"Bon Dieu!" thought the old negotiator, "the boy has actually talked the woman round, and she'd get him a wife as she would a toy if Master cried for it.

Why are there no such things as lettres-de-cachet--and a Bastille for young fellows of family ?" The Major lived in such good company that he might be excused for feeling like an Earl .-- He kissed the widow's timid hand, pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with one of his own over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face.
"Confess," said he, "now, that you are thinking how you possibly can make it up to your conscience to let the boy have his own way." She blushed and was moved in the usual manner of females.

"I am thinking that he is very unhappy--and I am too----" "To contradict him or to let him have his own wish ?" asked the other; and added, with great comfort to his inward self, "I'm d----d if he shall." "To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel and fatal an attachment," the widow said, "which can but end in pain whatever be the issue." "The issue shan't be marriage, my dear sister," the Major said resolutely.

"We're not going to have a Pendennis, the head of the house, marry a strolling mountebank from a booth.

No, no, we won't marry into Greenwich Fair, ma'am." "If the match is broken suddenly off," the widow interposed, "I don't know what may be the consequence.