get her. I feel as if I should go mad sometimes. I can't stand it, Pen. I couldn't bear to hear you talking about her, just now, about marrying her only because she's money. Ah, Pen! that ain't the question in marrying. I'd bet anything it ain't. Talking about money and such a girl as that, it's-it's-whatd'ye-call'em-you know what I meanI ain't good at talking-sacrilege, then. If she'd have me, I'd take and sweep a crossing, that I would!"

"Poor Fo! I don't think that would tempt her," Pen said, eyeing his friend with a great deal of real-good nature and pity. She is not a girl for love and a cottage."

I'm

"She ought to be a duchess, I know that very well, and I know she wouldn't take me unless I could make her a great place in the world-for I ain't good for anything myself much-I ain't clever and that sort of thing," Foker said sadly. "If I had all the diamonds that all the duchesses and marchionesses had on tonight, wouldn't I put 'em in her lap? But what's the use of talking? booked for another race. It's that kills me, Pen. I can't get out of it; though I die, I can't get out of it. And though my cousin's a nice girl, and I like her very well, and that, yet I hadn't seen this one when our Governors settled that matter between us. And when you talked, just now, about her doing very well, and about her having money enough for both of you, I thought to myself it isn't money or mere liking a girl, that ought to be enough to make a fellow marry. He may marry, and find

he likes somebody else better. All the money in the world won't make you happy then. Look at me; I've plenty of money, or shall have, out of the mashtubs, as you call 'em. My Governor thought he'd made it all right for me in settling my marriage with my cousin. I tell you it won't do; and when Lady Ann has got her husband, it won't be happy for either of us, and they'll have the most miserable beggar in town."

"Poor old fellow !" Pen said, with rather a cheap magnanimity, " I wish I could help you. I had no idea of this, and that you were so wild about the

girl. Do you think she would have you without your money? No. Do you think your father would agree to break off your engagement with your cousin? You know him very well, and that he would cast you off rather than do so."

The unhappy Foker only groaned a reply, flinging himself prostrate on a sofa, face forwards, his head in his hands,

"As for my affair," Pen went on'my dear fellow, if I had thought matters were so critical with you, at least I would not have pained you by choosing you as my confidant. And my business is not serious, at least not as yet. I have not spoken a word about it to Miss Amory. Very likely she would not have me if I asked her. Only I have had a great deal of talk about it with my uncle, who says that the match might be an eligible one for me. I'm ambitious and I'm poor. And it appears Lady Clavering will give her a good deal of money, and Sir Francis might be got to -never mind the rest. Nothing is settled, Harry. They are going out of town directly. I promise you I won't ask her before she goes. There's no hurry: there's time for everybody. But, suppose you got her, Foker. Remember what you said about marriages just now, and the misery of a man who doesn't care for his wife; and what sort of a wife would you have who didn't care for her husband?”

"But she would care for me," said Foker, from his sofa-"that is, I think she would. Last night only, as we were dancing, she said-"

"What did she say?" Pen cried, starting up in great wrath. But he saw his own meaning more clearly than Foker, and broke off with a laugh"Well, never mind what she said, Harry. Miss Amory is a clever girl, and says numbers of civil thingsto you to me, perhaps-and who the deuce knows to whom besides? Nothing's settled, old boy. At least my heart won't break if I don't get her. Win her if you can, and I wish you joy of her. Good-bye! Don't think about what I said to you. I was excited, and confoundedly thirsty in those

hot rooms, and didn't, I suppose, put enough Seltzer water into the champagne. Good night! I'll keep your counsel too. 'Mum' is the word between us; and 'let there be a fair fight, and let the best man win,' as Peter Crawley says."

So saying, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, giving a very queer and rather dangerous look at his companion, shook him by the hand, with something of that sort of cordiality which befitted his just repeated simile of the boxing-match, and which Mr. Bendigo displays when he shakes hands with Mr. Caunt before they fight each other for the champion's belt and two hundred pounds a-side. Foker returned his friend's salute with an imploring look, and a piteous squeeze of the hand, sank back on his cushions again, and Pen, putting on his hat, strode forth into the air, and almost over the body of the matutinal housemaid, who was rubbing the steps at the door.

