about the Peninsular war. The Claverings
are the only Christian people in the neighbourhood, and they are not to
be at home before Christmas, my uncle says: besides, Warrington, I want
to get out of the country. Whilst you were away, confound it, I had a
temptation, from which I am very thankful to have escaped, and which I
count that even my illness came very luckily to put an end to." And here
he narrated to his friend the circumstances of the Vauxhall affair, with
which the reader is already acquainted.

Warrington looked very grave when he heard this story. Putting the moral
delinquency out of the question, he was extremely glad for Arthur's
sake that the latter had escaped from a danger which might have made
his whole life wretched; "which certainly," said Warrington, "would have
occasioned the wretchedness and ruin of the other party. And your mother
and--and your friends--what a pain it would have been to them!" urged
Pen's companion, little knowing what grief and annoyance these good
people had already suffered.

"Not a word to my mother!" Pen cried out, in a state of great alarm.
"She would never get over it. An esclandre of that sort would kill her,
I do believe. And," he added, with a knowing air, and as if, like a
young rascal of a Lovelace, he had been engaged in what are called
affaires de coeur, all his life; "the best way, when a danger of that
sort menaces, is not to face it, but to turn one's back on it and run."

"And were you very much smitten?" Warrington asked.

"Hm!" said Lovelace. "She dropped her h's, but she was a dear little
girl."

O Clarissas of this life, O you poor little ignorant vain foolish
maidens! if you did but know the way in which the Lovelaces speak of
you: if you could but hear Jack talking to Tom across the coffee-room
of a Club; or see Ned taking your poor little letters out of his
cigar-case, and handing them over to Charley, and Billy, and Harry
across the messroom table, you would not be so eager to write, or so
ready to listen! There's a sort of crime which is not complete unless
the lucky rogue boasts of it afterwards; and the man who betrays your
honour in the first place, is pretty sure, remember that, to betray your
secret too.

"It's hard to fight, and it's easy to fall," said Warring gloomily. "And
as you say, Pendennis, when a danger like this is imminent, the best way
is to turn your back on it and run."

After this little discourse upon a subject about whi