With a cry of agony, Bruce saw the paper, and struck his forehead with his hand. The sudden blow of shameful detection with all its train of consequences utterly unmanned him, and falling on his knees, he cried incoherently—
“Oh! I did it, I did it. I didn’t mean to; my hand slipped: indeed, indeed it did. For God’s sake forgive me, and let this not be known. I will give you thousands to hush it up—”
A general exclamation of indignation and disgust stopped his prayers, and the Master gave orders that he should be removed and watched. He was dragged away, tearing his hair and sobbing like a child. Kennedy, too, was ordered to retire.
It took the Seniors but a short time to deliberate, and then Bruce was summoned. He would have spoken, but the Master sternly ordered him to be silent, and said to him:
“Vyvyan Bruce, you are convicted by your own confession, extorted after deliberate falsehood, of having wished to drug the wine of a fellow-student for the purpose of entrapping him into a sin, to which you would otherwise have failed to tempt him. What fearful results may follow from your wickedness we cannot yet know, and you may have to answer for this crime before another tribunal. Be that as it may, it is hardly necessary to tell you that your time as a student at Saint Werner’s has ended. You are expelled, and I now proceed to erase your name from the books.” (Here the Master ran his pen two or three times through Bruce’s signature in the college register). “Your rooms must be finally vacated to-morrow. You need say nothing in self-defence, and may go.” As Bruce seemed determined to plead his own cause, they ordered the attendant to remove him immediately.
Kennedy was then sent for, and they could not help pitying him, for he was a favourite with them all.
“Mr Kennedy,” said the senior Dean, “the Master desires me to admonish you for your very culpable connivance—for I have no other name for it—in the great folly and wickedness of which Bruce has been convicted—”
“I did not connive,” said Kennedy.
“Silence, sir!”
“But I will not keep silence; you accuse me falsely.”