he girl's laugh and the woman's! It was only very lately, indeed,
that Fanny, when looking in the little glass over the Bows-Costigan
mantelpiece as she was dusting it had begun to suspect that she was a
beauty. But a year ago, she was a clumsy, gawky girl, at whom her
father sneered, and of whom the girls at the day-school (Miss Minifer's,
Newcastle Street, Strand; Miss M., the younger sister, took the leading
business at the Norwich circuit in 182--; and she herself had played for
two seasons with some credit T. R. E. O., T. R. S. W., until she fell
down a trap-door and broke her leg); the girls at Fanny's school, we
say, took no account of her, and thought her a dowdy little creature
as long as she remained under Miss Minifer's instruction. And it was
unremarked and almost unseen in the porter's dark lodge of Shepherd's
Inn, that this little flower bloomed into beauty.

So this young person hung upon Mr. Pen's arm, and they paced the gardens
together, Empty as London was, there were still some two millions of
people left lingering about it, and amongst them, one or two of the
acquaintances of Mr. Arthur Pendennis.

Amongst them, silent and alone, pale, with his hands in his pockets, and
a rueful nod of the head to Arthur as they met, passed Henry Foker, Esq.
Young Henry was trying to ease his mind by moving from place to place,
and from excitement to excitement. But he thought about Blanche as he
sauntered in the dark walks; he thought about Blanche as he looked at
the devices of the lamps. He consulted the fortune-teller about her,
and was disappointed when that gipsy told him that he was in love with a
dark lady who would make him happy; and at the concert, though Mr.
Momus sang his most stunning comic songs, and asked his most astonishing
riddles, never did a kind smile come to visit Foker's lips. In fact, he
never heard Mr. Momus at all.

Pen and Miss Bolton were hard by listening to the same concert, and the
latter remarked, and Pen laughed at Mr. Fokei's woebegone face.

Fanny asked what it was that made that odd-looking little man so dismal?
"I think he is crossed in love!" Pen, said. "Isn't that enough to make
any man dismal, Fanny?" And he looked down at her, splendidly protecting
her, like Egmont at Clara in Goethe's play, or Leicester at Amy in
Scott's novel.

"Crossed in love is he? poor gentleman," said Fanny with a sigh, and
her eyes turned round towards him with no little kindness and pity--but
Ha