Blanche,
don't cry. Dry the pretty eyes, I can't bear that;" and he proceeded to
offer that consolation which the circumstance required, and which the
tears, the genuine tears of vexation, which now sprang from the angry
eyes of the author of 'Mes Larmes' demanded.

The scornful and sarcastic tone of Pendennis quite frightened and
overcame the girl. "I--I don't want your consolation. I--I never
was--so--spoken to before--by any of my--my--by anybody"--she sobbed
out, with much simplicity.

"Anybody!" shouted out Pen, with a savage burst of laughter, and
Blanche blushed one of the most genuine blushes which her cheek had ever
exhibited, and she cried out, "O Arthur, vous etes un homme terrible!"
She felt bewildered, frightened, oppressed, the worldly little flirt who
had been playing at love for the last dozen years of her life, and yet
not displeased at meeting a master.

"Tell me, Arthur," she said, after a pause in this strange love-making.
"Why does Sir Francis Clavering give up his seat in Parliament?"

"Au fait, why does he give it to me?" asked Arthur, now blushing in his
turn.

"You always mock me, sir," she said. "If it is good to be in Parliament,
why does Sir Francis go out?"

"My uncle has talked him over. He always said that you were not
sufficiently provided for. In the--the family disputes, when your
mamma paid his debts so liberally, it was stipulated, I suppose, that
you--that is, that I--that is, upon my word, I don't know why he goes
out of Parliament," Pen said, with rather a forced laugh. "You see,
Blanche, that you and I are two good little children, and that this
marriage has been arranged for us by our mammas and uncles, and that we
must be obedient, like a good little boy and girl."

So, when Pen went to London, he sent Blanche a box of bonbons, each
sugar-plum of which was wrapped up in ready-made French verses, of the
most tender kind; and, besides, despatched to her some poems of his own
manufacture, quite as artless and authentic; and it was no wonder that
he did not tell Warrington what his conversations with Miss Amory
had been, of so delicate a sentiment were they, and of a nature so
necessarily private.

And if, like many a worse and better man, Arthur Pendennis, the widow's
son, was meditating an apostasy, and going to sell himself to--we all
know whom,--at least the renegade did not pretend to be a believer in
the creed to which he was ready to swear. And if every woman and m