to me: it is you who are
cruel with your wicked reproaches, your wicked doubts of me, your wicked
persecutions of those who love me,--yes, those who love me, and who
brave everything for me, and whom you despise and trample upon because
they are of lower degree than you. Shall I tell you what I will
do,--what I am resolved to do, now that I know what your conduct has
been?--I will go back to this poor girl whom you turned out of my doors,
and ask her to come back and share my home with me. I'll defy the pride
which persecutes her, and the pitiless suspicion which insults her and
me."

"Do you mean, Pen, that you----" here the widow, with eager eyes and
outstretched hands, was breaking out, but Laura stopped her: "Silence,
hush, dear mother," she cried, and the widow hushed. Savagely as Pen
spoke, she was only too eager to hear what more he had to say. "Go on,
Arthur, go on, Arthur," was all she said, almost swooning away as she
spoke.

"By Gad, I say he shan't go on, or I won't hear him, by Gad," the Major
said, trembling too in his wrath. "If you choose, sir, after all we've
done for you, after all I've done for you myself, to insult your
mother and disgrace your name, by allying yourself with a low-born
kitchen-girl, go and do it, by Gad,--but let us, ma'am, have no more to
do with him. I wash my hands of you, sir,--I wash my hands of you. I'm
an old fellow,--I ain't long for this world. I come of as ancient and
honourable a family as any in England, by Gad, and I did hope, before I
went off the hooks, by Gad, that the fellow that I'd liked, and brought
up, and nursed through life, by Jove, would do something to show me that
our name--yes, the name of Pendennis, by Gad, was left undishonoured
behind us, but if he won't, dammy, I say, amen. By G--, both my father
and my brother Jack were the proudest men in England, and I never
would have thought that there would come this disgrace to my
name,--never--and--and I'm ashamed that it's Arthur Pendennis." The old
fellow's voice here broke off into a sob: it was the second time that
Arthur had brought tears from those wrinkled lids.

The sound of his breaking voice stayed Pen's anger instantly, and he
stopped pacing the room, as he had been doing until that moment. Laura
was by Helen's sofa; and Warrington had remained hitherto an almost
silent, but not uninterested spectator of the family storm. As the
parties were talking, it had grown almost dark; and after the lull wh