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