assize balls or concerts there, he would step into the
assembly with his wife on his arm, and look the great folks in the face,
as much as to say, "Look at that, my lord; can any of you show me a
woman like that?" She enraged some country ladies with three times her
money, by a sort of desperate perfection which they found in her. Miss
Pybus said she was cold and haughty; Miss Pierce, that she was too proud
for her station; Mrs. Wapshot, as a doctor of divinity's lady, would
have the pas of her, who was only the wife of a medical practitioner. In
the meanwhile, this lady moved through the world quite regardless of all
the comments that were made in her praise or disfavour. She did not seem
to know that she was admired or hated for being so perfect: but carried
on calmly through life, saying her prayers, loving her family, helping
her neighbours, and doing her duty.

That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an arrangement not
permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental defects, as it awards to
us headaches, illnesses, or death; without which the scheme of the world
could not be carried on,--nay, some of the best qualities of mankind
could not be brought into exercise. As pain produces or elicits
fortitude and endurance; difficulty, perseverance; poverty, industry
and ingenuity; danger, courage and what not; so the very virtues, on the
other hand, will generate some vices: and, in fine, Mrs. Pendennis had
that vice which Miss Pybus and Miss Pierce discovered in her, namely,
that of pride; which did not vest itself so much in her own person, as
in that of her family. She spoke about Mr. Pendennis (a worthy little
gentleman enough, but there are others as good as he) with an awful
reverence, as if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne, and she
a cardinal kneeling at his feet, and giving him incense. The Major she
held to be a sort of Bayard among Majors: and as for her son Arthur she
worshipped that youth with an ardour which the young scapegrace accepted
almost as coolly as the statue of the Saint in Saint Peter's receives
the rapturous osculations which the faithful deliver on his toe.

This unfortunate superstition and idol-worship of this good woman was
the cause of a great deal of the misfortune which befell the young
gentleman who is the hero of this history, and deserves therefore to be
mentioned at the outset of his story.

Arthur Pendennis's schoolfellows at the Greyfriars School state that, as