“But what excuse have you? I really feel quite angry with you. You are wholly throwing away everything. What have you to show for your time and money? Only think, my dear fellow, that an opportunity like this comes only once in life, and soon your college days will be over with nothing to remember.”
“True, too true.”
“Well, I am glad that you see and own it. I began to fear that you were one of that contemptible would-be fine gentleman class that affects forsooth to despise work as a thing unworthy of their eminence.”
“No, Mr Admer,” said Kennedy, “my idleness springs from very different causes.”
“And then these Brogtens and people, whom you are so often seen with; which of them do you think understands you, or can teach you anything worth knowing? and which of them do you think you will ever care to look back to as acquaintances in after days?”
“Not one of them. I hate the whole set.”
“And then, my dear Kennedy—for I speak to you out of real good-will—I would say it with the utmost delicacy, but you must know that your name has suffered from the company you frequent.”
“Can I not see it to be so?” he answered moodily; “no need to tell me that, when I read it in the faces of nearly every man I see. The men have not yet forgiven me De Vayne’s absence, though really and truly that sin does not lie at my door. Except Julian and Lillyston there is hardly a man I respect, who does not look at me with averted eyes. Of course Grayson and the dons detest me to a man; but I don’t care for them.”
“Then, you mysterious fellow, seeing all this so clearly, why do you suffer it to be so?”
Kennedy only shook his head; already there had begun to creep over him a feeling of despair; already it seemed to him as though the gate of heaven were a lion-haunted portal guarded by a fiery sword.