housands a year more or less can make
no difference in the estimation in which they are pleased to hold me.
Miss Hunkle, though a most respectable lady, is not in possession of
either the birth or the manners, which would entitle her to be received
into the sphere in which I have the honour to move. I shall live and die
an old bachelor, John: and your worthy friend, Miss Hunkle, I have
no doubt, will find some more worthy object of her affection, than a
worn-out old soldier on half-pay." Time showed the correctness of the
surmise of the old man of the world; Miss Hunkle married a young French
nobleman, and is now at this moment living at Lilybank, under the title
of Baroness de Carambole, having been separated from her wild young
scapegrace of a Baron very shortly after their union.

The Major was a great favourite with almost all the little establishment
of Fairoaks. He was as good-natured as he was well bred, and had a
sincere liking and regard for his sister-in-law, whom he pronounced,
and with perfect truth, to be as fine a lady as any in England, and
an honour to the family. Indeed, Mrs. Pendennis's tranquil beauty, her
natural sweetness and kindness, and that simplicity and dignity which a
perfect purity and innocence are sure to bestow upon a handsome woman,
rendered her quite worthy of her brother's praises. I think it is not
national prejudice which makes me believe that a high-bred English lady
is the most complete of all Heaven's subjects in this world. In whom
else do you see so much grace, and so much virtue; so much faith, and
so much tenderness; with such a perfect refinement and chastity? And by
high-bred ladies I don't mean duchesses and countesses. Be they ever so
high in station, they can be but ladies, and no more. But almost every
man who lives in the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting
a few such persons amongst his circle of acquaintance--women, in whose
angelical natures, there is something awful, as well as beautiful, to
contemplate; at whose feet the wildest and fiercest of us must fall down
and humble ourselves;--in admiration of that adorable purity which never
seems to do or to think wrong.

Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have a mother endowed with
these happy qualities. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought
of her as little less than an angel,--as a supernatural being, all
wisdom, love, and beauty. When her husband drove her into the county
town, or to the