"And so he wants her too? does he?" thought Pen as he marched along-and noted within himself with a fatal keenness of perception, and almost an infernal mischief, that the very pains and tortures which that honest heart of Foker's was suffering gave a zest and an impetus to his own pursuit of Blanche: if pursuit that might be called which had been no pursuit as yet, but mere sport and idle dallying. "She said something to him, did she? perhaps she gave him the fellow flower to this ;" and he took out of his coat and twiddled in his thumb and finger a poor little shrivelled crumpled bud that had faded and blackened with the heat and flare of the night." I wonder to how many more she has given her artless tokens of affection-the little flirt !" and he flung his into the gutter, where the water may have refreshed it, and where any amateur of rosebuds may have picked it up. And then bethinking him that the day was quite bright, and that the passers-by might be staring at his beard and white neckcloth, our modest young gentleman took a cab and drove to the Temple.

Ah! is this the boy that prayed at his mother's knee but a few years since, and for whom very likely at this hour of

morning she is praying? Is this jaded and selfish worldling the lad who, a short while back, was ready to fling away his worldly all, his hope, his ambition, his chance of life, for his love? This is the man you are proud of, old Pendennis. You boast of having formed him: and of having reasoned him out of his absurd romance and folly-and groaning in your bed over your pains and rheumatisms, satisfy yourself still by thinking, that, at last, that lad will do something to better himself in life, and that the Pendennises will take a good place in the world. And is he the only one, who in his progress through this dark life goes wilfully or fatally astray, whilst the natural truth and love which should illumine him grow dim in the poisoned air, and suffice to light him no more?

When Pen was gone away, poor Harry Foker got up from the sofa, and taking out from his waistcoat-the splendidly buttoned, the gorgeously embroidered, the work of his mamma-a little white rosebud, he drew from his dressing-case, also the maternal present, a pair of scissors, with which he nipped carefully the stalk of the flower, and placing it in a glass of water opposite his bed, he sought refuge there from care and bitter remembrances.

It is to be presumed that Miss Blanche Amory had more than one rose in her bouquet, and why should not the kind young creature give out of her superfluity, and make as many partners as possible happy?

CHAPTER XLVI.

MONSEIGNEUR S'AMUSE.

THE exertions of that last night at Gaunt House had proved almost too much for Major Pendennis; and as soon as he could move his weary old body with safety, he transported himself groaning to Buxton, and sought relief in the healing waters of that place. Parliament broke up. Sir Francis Clavering and family left town, and the affairs which we have just mentioned to the

reader were not advanced, in the brief interval of a few days or weeks which have occurred between this and the last chapter. The town was, however, emptied since then.

The season was now come to a con

clusion: Pen's neighbours, the lawyers, were gone upon circuit: and his more fashionable friends had taken their passports for the continent, or had fled for health or excitement to the Scotch moors. Scarce a man was to be seen in the bow-windows of the Clubs, or on the solitary Pall-Mall pavement. The red jackets had disappeared from before the Palace-gate the tradesmen of St. James's were abroad taking their pleasure the tailors had grown mustachios and were gone up the Rhine: the bootmakers were at Ems or Baden, blushing when they met their customers at those places of recreation, or punting beside their creditors at the gambling tables: the clergymen of St. James's only preached to half a congregation, in which there was not a single sinner of distinction: the band in Kensington Gardens had shut up their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver: only two or three old flys and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpentine, and Clarence Bulbul, who was retained in town by his arduous duties as a Treasury clerk, when he took his afternoon ride in Rotten Row, compared its loneliness to the vastness of the Arabian desert, and himself to a Bedouin wending his way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed away a quantity of Cavendish tobacco in his carpet bag, and betook himself, as his custom was in the vacation, to his brother's house in Norfolk. Pen was left alone in chambers for a while, for this man of fashion could not quit the metropolis when he chose always and was at present detained by the affairs of his newspaper, the "Pall Mall Gazette," of which he acted as the editor and charge d'affaires during the temporary absence of the chief, Captain Shandon, who was with his family at the salutary watering-place of Boulogne sur Mer.

