“I’m sure he is engaged to his cousin, and that they will keep the young man to his bargain,” said the Major. “The marriages in these families are affairs of state. Lady Agnes was made to marry old Foker by the late Lord, although she was notoriously partial to her cousin who was killed at Albuera afterwards, and who saved her life out of the lake at Drummington. I remember Lady Agnes, sir, an exceedingly fine woman. But what did she do?—of course she married her father’s man. Why, Mr. Foker sate for Drummington till the Reform Bill, and paid dev’lish well for his seat, too. And you may depend upon this, sir, that Foker senior, who is a parvenu, and loves a great man, as all parvenus do, has ambitious views for his son as well as himself, and that your friend Harry must do as his father bids him. Lord bless you! I’ve known a hundred cases of love in young men and women: hey, Master Arthur, do you take me? They kick, sir, they resist, they make a deuce of a riot and that sort of thing, but they end by listening to reason, begad.”
“Blanche is a dangerous girl, sir,” Pen said. “I was smitten with her myself once, and very far gone, too,” he added; “but that is years ago.”
“Were you? How far did it go? Did she return it?” asked the Major, looking hard at Pen.
Pen, with a laugh, said “that at one time he did think he was pretty well in Miss Amory’s good graces. But my mother did not like her, and the affair went off.” Pen did not think it fit to tell his uncle all the particulars of that courtship which had passed between himself and the young lady.
“A man might go farther and fare worse, Arthur,” the Major said, still looking queerly at his nephew.
“Her birth, sir; her father was the mate of a ship, they say: and she has not money enough,” objected Pen, in a dandified manner. “What’s ten thousand pound and a girl bred up like her?”
“You use my own words, and it is all very well. But, I tell you in confidence, Pen,—in strict honour, mind,—that it’s my belief she has a devilish deal more than ten thousand pound: and from what I saw of her the other day, and—and have heard of her—I should say she was a devilish accomplished, clever girl: and would make a good wife with a sensible husband.”
“How do you know about her money?” Pen asked, smiling. “You seem to have information about everybody, and to know about all the town.”
“I do know a few things, sir, and I don’t tell all I know. Mark that,” the uncle replied. “And as for that charming Miss Amory,—for charming, begad! she is,—if I saw her Mrs. Arthur Pendennis, I should neither be sorry nor surprised, begad! and if you object to ten thousand pound, what would you say, sir, to thirty, or forty, or fifty?” and the Major looked still more knowingly, and still harder at Pen.
“Well, sir,” he said to his godfather and namesake, “make her Mrs. Arthur Pendennis. You can do it as well as I.”