ther, paid a visit in Fitzroy
Square. Little Miss Cann used to laugh and wink knowingly, saying, "You
will never get back your bedroom, Mr. Clive. You may be sure that Miss
Josey will come in a few months; and perhaps old Mrs. Binnie, only
no doubt she and her daughter do not agree. But the widow has taken
possession of Uncle James; and she will carry off somebody else if I
am not mistaken. Should you like a stepmother, Mr. Clive, or should you
prefer a wife?"

Whether the fair lady tried her wiles upon Colonel Newcome the present
writer has no certain means of ascertaining: but I think another image
occupied his heart: and this Circe tempted him no more than a score of
other enchantresses who had tried their spells upon him. If she tried
she failed. She was a very shrewd woman, quite frank in her talk when
such frankness suited her. She said to me, "Colonel Newcome has had
some great passion, once upon a time, I am sure of that, and has no more
heart to give away. The woman who had his must have been a very lucky
woman: though I daresay she did not value what she had; or did not
live to enjoy it--or--or something or other. You see tragedies in some
people's faces. I recollect when we were in Coventry Island--there was
a chaplain there--a very good man--a Mr. Bell, and married to a pretty
little woman who died. The first day I saw him I said, 'I know that
man has had a great grief in life. I am sure that he left his heart in
England.' You gentlemen who write books, Mr. Pendennis, and stop at
the third volume, know very well that the real story often begins
afterwards. My third volume ended when I was sixteen, and was married to
my poor husband. Do you think all our adventures ended then, and that we
lived happy ever after? I live for my darling girls now. All I want is
to see them comfortable in life. Nothing can be more generous than my
dear brother James has been. I am only his half-sister, you know, and
was an infant in arms when he went away. He had differences with Captain
Mackenzie, who was headstrong and imprudent, and I own my poor dear
husband was in the wrong. James could not live with my poor mother.
Neither could by possibility suit the other. I have often, I own, longed
to come and keep house for him. His home, the society he sees, of men
of talents like Mr. Warrington and--and I won't mention names, or pay
compliments to a man who knows human nature so well as the author
of Walter Lorraine: this house is p