gazette, the births and deaths, and the fashionable intelligence, to see that his name was down among the guests at my Lord So-and-so’s fête, and in the intervals of these occupations carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaintances about the room. 

 Among the letters which formed Major Pendennis’s budget for that morning there was only one unread, and which lay solitary and apart from all the fashionable London letters, with a country postmark and a homely seal. The superscription was in a pretty delicate female hand, and though marked ‘Immediate’ by the fair writer, with a strong dash of anxiety under the word, yet the Major had, for reasons of his own, neglected up to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to be sure could hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks who attended his levee. The fact was, this was a letter from a female relative of Pendennis, and while the grandees of her brother’s acquaintance were received and got their interview, and drove off, as it were, the patient country letter remained for a long time waiting for an audience in the ante-chamber under the slop-bason. 

 At last it came to be this letter’s turn, and the Major broke a seal with ‘Fairoaks’ engraved upon it, and ‘Clavering St. Mary’s’ for a postmark. It was a double letter, and the Major commenced perusing the envelope before he attacked the inner epistle. 

 “Is it a letter from another Jook,” growled Mr. Glowry, inwardly, “Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, I’m thinking.” 

 “My dear Major Pendennis,” the letter ran, “I beg and implore you to come to me immediately”—very likely, thought Pendennis, and Steyne’s dinner to-day—“I am in the very greatest grief and perplexity. My dearest boy, who has been hitherto everything the fondest mother could wish, is grieving me dreadfully. He has formed—I can hardly write it—a passion, an infatuation,”—the Major grinned—“for an actress who has been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than Arthur—who will not be eighteen till next February—and the wretched boy insists upon marrying her.” 

 “Hay! What’s making Pendennis swear now?”—Mr. Glowry asked of himself, for rage and wonder were concentrated in the Major’s open mouth, as he read this astounding announcement. 

 “Do, my dear friend,” the grief-stricken lady went on, “come to me instantly on the receipt of this; and, as Arthur’s guardian, entreat, command, the wretched child to give up this most deplorable resolution.” And, after 

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