344

MR. KENNEDY'S LETTER.

an effort, a strong effort to call you 'dear,' you may judge of the depth of my anger. I cannot trust myself, nor will I condescend to say much to you. Suffice it for you to know that your shameful transactions are detected, and that I am now aware of the means, the treacherous, dishonest means, you have adopted to procure money, which, since I give you an ample and liberal allowance, can only be wanted to pander to vice, idleness, and I know not what other forms of sin.

"I tell you that I do not know what to say; if you can act as you have acted, you must be quite deaf to expostulation, and dead to shame. You have done all you can to cover me and yourself with dishonor, and to bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

"Oh Edward, Edward! if I could have foreseen this in the days when you were yet a young and innocent and happy boy, I would have chosen rather that you should die.

"It must be a long time before you see my face again. I will not see you in the coming holidays, and I at once reduce your allowance to half of what it was. I cannot, and will not supply money to be wasted in extravagance and folly, nor shall I again be deceived into granting it to you on false pretenses.

"Your indignant, deeply-sorrowing father,

"T. KENNEDY."

Kennedy read the letter, and reread it, and laid it down on the table beside his untouched breakfast. There was but one expression in his face, and that was misery, and in his soul no other feeling than that of hopeless shame.

"HAST THOU FOUND ME, O MINE ENEMY?" 345

He did not, and could not write to his father. What was to be said? He must bear his burden-the burden of detection and of punishment—alone.

And the thought of Violet added keener poignancy to all his grief. For Kennedy could not but observe that her letters were not so fondly, passionately loving as they once had been, and he knew that the fault was his, because his own letters reflected, like a broken mirror, the troubled images of his wandering heart.

CHAPTER XXIX.

KENNEDY'S DESPAIR.

"When all the blandishments from life are gone,
The coward slinks to death;-the brave live on!"

Of all the sicknesses that can happen to the human soul, the deadliest and the most incurable is the feeling of despair and this was the malady which now infected every vein of Kennedy's moral and intellectual life.

Could he but have conquered his pride so far as to take but one person into his confidence, all might have been well. But Violet-could he ever tell Violet of sins which her noble heart must render so inconceivable as almost to make it impossible for her to sympathize with one who committed them? And Eva-could he ever wound the tender affection of his sweet sister, by revealing to her the disgrace of the brother whom, from her childhood, she had idolized? He sometimes thought that he would confess to Julian or Lillyston; but his courage failed him when the time came, and he fed on his own heart in solitude, avoiding the society of men.

The sore burden of a self-reproaching spirit wore him down. He had fallen so often now, and swerved so often from the path of temperance, rectitude, and honor, that he began to regard himself as a hopeless reprobate as one who had been weighed and found wanting-tested of God, and deliberately set aside.

And so step by step the devil thrust him into desperation, and strove thereby to clinch the hopelessness of his estate. With wild fierce passion Kennedy flung himself into sins he had never known before; angrily he laid waste the beauty and glory of the vineyard. whose hedge had been broken down; a little entrance to the sanctuary had been opened to evil thoughts, and they, when once admitted, soon flung back wider and wider the golden gates, till the reveling band of worse wickedness rushed in and defiled the altar, and trampled on the virgin floors, and defaced the cedarn walls with images of idolatry and picturings of sin. Because he had sunk into the slough of despond, he would be heedless of the mud that gathered on his garWas he not ruined already? could anything much worse befall him than had befallen him already? No; he would sin on now and take his fill.

ments.

It was a short period of his life; but in no other period did he suffer so much, or shake more fatally the foundations of all future happiness. It was emphatically a sin against his own soul, and as such it affected his very look. Those blue laughing eyes were clouded over, and the bloom died away from his cheeks, and the ingenuous beauty from his countenance, as the light of the Shekinah grew pale and dim in the inmost sanctuary. Kennedy was not mastered by impulse, but driven by despair.

Nor did he take any precaution to shield himself from punishment-the punishment of outward circumstance and natural consequence-as his moral abasement proceeded. His acquaintances shunned him, his friends dropped away from him, and the guiltiness of

the present received a tinge of deeper horror from the gloom of the future.

All that could be done, Julian did. He warned, he expostulated, he reminded of purer and happier-of pure and happy days. But he did not know the bitter fountain of despondency whence flowed those naphthalike streams of passion. At last he said,

"Kennedy, I have not often spoken to you of my dear sister; it is time to speak of her now. Your conduct proves to me that you do not and cannot love her."

Kennedy listened in silence; his face bowed down upon his hands. "You could not go on as you are doing if you loved her, for love allows no meaner, no unhallowed fires to pollute her vestal flame. Your love must be a pretense-a thing of the past. It was only possible, Kennedy, when you were worthier than now you are."

He groaned deeply, but still said nothing.

"Kennedy," continued Julian, "I have loved you as a friend, as a brother; I love you still most earnestly, and you must not be too much pained at what I say; but I have come to a determination which I must tell you, and by which I must abide. Your engagement with Violet must cease."

"Does SHE say so?" he asked, in a hollow voice.

"No, she does not know, Kennedy, what I know of you; but she will trust my deep affection, and know that I act solely for her good. The blow may almost kill her, but better that she should die than that her life should be ever connected-oh that you should have driven me to say it-with one so stained as yours!"