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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 from falsehood and equivocation, Armour preferred silence as the least evil of the three. The question of Blanche was not, therefore, answered. At the breakfast-table, his father and mother remarked upon his appearance. To this, he merely replied that he was not well. As soon as the meal was over, he went out, glad to escape the eye of Blanche, which, it seemed to him, rested searchingly upon him all the while.

A walk of half an hour in the fresh morning air dispelled the dull pain in his head, and restored his whole system to a more healthy tone. This drove away, to some extent, the oppressive feeling of self-condemnation he had indulged. The scenes of the previous evening, though silly enough for sensible young men to engage in, seemed less objectionable than they had appeared to him on his first review. To laugh involuntarily at several remembered jests and stories, the points of which were not exactly the most chaste or reverential, marked the change that a short period had produced in his state of mind. During that day, he did not fall in with any of his wild companions of the last evening, too many of whom had already fairly entered the road to ruin. The evening was spent at home, in the society of Blanche. He read while she sewed, or he turned for her the leaves of her music book, or accompanied her upon the flute while she played him a favourite air upon the piano. Conversation upon books, music, society, and other topics of interest, filled up the time not occupied in these mental recreations, and added zest, variety, and unflagging interest to the gently-passing hours. On the next evening they attended a concert, and on the next a party. On that succeeding, Henry went out to see a friend of a different character from any of those with whom he had passed the hours a few nights previous–a friend about his own age, of fixed habits and principles, who, like himself, was preparing for the bar. With him he spent a more rational evening than with the others, and, what was better, no sting was left behind.