It was said that Pen had hanged himself for despair in the orchard, and that his uncle had cut him down; that, on the contrary, it was Miss Costigan who was jilted, and not young Arthur; and that the affair had only been hushed up by the payment of a large sum of money, the exact amount of which there were several people in Clavering could testify--the sum of course varying according to the calculation of the individual narrator of the story.
Pen shook his mane and raged like a furious lion when these scandals, affecting Miss Costigan's honour and his own, came to his ears.

Why was not Pybus a man (she had whiskers enough), that he might call her out and shoot her?
Seeing Simcoe pass by, Pen glared at him so from his saddle on Rebecca, and clutched his whip in a manner so menacing, that that clergyman went home and wrote a sermon, or thought over a sermon (for he delivered oral testimony at great length), in which he spoke of Jezebel, theatrical entertainments (a double cut this--for Doctor Portman, the Rector of the old church, was known to frequent such), and of youth going to perdition, in a manner which made it clear to every capacity that Pen was the individual meant, and on the road alluded to.
What stories more were there not against young Pendennis, whilst he sate sulking, Achilles-like in his tent, for the loss of his ravished Briseis?
After the affair with Hobnell, Pen was pronounced to be a murderer as well as a profligate, and his name became a name of terror and a byword in Clavering.

But this was not all; he was not the only one of the family about whom the village began to chatter, and his unlucky mother was the next to become a victim to their gossip.
"It is all settled," said Mrs.Pybus to Mrs.Speers, "the boy is to go to College, and then the widow is to console herself." "He's been there every day, in the most open manner, my dear," continued Mrs.Speers.
"Enough to make poor Mr.Pendennis turn in his grave," said Mrs.
Wapshot.
"She never liked him, that we know," says No.

1.
"Married him for his money.

Everybody knows that: was a penniless hanger-on of Lady Pontypool's," says No.