frightened me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now; and be
very--very cautious," said the widow, laying a fair long hand on the
Major's sleeve.

He took it up, kissed it gallantly and looked in her alarmed face with
wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. "Bon Dieu!" thought
the old negotiator, "the boy has actually talked the woman round, and
she'd get him a wife as she would a toy if Master cried for it. Why are
there no such things as lettres-de-cachet--and a Bastille for young
fellows of family?" The Major lived in such good company that he might be
excused for feeling like an Earl.--He kissed the widow's timid hand,
pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with one of his own
over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face.

"Confess," said he, "now, that you are thinking how you possibly can make
it up to your conscience to let the boy have his own way."

She blushed and was moved in the usual manner of females. "I am thinking
that he is very unhappy--and I am too----"

"To contradict him or to let him have his own wish?" asked the other; and
added, with great comfort to his inward self, "I'm d----d if he shall."

"To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an
attachment," the widow said, "which can but end in pain whatever be the
issue."

"The issue shan't be marriage, my dear sister," the Major said
resolutely. "We're not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house,
marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. No, no, we won't marry into