d, ma'am. I've tested
the chap, and know him pretty well, I think. He is much too lazy, and
careless, and flighty a fellow, to make a jog-trot journey, and arrive,
as your lawyers do, at the end of their lives! but give him a start and
good friends, and an opportunity, and take my word for it, he'll make
himself a name that his sons shall be proud of. I don't see any way for
a fellow like him to parvenir, but by making a prudent marriage--not
with a beggarly heiress--to sit down for life upon a miserable fifteen
hundred a year--but with somebody whom he can help, and who can help him
forward in the world, and whom he can give a good name and a station in
the country, begad, in return for the advantages which she brings him.
It would be better for you to have a distinguished son-in-law, than to
keep your husband on in Parliament, who's of no good to himself or to
anybody else there, and that's, I say, why I've been interested about
you, and offer you what I think a good bargain for both."

"You know I look upon Arthur as one of the family almost now," said the
good-natured Begum; "he comes and goes when he likes; and the more
I think of his dear mother, the more I see there's few people so
good--none so good to me. And I'm sure I cried when I heard of her
death, and would have gone into mourning for her myself, only black
don't become me. And I know who his mother wanted him to marry--Laura,
I mean--whom old Lady Rockminster has taken such a fancy to, and,
no wonder. She's a better girl than my girl. I know both. And my
Betsy--Blanche, I mean--ain't been a comfort to me, Major. It's Laura
Pen ought to marry.

"Marry on five hundred a year! My dear good soul, you are mad!" Major
Pendennis said. "Think over what I have said to you. Do nothing in your
affairs with that unhappy husband of yours without consulting me; and
remember that old Pendennis is always your friend."

For some time previous, Pen's uncle had held similar language to Miss
Amory. He had pointed out to her the convenience of the match which he
had at heart, and was bound to say, that mutual convenience was of all
things the very best in the world to marry upon--the only thing. "Look
at your love-marriages, my dear young creature. The love-match people
are the most notorious of all for quarrelling afterwards; and a girl who
runs away with Jack to Gretna Green, constantly runs away with Tom to
Switzerland afterwards. The great point in marriage is for peopl