"What is it? What has happened?" said Mr. Bows, growing rather excited.

Costigan then told him the Major's statement that the young Pendennis had
not two thousand, nor two hundred pounds a year; and expressed his fury
that he should have permitted such an impostor to coax and wheedle his
innocent girl, and that he should have nourished such a viper in his own
personal bosom. "I have shaken the reptile from me, however," said
Costigan; "and as for his uncle, I'll have such a revenge on that old
man, as shall make 'um rue the day he ever insulted a Costigan."

"What do you mean, General?" said Bows.

"I mean to have his life, Bows--his villanous, skulking life, my boy;"
and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in an ominous and savage
manner. Bows had often heard him appeal to that box of death, with which
he proposed to sacrifice his enemies; but the Captain did not tell him
that he had actually written and sent a challenge to Major Pendennis, and
Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the present
instance.

At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common sitting-room
from her private apartment, looking perfectly healthy, happy, and
unconcerned, a striking and wholesome contrast to her father, who was in
a delirious tremor of grief, anger, and other agitation. She brought in a
pair of ex-white satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub as clean
as might be with bread-crumb: intending to go mad with them upon next
Tuesday evening in Ophelia, in which character she was to reappear on
that night.