e about the young people left
alone in the drawing-room yonder. Laura talked about our own home at
Fairoaks, which our tenants were about to vacate. She vowed and
declared that we must live at Fairoaks; that Clavering, with all its
tittle-tattle and stupid inhabitants, was better than this wicked
London. Besides, there were some new and very pleasant families settled
in the neighbourhood. Clavering Park was taken by some delightful
people--"and you know, Pen, you were always very fond of fly-fishing,
and may fish the Brawl, as you used in old days, when--" The lips of the
pretty satirist who alluded to these unpleasant bygones were silenced
as they deserved to be by Mr. Pendennis. "Do you think, sir, I did not
know," says the sweetest voice in the world, "when you went out on your
fishing excursions with Miss Amory?" Again the flow of words is checked
by the styptic previously applied.

"I wonder," says Mr. Pendennis, archly, bending over his wife's fair
hand--"I wonder whether this kind of thing is taking place in the
drawing-room?"

"Nonsense, Arthur. It is time to go back to them. Why, I declare, I have
been three-quarters of an hour away!"

"I don't think they will much miss you, my dear," says the gentleman.

"She is certainly very fond of him. She is always coming here. I am sure
it is not to hear you read Shakspeare, Arthur; or your new novel, though
it is very pretty. I wish Lady Kew and her sixty thousand pounds were at
the bottom of the sea."

"But she says she is going to portion her younger brothers with a part
of it; she told Clive so," remarks Mr. Pendennis.

"For shame! Why does not Barnes Newcome portion his younger brothers? I
have no patience with that----Why! Goodness! There is Clive going
away, actually! Clive! Mr. Newcome!" But though my wife ran to the
study-window and beckoned our friend, he only shook his head, jumped on
his horse, and rode away gloomily.

"Ethel had been crying when I went into the room," Laura afterwards told
me. "I knew she had; but she looked up from some flowers over which she
was bending, began to laugh and rattle, would talk about nothing but
Lady Hautboi's great breakfast the day before, and the most insufferable
Mayfair jargon; and then declared it was time to go home and dress for
Mrs. Booth's dejeuner, which was to take place that afternoon."

And so Miss Newcome rode away--back amongst the roses and the
rouges--back amongst the fiddling, flirting, flattery, f