Civil war was raging, high words passing, people pushing and squeezing together in an unseemly manner, round a window in the corner of the ballroom, close by the door through which the Chevalier Strong shouldered his way. Through the opened window, the crowd in the street below was sending up sarcastic remarks, such as “Pitch into him!” “Where’s the police?” and the like; and a ring of individuals, amongst whom Madame Fribsby was conspicuous, was gathered round Monsieur Alcide Mirobolant on the one side; whilst several gentlemen and ladies surrounded our friend Arthur Pendennis on the other. Strong penetrated into this assembly, elbowing by Madame Fribsby, who was charmed at the Chevalier’s appearance, and cried, “Save him, save him!” in frantic and pathetic accents.

The cause of the disturbance, it appeared, was the angry little chef of Sir Francis Clavering’s culinary establishment. Shortly after Strong had quitted the room, and whilst Mr. Pen, greatly irate at his downfall in the waltz, which had made him look ridiculous in the eyes of the nation, and by Miss Amory’s behaviour to him, which had still further insulted his dignity, was endeavouring to get some coolness of body and temper, by looking out of window towards the sea, which was sparkling in the distance, and murmuring in a wonderful calm — whilst he was really trying to compose himself, and owning to himself, perhaps, that he had acted in a very absurd and peevish manner during the night — he felt a hand upon his shoulder; and, on looking round, beheld, to his utter surprise and horror, that the hand in question belonged to Monsieur Mirobolant, whose eyes were glaring out of his pale face and ringlets at Mr. Pen. To be tapped on the shoulder by a French cook was a piece of familiarity which made the blood of the Pendennises to boil up in the veins of their descendant, and he was astounded, almost more than enraged, at such an indignity.

“You speak French?” Mirobolant said in his own language to Pen.

“What is that to you, pray?” said Pen, in English.

“At any rate, you understand it?” continued the other, with a bow.

“Yes, sir,” said Pen, with a stamp of his foot; “I understand it pretty well.”

“Vous me comprendrez alors, Monsieur Pendennis,” replied the other, rolling out his r with Gascon force, “quand je vous dis que vous etes un lache. Monsieur Pendennis — un lache, entendez-vous?”

“What?” said Pen, starting round on him.

“You understand the meaning of the word and its consequences among men of honour?” the artist said, putting his hand on his hip, and staring at Pen.

“The consequences are, that I will fling you out of window, you impudent scoundrel,” bawled out Mr. Pen; and darting upon the Frenchman, he would very likely have put his threat into execution, for the window was at hand, and the artist by no means a match for the young gentleman — had not Captain Broadfoot and another heavy officer flung themselves between the combatants,— had not the ladies begun to scream,— had not the fiddles stopped, had not the crowd of people come running in that direction,— had not Laura, with a face of great alarm, looked over their heads and asked for Heaven’s sake what was wrong,— had not the opportune Strong made his appearance from the refreshment-room, and found Alcides grinding his teeth and jabbering oaths in his Galleon French, and Pen looking uncommonly wicked, although trying to appear as calm as possible, when the ladies and the crowd came up.

“What has happened?” Strong asked of the chef, in Spanish.

“I am Chevalier de Juillet,” said the other, slapping his breast, “and he has insulted me.”

“What has he said to you?” asked Strong.

“Il m’a appele — Cuisinier,” hissed out the little Frenchman.

Strong could hardly help laughing. “Come away with me, poor Chevalier,” he said. “We must not quarrel before ladies. Come away; I will carry your message to Mr. Pendennis.— The poor fellow is not right in his head,” he whispered to one or two people about him;— and others, and anxious Laura’s face visible amongst these, gathered round Pen and asked the cause of the disturbance.

Pen did not know. “The man was going to give his arm to a young lady, on which I said that he was a cook, and the man called me a coward and challenged me to fight. I own I was so surprised and indignant, that if you gentlemen had not stopped me, I should have thrown him out of window,” Pen said.

“D—— him, serve him right, too,— the impudent foreign scoundrel,” the gentlemen said.

“I— I’m very sorry if I hurt his feelings, though,” Pen added and Laura was glad to hear him say that; although some of the young bucks said, “No, hang the fellow,— hang those impudent foreigners — little thrashing would do them good.”

“You will go and shake hands with him before you go to sleep — won’t you, Pen?” said Laura, coming up to him. “Foreigners may be more susceptible than we are, and have different manners. If you hurt a poor man’s feelings, I am sure you would be the first to ask his pardon. Wouldn’t you, dear Pen?”

She looked all forgiveness and gentleness, like an angel, as she spoke; and Pen took both her hands, and looked into her kind face, and said indeed he would.

“How fond that girl is of me!” he thought, as she stood gazing at him. “Shall I speak to her now? No — not now. I must have this absurd business with the Frenchman over.”

Laura asked — Wouldn’t he stop and dance with her? She was as anxious to keep him in the room, as he to quit it. “Won’t you stop and waltz with me, Pen? I’m not afraid to waltz with you.”

