“I agree to it with pleasure,” was the prompt reply.

“Another drink before you go, then,” said the president, “and I will give the toast.  Fill up your glasses.”

The bottle again passed round the table.

“Here’s to a good fellow!” was the sentiment announced.  It was received standing.  Armour then retired with bewildered senses.  The gay scene that had floated before his eyes, and in which himself had been an actor, and the freedom with which he had taken wine, left him confused, almost in regard to his own identity.  He did not seem to himself the same person he had been a few hours before.  A new world had opened before him, and he had, almost involuntarily, entered into, and become a citizen of that world.  Long after he had reached his home, and retired to his bed, did his imagination revel amid the scenes he had just left.  In sleep, too, fancy was busy.  But here came a change.  Serpents would too often glide across the table around which the gay company, himself a member, were assembled; or some other sudden and more appalling change scatter into fragments the bright phantasma of his dreams.

The sober morning found him in a soberer mood.  Calm, cold, unimpassioned reflection came.  What had he been doing?  What path had he entered; and whither did it lead?  These were questions that would intrude themselves, and clamour for an answer.  He shut his eyes and endeavoured again to sleep.  Waking thoughts were worse than the airy terrors which had visited him in sleep.  At length he arose, with dull pains in his head, and an oppressive sluggishness of the whole body.  But more painful than his own reflections, or the physical consequences of the last night’s irregularity, was the thought of meeting Blanche, and bearing the glance of her innocent eyes.  He felt that he had been among the impure,—­and worse, that he had enjoyed their impure sentiments, and indulged with them in excess of wine.  The taint was upon him, and the pure mind of his sister must instinctively perceive it.  These thoughts made him wretched.  He really dreaded to meet her.  But this could not be avoided.

“You do not look well, brother,” said Blanche, almost as soon as she saw him.

“I am not well,” he replied, avoiding her steady look.  “My head aches, and I feel dull and heavy.”

“What has caused it, brother?” the affectionate girl asked, with a look and voice of real concern.

Now this was, of all others, the question that Henry was least prepared to answer.  He could not utter a direct falsehood.  From that his firm principles shrunk.  Nor could he equivocate, for he considered equivocation little better than a direct falsehood.  “Why should I wish to conceal any part of my conduct from her?” he asked himself, in his dilemma.  But the answer was instant and conclusive.  His participation in the revelry of the last night was a thing not to be whispered in her ear.  Not being prepared, then, to tell the truth, and shrinking