Although, as we have seen, Mr. Pen had pronounced himself for years past to be a man perfectly blase and wearied of life, yet the truth is he was an exceed

ingly healthy young fellow still; with a fine appetite, which he satisfied with the greatest relish and satisfaction at least once a-day; and a constant desire for society, which showed him to be anything but misanthropical. If he could not get a good dinner, he sate down to a bad one with entire contentment; if he could not procure the company of witty, or great, or beautiful persons, he put up with any society that came to hand: and was perfectly satisfied in a tavern parlour, or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt to Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the Pall Mall Gazette: or in a visit to the summer theatres across the river; or to the Royal Gardens of Vauxhall, where he was on terms of friendship with the great Simpson, and where he shook the principal comic singer or the lovely equestrian of the arena by the hand. And while he could watch the grimaces or the graces of these with a satiric humour that was not deprived of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at the lookers on too: at the roystering youth bent upon enjoyment, and here taking it: at the honest parents, with their delighted children laughing and clapping their hands at the show: at the poor outcasts, whose laughter was less innocent though perhaps louder, and who brought their shame and their youth here, to dance and be merry till the dawn at least; and to get bread and drown care. Of this sympathy with all conditions of men, Arthur often boasted: he was pleased to possess it and said that he hoped thus to the last he should retain it. As another man has an ardour for art or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen said that anthropology was his favourite pursuit ; and had his eyes always eagerly open to its infinite varieties and beauties: contemplating with an unfailing delight all specimens of it in all places to which he resorted, whether it was the coquetting of a wrinkled dowager in a ball-room, or a high-bred young beauty blushing in her prime there; whether it was a hulking guardsman coaxing a servant-girl in the Park-or innocent little Tommy that was feeding the ducks whilst the nurse listened. And indeed a man whose heart is pretty clean, can indulge in this

pursuit with an enjoyment that never ceases, and is only perhaps the more keen because it is secret and has a touch of sadness in it; because he is of his mood and humour lonely, and apart although not alone.

Yes, Pen used to bragg and talk in his impetuous way to Warrington. "I was in love so fiercely in my youth, that I have burned out that flame for ever, I think; and if ever I marry, it will be a marriage of reason that I will make, with a well-bred, good-tempered, goodlooking person who has a little money, and so forth, that will cushion our carriage in its course through life. As for romance, it is all done; I have spent that out, and am old before my timeI'm proud of it."

"Stuff!" growled the other, " you fancied you were getting bald the other day, and bragged about it as you do about everything. But you began to use the bear's-grease pot directly the hairdresser told you; and are scented like a barber ever since."

"You are Diogenes," the other answered, "and you want every man to live in a tub like yourself. Violets smell better than stale tobacco, you grizly old cynic." But Mr. Pen was blushing whilst he made this reply to his unromantical friend, and indeed cared a great deal more about himself still than such a philosopher perhaps should have done. Indeed, considering that he was careless about the world, Mr. Pen ornamented his person with no small pains in order to make himself agreeable to it, and for a weary pilgrim as he was, wore very tight boots and bright varnish.

It was in this dull season of the year then, of a shining Friday night in Autumn, that Mr. Pendennis, having completed at his newspaper office a brilliant leading article-such as Captain Shandon himself might have written, had the Captain been in good humour, and inclined to work, which he never would do except under compulsion-that Mr. Arthur Pendennis, having written his article, and reviewed it approvingly as it lay before him in its wet proof sheet at the office of the paper, bethought him that he would cross the water, and regale himself with the fireworks and other

amusements of Vauxhall. So he affably put in his pocket the order which admitted "Editor of Pall Mall Gazette and friend" to that place of recreation, and paid with the coin of the realm a sufficient sum to enable him to cross Waterloo Bridge. The walk thence to the Gardens was pleasant, the stars were shining in the skies above, looking down upon the royal property, whence the rockets and Roman candles had not yet ascended to outshine the stars.

Before you enter the enchanted ground, where twenty thousand additional lamps are burned every night as usual, most of us have passed through the black and dreary passage and wickets which hide the splendours of Vauxhall from uninitiated men. In the walls of this passage are two holes strongly illuminated, in the midst of which you see two gentlemen at desks, where they will take either your money as a private individual, or your order of admission if you are provided with that passport to the Gardens. Pen went to exhibit his ticket at the last-named orifice, where, however, a gentleman and two ladies were already in parley before him.

The gentleman, whose hat was very much on one side, and who wore a short and shabby cloak in an excessively smart manner, was crying out in a voice which Pen at once recognised

Bedad, sir, if ye doubt me honour, will ye obleege me by stipping out of that box, and-"

"Lor, Capting !" cried the elder lady. "Don't bother me," said the man in the box.

