women--the dearest, the dearest and the best. Teach
me my duty. Pray for me that I may do it--pure heart. God bless you--God
bless you, my sister!"

"Amen," groaned out Warrington, with his head in his hands. "She is
right," he murmured to himself. "She can't do any wrong, I think--that
girl." Indeed, she looked and smiled like an angel. Many a day after he
saw that smile--saw her radiant face as she looked up at Pen--saw her
putting back her curls, blushing and smiling, and still looking fondly
towards him.

She leaned for a moment her little fair hand on the table, playing on
it. "And now, and now," she said, looking at the two gentlemen--

"And what now?" asked George.

"And now we will have some tea," said Miss Laura, with her smile.

But before this unromantic conclusion to a rather sentimental scene
could be suffered to take place, a servant brought word that Major
Pendennis had returned to the hotel, and was waiting to see his nephew.
Upon this announcement, Laura, not without some alarm, and an appealing
look to Pen, which said, "Behave yourself well--hold to the right, and
do your duty--be gentle, but firm with your uncle"--Laura, we say, with
these warnings written in her face, took leave of the two gentlemen, and
retreated to her dormitory. Warrington, who was not generally fond
of tea, yet grudged that expected cup very much. Why could not old
Pendennis have come in an hour later? Well, an hour sooner or later,
what matter? The hour strikes at last. The inevitable moment comes to
say Farewell, The hand is shaken, the door closed, and the friend gone;
and, the brief joy over, you are alone. "In which of those many windows
of the hotel does her light beam?" perhaps he asks himself as he passes
down the street. He strides away to the smoking-room of a neighbouring
Club, and, there applies himself to his usual solace of a cigar. Men are
brawling and talking loud about politics, opera-girls, horse-racing, the
atrocious tyranny of the committee:--bearing this sacred secret about
him, he enters into this brawl. Talk away, each louder than the other.
Rattle and crack jokes. Laugh and tell your wild stories. It is strange
to take one's place and part in the midst of the smoke and din, and
think every man here has his secret ego most likely, which is sitting
lonely and apart, away in the private chamber, from the loud game in
which the rest of us is joining!

Arthur, as he traversed the passages of the hotel, f