He was upwards of forty years old when these events befell; before the
war was over; before George the Magnificent came to the throne; before
this history indeed: but what is a gentleman without his pedigree?
Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and glazed, and
hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures of Codlingbury House
in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface's College, Cambridge, where he had
passed the brief and happy days of his early manhood. As for the pedigree
he had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne's officer called for his sword,
now that he was a gentleman and could show it.

About the time of Mrs. Pendennis's demise, another of her son's patients
likewise died at Bath; that virtuous woman, old Lady Pontypool,
daughter of Reginald twelfth Earl of Bareacres, and by consequence
great-grand-aunt to the present Earl, and widow of John second Lord
Pontypool, and likewise of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon
Chapel, Clifton. For the last five years of her life her ladyship had
been attended by Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant relative of the
noble house of Bareacres, before mentioned, and daughter of Lieutenant R.
Thistlewood, R.N., killed at the battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady
Pontypool's roof Miss Thistlewood found a comfortable shelter, as far as
boarding and lodging went, but suffered under such an infernal tyranny as
only women can inflict on, or bear from, one another: the Doctor, who
paid his visits to my Lady Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but
remark the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the young lady
bore her elderly relative's insults; and it was, as they were going in
the fourth mourning coach to attend her ladyship's venerated remains to
Bath Abbey, where they now repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face
and resolved upon putting a certain question to her, the very nature of
which made his pulse beat ninety, at least.