His uncle's lessons had not been thrown away upon him; the mist of passion had passed from his eyes now, and he saw her as she was.

To think that he, Pendennis, had been enslaved by such a woman, and then jilted by her! that he should have stooped so low, to be trampled on the mire! that there was a time in his life, and that but a few months back, when he was willing to take Costigan for his father-in-law! "Poor old Smirke!" Pen presently laughed out--"well, I'll write and try and console the poor old boy.

He won't die of his passion, ha, ha!" The Major, had he been awake, might have heard a score of such ejaculations uttered by Pen as he lay awake and restless through the first night of his residence at Oxbridge.
It would, perhaps, have been better for a youth, the battle of whose life was going to begin on the morrow, to have passed the eve in a fferent sort of vigil: but the world had got hold of Pen in the shape of his selfish old Mentor: and those who have any interest in his character must have perceived ere now, that this lad was very weak as well as very impetuous, very vain as well as very frank, and if of a generous disposition, not a little selfish in the midst of his profuseness, and also rather fickle, as all eager pursuers of self-gratification are.
The six months' passion had aged him very considerably.

There was an immense gulf between Pen the victim of love, and Pen the innocent boy of eighteen, sighing after it: and so Arthur Pendennis had all the experience and superiority, besides that command which afterwards conceit and imperiousness of disposition gave him over the young men with whom he now began to live.
He and his uncle passed the morning with great satisfaction in making purchases for the better comfort of the apartments which the lad was about to occupy.

Mr.Spicer's china and glass was in a dreadfully dismantled condition, his lamps smashed, and his bookcases by no means so spacious as those shelves which would be requisite to receive the contents of the boxes which were lying in the hall at Fairoaks, and which were addressed to Arthur in the hand of poor Helen.
The boxes arrived in a few days, that his mother had packed with so much care.