This was an affectionate, but an unlucky speech. Pen saw himself prostrate on the ground, having tumbled over Miss Roundle and the dragoon, and flung Blanche up against the wall — saw himself on the ground, and all the people laughing at him, Laura and Pynsent amongst them.

“I shall never dance again,” he replied, with a dark and determined face. “Never. I’m surprised you should ask me.”

“Is it because you can’t get Blanche for a partner?” asked Laura, with a wicked, unlucky captiousness.

“Because I don’t wish to make a fool of myself, for other people to laugh at me,” Pen answered —“for you to laugh at me, Laura. I saw you and Pynsent. By Jove! no man shall laugh at me.”

“Pen, Pen, don’t be so wicked!” cried out the poor girl, hurt at the morbid perverseness and savage vanity of Pen. He was glaring round in the direction of Mr. Pynsent as if he would have liked to engage that gentleman as he had done the cook. “Who thinks the worse of you for stumbling in a waltz?” If Laura does, we don’t. “Why are you so sensitive, and ready to think evil?”

Here again, by ill luck, Mr. Pynsent came up to Laura, and said “I have it in command from Lady Rockminster to ask whether I may take you in to supper?”

“I— I was going in with my cousin,” Laura said.

“O— pray, no!” said Pen. “You are in such good hands, that I can’t do better than leave you: and I’m going home.”

“Good-night, Mr. Pendennis,” Pynsent said, drily — to which speech (which, in fact, meant, “Go to the deuce for an insolent, jealous, impertinent jackanapes, whose ears I should like to box”) Mr. Pendennis did not vouchsafe any reply, except a bow: and in spite of Laura’s imploring looks, he left the room.

“How beautifully calm and bright the night outside is!” said Mr. Pynsent; “and what a murmur the sea is making! It would be pleasanter to be walking on the beach, than in this hot room.”

“Very,” said Laura.

“What a strange congregation of people,” continued Pynsent. “I have had to go up and perform the agreeable to most of them — the attorney’s daughters — the apothecary’s wife — I scarcely know whom. There was a man in the refreshment-room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne — a seafaring-looking man — extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half tipsy. As a public man one is bound to conciliate all these people, but it is a hard task — especially when one would so very much like to be elsewhere”— and he blushed rather as he spoke.

“I beg your pardon,” said Laura —“I— I was not listening. Indeed — I was frightened about that quarrel between my cousin and that — that — French person.”

“Your cousin has been rather unlucky to-night,” Pynsent said. “There are three or four persons whom he has not succeeded in pleasing — captain Broadwood; what is his name — the officer — and the young lady in red with whom he danced — and Miss Blanche — and the poor chef — and I don’t think he seemed to be particularly pleased with me.”

“Didn’t he leave me in charge to you?” Laura said, looking up into Mr. Pynsent’s face, and dropping her eyes instantly, like a guilty little story-telling coquette.

“Indeed, I can forgive him a good deal for that,” Pynsent eagerly cried out, and she took his arm, and he led off his little prize in the direction of the supper-room.

She had no great desire for that repast, though it was served in Rincer’s well-known style, as the county paper said, giving an account of the entertainment afterwards; indeed, she was very distraite; and exceedingly pained and unhappy about Pen. Captious and quarrelsome; jealous and selfish; fickle and violent and unjust when his anger led him astray; how could her mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand words and hints) ask her to give her heart to such a man? and suppose she were to do so, would it make him happy?

But she got some relief at length, when, at the end of half an hour — a long half-hour it had seemed to her — a waiter brought her a little note in pencil from Pen, who said, “I met Cooky below ready to fight me; and I asked his pardon. I’m glad I did it. I wanted to speak to you to-night, but will keep what I had to say till you come home. God bless you. Dance away all night with Pynsent, and be very happy.— PEN.” Laura was very thankful for this letter, and to think that there was goodness and forgiveness still in her mother’s boy.

Pen went downstairs, his heart reproaching him for his absurd behaviour to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks followed and rebuked him; and he was scarcely out of the ballroom door but he longed to turn back and ask her pardon. But he remembered that he had left her with that confounded Pynsent. He could not apologise before him. He would compromise and forget his wrath, and make his peace with the Frenchman.

The Chevalier was pacing down below in the hall of the inn when Pen descended from the ballroom; and he came up to Pen, with all sorts of fun and mischief lighting up his jolly face.

“I have got him in the coffee-room,” he said, “with a brace of pistols and a candle. Or would you like swords on the beach? Mirobolant is a dead hand with the foils, and killed four gardes-du-corps with his own point in the barricades of July.”

“Confound it,” said Pen, in a fury, “I can’t fight a cook!”

“He is a Chevalier of July,” replied the other. “They present arms to him in his own country.”

