up, young Lord Plinlimmon, a friend
of my boy, young Lord Magnus Charters, a chum of my scapegrace, etc.,
would make a greater figure in the world than even their fathers had
done before them. He asked permission to bring Arthur to a grand fete
at Gaunt House; saw him with ineffable satisfaction dancing with the
sisters of the young noblemen before mentioned; and gave himself as much
trouble to procure cards of invitation for the lad to some good houses,
as if he had been a mamma with a daughter to marry, and not an old
half-pay officer in a wig. And he boasted everywhere of the boy's great
talents, and remarkable oratorical powers; and of the brilliant degree
he was going to take. Lord Runnymede would take him on his embassy, or
the Duke would bring him in for one of his boroughs, he wrote over
and over again to Helen; who, for her part, was too ready to believe
anything that anybody chose to say in favour of her son.

And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had been trampled
down by Pen's wicked extravagance and idleness! I don't envy Pen's
feelings (as the phrase is), as he thought of what he had done. He had
slept, and the tortoise had won the race. He had marred at its outset
what might have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously into
a generous mother's purse; basely and recklessly spilt her little cruse.
O! it was a coward hand that could strike and rob a creature so tender.
And if Pen felt the wrong which he had done to others, are we to suppose
that a young gentleman of his vanity did not feel still more keenly the
shame he had brought upon himself? Let us be assured that there is no
more cruel remorse than that; and no groans more piteous than those of
wounded self-love. Like Joel Miller's friend, the Senior Wrangler, who
bowed to the audience from his box at the play, because he and the king
happened to enter the theatre at the same time, only with a fatuity by
no means so agreeable to himself, poor Arthur Pendennis felt perfectly
convinced that all England would remark the absence of his name from the
examination-lists, and talk about his misfortune. His wounded tutor,
his many duns, the skip and bed-maker who waited upon him, the
undergraduates of his own time and the years below him, whom he had
patronised or scorned--how could he bear to look any of them in the face
now? He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there he
penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks,