in a box near theirs. The
young fellows saluted Pen cordially, and examined his party with
approval; for little Laura was a pretty red-cheeked girl with a quantity
of shining brown ringlets, and Mrs. Pendennis, dressed in black velvet,
with a diamond cross which she wore on great occasions, looked uncommonly
handsome and majestic.

"Who is that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur?" Mrs. Pendennis
asked of her son, after a critical examination of the audience.

Pen blushed a great deal. "His name is Captain Costigan, ma'am," he said,
"a Peninsular officer." Pen did not volunteer anything more; and how was
Mrs. Pendennis to know that Mr. Costigan was the father of Miss
Fotheringay?

We have nothing to do with the play except to say that Ophelia looked
lovely, and performed with admirable wild pathos, laughing, weeping,
gazing wildly, waving her beautiful white arms and flinging about her
snatches of flowers and songs with the most charming madness. What an
opportunity her splendid black hair had of tossing over her shoulders!
She made the most charming corpse ever seen, and while Hamlet and Laertes
were battling in her grave she was looking out from the back scenes with
some curiosity towards Pen's box, and the family party assembled in it.

There was but one voice in her praise there. Mrs. Pendennis was in
ecstasies with her beauty. Little Laura was bewildered by the piece and
the Ghost, and the play within the play, but cried out great praises of
that beautiful young creature, Ophelia. Pen was charmed with the effect
which she produced on his mother, and the clergyman on his part was
exceedingly enthusiastic.

When the curtain fell upon that group of slaughtered personages who are
despatched so suddenly at the end of "Hamlet," and whose death astonished
poor little Laura, there was an immense shouting and applause from all
quarters of the house. There was a roar of bravoes rang through the
house; Pen bellowing with the loudest. "Fotheringay! Fotheringay!" Even
Mrs. Pendennis began to wave about her pocket-handkerchief, and little
Laura danced, laughed, clapped, and looked up at Pen with wonder.

If Pen had been alone with his mother in the carriage as they drove home
that night he would have told her the extent of his devotion for Miss
Fotheringay, but he had no chance to do so, and it remained for that good
lady to hear of her boy's intimacy with the actress from good Dr.
Portman, who, on the following eveni