“Sure enough!  What is life worth, if its pleasures are all to be sacrificed for a sister?” returned the other, sneeringly.

“Here!  Pass that champagne,” interrupted one of the company.  “Let Harry Armour break his engagement for a sister if he likes.  That needn’t mar our enjoyment.  There are enough of us here for a regular good time.”

“Here’s a toast,” cried another, as he lifted a sparkling glass to his lips—­“Pleasant dreams to the old folks!”

“Good!  Good!  Good!” passed round the table, about which the young revellers were gathered, and each drained a glass to the well understood sentiment.

In the mean time, young Armour had left his home, having decided at last, and after a long struggle with himself, to join this gay company, as he had agreed to do.  It was, in fact, a little club, formed a short time previous, the members of which met once a week to eat, drink, smoke, and corrupt each other by ridiculing those salutary moral restraints which, once laid aside, leave the thoughtless youth in imminent danger of ruin.

Henry Armour had been blessed with a sister a year or two older than himself, who loved him tenderly.  The more rapid development of her mind, as well as body, had given her the appearance of maturity that enabled her to exercise a strong influence over him.  Of the dangers that beset the path of a young man, she knew little or nothing.  The constant effort which she made to render home agreeable to her brother by consulting his tastes, and entering into every thing that seemed to give him pleasure, did not, therefore, spring from a wish to guard him from the world’s allurements; it was the spontaneous result of a pure fraternal affection.  But it had the right effect.  To him, there was no place like home; nor any smile so alluring, or voice so sweet, as his sister’s.  And abroad, no company possessed a perfect charm, unless Blanche were one of its members.

This continued until Henry gained his twenty-second year, when, as a law student, he found himself thrown more and more into the company of young men of his own age, and the same standing in society.  An occasional ride out with one and another of these, at which times an hour at least was always spent in a public house, opened to him new scenes in life, and for a young man of lively, buoyant mind, not altogether unattractive.  That there was danger in these paths he did not attempt to disguise from himself.  More than one, or two, or three, whom he met on almost every visit he made to a fashionable resort for young men, about five miles from the city, showed too strong indications of having passed beyond the bounds of self-control, as well in their use of wines and stronger drinks as in their conduct, which was too free from those external decent restraints that we look for even in men who make no pretensions to virtue.  But he did not fear for himself.  The exhibitions which these made of themselves instinctively disgusted him.  Still, he did not perceive that he was less and less shocked at some things he beheld, and more than at first inclined to laugh at follies which verged too nearly upon moral delinquencies.