“And do you ask me, Captain Strong, to go out with a servant?” Pen asked fiercely; “I’ll call a policeman him but — but ——”

“You’ll invite me to hair triggers?” cried Strong, with a laugh. “Thank you for nothing; I was but joking. I came to settle quarrels, not to fight them. I have been soothing down Mirobolant; I have told him that you did not apply the word ‘Cook’ to him in an offensive sense: that it was contrary to all the customs of the country that a hired officer of a household, as I called it, should give his arm to the daughter of the house.” And then he told Pen the grand secret which he had had from Madame Fribsby of the violent passion under which the poor artist was labouring.

When Arthur heard this tale, he broke out into a hearty laugh, in which Strong joined, and his rage against the poor cook vanished at once. He had been absurdly jealous himself all the evening, and had longed for a pretext to insult Pynsent. He remembered how jealous he had been of Oaks in his first affair; he was ready to pardon anything to a man under a passion like that: and he went into the coffee-room where Mirobolant was waiting, with an outstretched hand, and made him a speech in French, in which he declared that he was “sincerement fache d’avoir use une expression qui avoit pu blesser Monsieur Mirobolant, et qu’il donnoit sa parole comme un gentilhomme qu’il ne l’avoit jamais, jamais — intende,” said Pen, who made a shot at a French word for “intended,” and was secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in speaking that language.

“Bravo, bravo!” cried Strong, as much amused with Pen’s speech as pleased by his kind manner. And the Chevalier Mirobolant of course withdraws, and sincerely regrets the expression of which he made use.

“Monsieur Pendennis has disproved my words himself,” said Alcide with great politeness; “he has shown that he is a galant homme.”

And so they shook hands and parted, Arthur in the first place despatching his note to Laura before he and Strong committed themselves to the Butcher Boy.

As they drove along, Strong complimented Pen upon his behaviour, as well as upon his skill in French. “You’re a good fellow, Pendennis, and you speak French like Chateaubriand, by Jove.”

“I’ve been accustomed to it from my youth upwards,” said Pen; and Strong had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, when he exploded into fits of hilarity which Pendennis has never perhaps understood up to this day.

It was daybreak when they got to the Brawl, where they separated. By that time the ball at Baymouth was over too. Madame Fribsby and Mirobolant were on their way home in the Clavering fly; Laura was in bed with an easy heart and asleep at Lady Rockminster’s; and the Claverings at rest at the inn at Baymouth, where they had quarters for the night. A short time after the disturbance between Pen and the chef, Blanche had come out of the refreshment-room, looking as pale as a lemon-ice. She told her maid, having no other confidante at hand, that she had met with the most romantic adventure — the most singular man — one who had known the author of her being — her persecuted — her unhappy — her heroic — her murdered father; and she began a sonnet to his manes before she went to sleep.

So Pen returned to Fairoaks, in company with his friend the Chevalier, without having uttered a word of the message which he had been so anxious to deliver to Laura at Baymouth. He could wait, however, until her return home, which was to take place on the succeeding day. He was not seriously jealous of the progress made by Mr. Pynsent in her favour; and he felt pretty certain that in this, as in any other family arrangement, he had but to ask and have, and Laura, like his mother, could refuse him nothing.

When Helen’s anxious looks inquired of him what had happened at Baymouth, and whether her darling project was fulfilled, Pen, in a gay tone, told of the calamity which had befallen; laughingly said, that no man could think about declarations under such a mishap, and made light of the matter. “There will be plenty of time for sentiment, dear mother, when Laura comes back,” he said, and he looked in the glass with a killing air, and his mother put his hair off his forehead and kissed him, and of course thought, for her part, that no woman could resist him: and was exceedingly happy that day.

When he was not with her, Mr. Pen occupied himself in packing books and portmanteaus, burning and arranging papers, cleaning his gun and putting it into its case: in fact, in making dispositions for departure. For though he was ready to marry, this gentleman was eager to go to London too, rightly considering that at three-and-twenty it was quite time for him to begin upon the serious business of life, and to set about making a fortune as quickly as possible.

The means to this end he had already shaped out for himself. “I shall take chambers,” he said, “and enter myself at an Inn of Court. With a couple of hundred pounds I shall be able to carry through the first year very well; after that I have little doubt my pen will support me, as it is doing with several Oxbridge men now in town. I have a tragedy, a comedy, and a novel, all nearly finished, and for which I can’t fail to get a price. And so I shall be able to live pretty well, without drawing upon my poor mother, until I have made my way at the bar. Then, some day I will come back and make her dear soul happy by marrying Laura. She is as good and as sweet-tempered a girl as ever lived, besides being really very good-looking, and the engagement will serve to steady me,— won’t it, Ponto?” Thus, smoking his pipe, and talking to his dog as he sauntered through the gardens and orchards of the little domain of Fairoaks, this young day-dreamer built castles in the air for himself: “Yes, she’ll steady me, won’t she? And you’ll miss me when I’ve gone, won’t you, old boy?” he asked of Ponto, who quivered his tail and thrust his brown nose into hi............