nt to say that she was too unwell
to dine at their table, and Laura bore her company. The Major talked for
the party, and did not perceive, or choose to perceive, what a gloom
and silence pervaded the other two sharers of the modest dinner. It was
evening before Helen and Laura came into the sitting-room to join the
company there. She came in leaning on Laura, with her back to the waning
light, so that Arthur could not see how pallid and woe-stricken her face
was, and as she went up to Pen, whom she had not seen during the day,
and placed her fond arms on his shoulders and kissed him tenderly, Laura
left her, and moved away to another part of the room. Pen remarked that
his mother's voice and her whole frame trembled, her hand was clammy
cold as she put it up to his forehead, piteously embracing him. The
spectacle of her misery only added, somehow, to the wrath and testiness
of the young man. He scarcely returned the kiss which the suffering lady
gave him: and the countenance with which he met the appeal of her look
was hard and cruel. "She persecutes me," he thought within himself,
"and she comes to me with the air of a martyr!" "You look very ill, my
child," she said. "I don't like to see you look in that way." And she
tottered to a sofa, still holding one of his passive hands in her thin
cold clinging fingers.

"I have had much to annoy me, mother," Pen said, with a throbbing
breast: and as he spoke Helen's heart began to beat so, that she sate
almost dead and speechless with terror.

Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained breathless, aware
that the storm was about to break.

"I have had letters from London," Arthur continued, "and one that has
given me more pain than I ever had in my life. It tells me that
former letters of mine have been intercepted and purloined away from
me;--that--that a young creature who has shown the greatest love and
care for me, has been most cruelly used by--by you, mother."

"For God's sake stop," cried out Warrington. "She's ill--don't you see
she is ill?"

"Let him go on," said the widow, faintly.

"Let him go on and kill her," said Laura, rushing up to her mother's
side. "Speak on, sir, and see her die."

"It is you who are cruel," cried Pen, more exasperated and more savage,
because his own heart, naturally soft and weak, revolted indignantly at
the injustice of the very suffering which was laid at his door. "It is
you that are cruel, who attribute all this pain