bruce managed, without any apparent manoeuvring, to see more of De Vayne at various men’s rooms, and he generally made a point of sitting next to him when he could. He had naturally a most insinuating address and a suppleness of manner which enabled him to adapt himself with facility to the tastes and temperaments of the men among whom he was thrown. There were few who could make themselves more pleasant and plausible when it suited them than Vyvyan Bruce.
De Vayne soon got over the shrinking with which he had at first regarded him, and no longer shunned the acquaintance of which he seemed desirous. It was not until this stage that Bruce made any serious attempt to take some steps towards winning his wager. He asked De Vayne to a dessert, and took care that the wines should be of an insidious strength. But the young nobleman’s abstemiousness wholly defeated and baffled him, as he rarely took more than a single glass.
“You pass the wine, De Vayne; don’t do that.”
“Thank you, I’ve had enough.”
“Come, come; allow me,” said Bruce, filling his glass for him.
De Vayne drank it out of politeness, and Bruce repeated the same process soon after.
“Come, De Vayne, no heel-taps,” he said playfully, as he filled his glass for him.
“Thank you, I’d really rather not have any more.”
“Why, you must have been lending your ears to—