De Vayne soon got over the shrinking with which he had at first regarded him, and no longer shunned the acquaintance of which he seemed desirous. It was not until this stage that Bruce made any serious attempt to take some steps towards winning his wager. He asked De Vayne to a dessert, and took care that the wines should be of an insidious strength. But the young nobleman's abstemiousness wholly defeated and baffled him, as he rarely took more than a single glass. "You pass the wine, De Vayne; don't do that." "Thank you, I've had enough." "Come, come; allow me," said Bruce, filling his glass for him. De Vayne drank it out of politeness, and Bruce repeated the same process soon after. "Come, De Vayne, no heel-taps," he said playfully, as he filled his glass for him. "Thank you, I'd really rather not have any more." "Why, you must have been lending your ears to-- "`Those budge doctors of the Stoic fur, Praising the lean and sallow abstinence;' "You take nothing. I shall abuse my wine-merchant." "You certainly seem as anxious as Comus that I should drink, Bruce," said De Vayne, smiling; "but really I _mean_ that I wish for no more." Bruce saw that he had overstepped the bounds of politeness, and also made a mistake by going a little too far. He pressed De Vayne no longer, and the conversation passed to other subjects. "Anything in the papers to-day?" asked Brogten. "Yes, another case of wife-beating and wife-murder. What a dreadful increase of those crimes there has been lately," said De Vayne. "Another proof," said Bruce, "of the gross absurdity of the marriage-theory." De Vayne opened his eyes wide in astonishment. Knowing very little of Bruce, he was not aware that this was a very favourite style of remark with him,--indeed, a not uncommon style with other clever young undergraduates. He delighted to startle men by something new, and dazzle them with a semblance of insight and reasoning. "The gross absurdity of the marriage-theory," thought De Vayne to himself; "I wonder what on earth he can mean?" Fancying he must have misheard, he said nothing; but Bruce, disappointed that his remark had fallen flat, (for the others were too much used to the kind of thing to take any notice of it), continued-- "How curious it is that the _whole_ of the arguments should be against marriage, and yet that it should continue to be an institution. You never find a person to defend it." "`_At quis vituperavit_?' as the man remarked, on hearing of a defence of Hercules," said De Vayne. "I should have thought that marriage, like the Bible, `needed no apology.'" "My dear fellow, it surely is an absurdity on the face of it? See how badly it succeeds." Without choosing to enter on that question, De Vayne quietly remarked, "You ask why marriage exists. Don't you believe that it was originally appointed by divine providence, and afterwards sanctioned by divine lips?"