no more.

Meanwhile the kind smiles and tender watchfulness of the mother at
his bedside, filled the young man with peace and security. To see that
health was returning, was all the unwearied nurse demanded: to execute
any caprice or order of her patient's, her chiefest joy and reward.
He felt himself environed by her love, and thought himself almost as
grateful for it as he had been when weak and helpless in childhood.

Some misty notions regarding the first part of his illness, and that
Fanny had nursed him, Pen may have had, but they were so dim that he
could not realise them with accuracy, or distinguish them from what he
knew to be delusions which had occurred and were remembered during
the delirium of his fever. So as he had not thought proper on former
occasions to make any allusions about Fanny Bolton to his mother, of
course he could not now confide to her his sentiments regarding Fanny,
or make this worthy lady a confidante. It was on both sides an unlucky
precaution and want of confidence; and a word or two in time might have
spared the good lady, and those connected with her, a deal of pain and
anguish.

Seeing Miss Bolton installed as nurse and tender to Pen, I am sorry to
say Mrs. Pendennis had put the worst construction on the fact of the
intimacy of these two unlucky young persons, and had settled in her own
mind that the accusations against Arthur were true. Why not have stopped
to inquire?--There are stories to a man's disadvantage that the women
who are fondest of him are always the most eager to believe. Isn't a
man's wife often the first to be jealous of him? Poor Pen got a good
stock of this suspicious kind of love from the nurse who was now
watching over him; and the kind and pure creature thought that her boy
had gone through a malady much more awful and debasing than the mere
physical fever, and was stained by crime as well as weakened by illness.
The consciousness of this she had to bear perforce silently, and to try
to put a mask of cheerfulness and confidence over her doubt and despair
and inward horror.

When Captain Shandon, at Boulogne, read the next number of the Pall Mall
Gazette, it was to remark to Mrs. Shandon that Jack Finucane's hand was
no longer visible in the leading articles, and that Mr. Warrington must
be at work there again. "I know the crack of his whip in a hundred, and
the cut which the fellow's thong leaves. There's Jack Bludyer, goes to
work like a butcher, and mangl