"And ask Mr. Hodgen himself, who's in the gyardens, to let these leedies pass. Don't be froightened, me dear madam, I'm not going to quarl with this gintleman, at anyreet before leedies. Will ye go, sir, and desoire Mr. Hodgen (whose orther I keem in with, and he's me most intemate friend, and I know he's goan to sing the 'Body Snatcher' here to-noight), with Captain Costigan's compliments, to stip out and let in the leedies-for meself, sir, oi've seen Vauxhall, and I scawrun any interfayrance on moi account; but for these leedies, one of them has never been there, and oi should think ye'd harly take advantage

of me misfartune in losing the tickut, to deproive her of her pleasure."

"It ain't no use, Captain. I can't go about your business,' the checktaker said: on which the Captain swore an oath, and the elder lady said, "Lor, 'ow provokin'!"

As for the young one, she looked up at the Captain and said, "Never mind, Captain Costigan, I'm sure I don't want to go at all. Come away, mamma.' And with this, although she did not want to go at all, her feelings overcame her, and she began to cry.

"Me poor child!" the Captain said. "Can ye see that, sir, and will ye not let this innocent creature in ?"

"Me

"It ain't my business," cried the doorkeeper, peevishly, out of the illuminated box. And at this minute Arthur came up, and recognising Costigan, said, "Don't you know me, Captain? Pendennis!" And he took off his hat, and made a bow to the two ladies. dear boy! Me dear friend!" cried the Captain, extending towards Pendennis the grasp of friendship; and he rapidly explained to the other what he called "a most unlucky conthratong." He had an order for Vauxhall, admitting two, from Mr. Hodgen, then within the Gardens, and singing (as he did at the Back Kitchen and the nobility's concerts, the "Body Snatcher," the Death of General Wolfe," the "Banner of Blood," and other favourite melodies); and, having this order for the admission of two persons, he thought that it would admi three, and had come accordingly to the Gardens with his friends. But, on his way, Captain Costigan had lost the paper of admission-it was not forthcoming at all; and the leedies must go back again, to the great disappointment of one of them, as Pendennis saw.

Arthur had a great deal of good-nature for everybody, and how could he refuse his sympathy in such a case as this? He had seen the innocent face as it looked up to the Captain, the appealing look of the girl, the piteous quiver of the mouth, and the final outburst of tears. If it had been his last guinea in the world, he must have paid it to have given the poor little thing pleasure. She turned the sad imploring eyes away

they lighted upon a stranger-and began to wipe them with her handkerchief. Arthur looked very handsome and kind as he stood before the women, with his hat off, blushing, bowing, generous, a gentleman. "Who are they?" he asked of himself. He thought he had seen the elder lady before.

"If I can be of any service to you, Captain Costigan," the young man said, "I hope you will command me; is there any difficulty about taking these ladies into the garden? Will you kindly make use of my purse? And-and I have a ticket myself which will admit two I hope, ma'am, you will permit me?"

The first impulse of the Prince of Fairoaks was to pay for the whole party, and to make away with his newspaper order as poor Costigan had done with his own ticket. But his instinct, and the appearance of the two women, told him that they would be better pleased if he did not give himself the airs of a grand seigneur, and he handed his purse to Costigan, and laughingly pulled out his ticket with one hand, as he offered the other to the elder of the ladies -ladies was not the word-they had bonnets and shawls, and collars and ribbons, and the youngest showed a pretty little foot and boot under her modest gray gown, but his Highness of Fairoaks was courteous to every person who wore a petticoat, whatever its texture was, and the humbler the wearer, only the more stately and polite in his demeanour.

"Fanny, take the gentleman's arm,' the elder said; "since you will be so very kind-I've seen you often come in at our gate, sir, and go in to Captain Strong's at No. 4."

Fanny made a little curtsey, and put her hand under Arthur's arm. It had on a shabby little glove, but it was pretty and small. She was not a child, but she was scarcely a woman as yet; her tears had dried up, her cheek mantled with youthful blushes, and her eyes glistened with pleasure and gratitude, as she looked up into Arthur's kind face.

Arthur, in a protecting way, put his other hand upon the little one resting on his arm. "Fanny's a very pretty