, 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 things--to 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. Gaunt 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 be?" 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 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 by might be staring