I was at
that time about twelve years old. My relative enjoyed a handsome
annuity, which he spent with the utmost liberality. As I was rather a
thoughtful, though not very studious boy, it was determined that I
should go to college. I entered with some difficulty soon after my
seventeenth birthday,--an age somewhat later than the average at that
time.
Two years before me in college was the class of 18--. Upon the roll of
its fifty-two members stood the name of Herbert Vannelle. Rich, an
orphan, inclined to thought and study beyond the limited academic range
of those days, endowed with personal fascinations of a very rare and
peculiar kind,--there seemed only one possible shadow to darken his
career. In his family there had been said to exist a tendency to
eccentric independence of action, which vulgarly, perhaps justly, passed
for insanity. His father, who died soon after Herbert entered college,
had given much uneasiness to the wealthy and respectable city-circle
with which he was socially connected.
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