ondon at ten at night.
Once his secret was nearly lost by Smirke's simplicity, of whom Mrs.
Pendennis asked whether they had read a great deal the night before, or
a question to that effect. Smirke was about to tell the truth, that he
had never seen Mr. Pen at all, when the latter's boot-heel came grinding
down on Mr. Smirke's toe under the table, and warned the curate not to
betray him.

They had had conversations on the tender subject, of course. It is good
sport (if you are not yourself engaged in the conversation) to hear two
men in love talk. There must be a confidant and depositary somewhere.
When informed, under the most solemn vows of secrecy, of Pen's condition
of mind, the curate said, with no small tremor, "that he hoped it was no
unworthy object--no unlawful attachment, which Pen had formed"--for
if so, the poor fellow felt it would be his duty to break his vow and
inform Pen's mother, and then there would be a quarrel, he felt, with
sickening apprehension, and he would never again have a chance of seeing
what he most liked in the world.

"Unlawful, unworthy!" Pen bounced out at the curate's question. "She is
as pure as she is beautiful; I would give my heart to no other woman.
I keep the matter a secret in my family, because--because--there are
reasons of a weighty nature which I am not at liberty to disclose. But
any man who breathes a word against her purity insults both her honour
and mine, and--and dammy, I won't stand it."

Smirke, with a faint laugh, only said, "Well, well, don't call me out,
Arthur, for you know I can't fight;" but by this compromise the wretched
curate was put more than ever into the power of his pupil, and the Greek
and mathematics suffered correspondingly.

If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment, and looked into the
Poet's Corner of the County Chronicle, as it arrived in the Wednesday's
bag, he might have seen 'Mrs. Haller,' 'Passion and Genius,' 'Lines to
Miss Fotheringay, of the Theatre Royal,' appearing every week; and other
verses of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But as these
poems were no longer signed NEP by their artful composer, but subscribed
EROS, neither the tutor nor Helen, the good soul, who cut all her son's
verses out of the paper, knew that Nep was no other than that flaming
Eros, who sang so vehemently the character of the new actress.

"Who is the lady," at last asked Mrs. Pendennis, "whom your rival is
always singing in the Co