 Smirke
must be in love with the widow, and did everything in her power to encourage
this passion on both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom saw, indeed, except
in public, and in her pew at church. That lady had very little need of
millinery, or made most of her own dresses and caps; but on the rare occasions
when Madame Fribsby received visits from Mrs. Pendennis, or paid her respects at
Fairoaks, she never failed to entertain the widow with praises of the Curate,
pointing out what an angelical man he was, how gentle, how studious, how lonely,
and she would wonder that no lady would take pity upon him.
    Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered that Madame herself
did not compassionate her lodger, and console him. Madame Fribsby shook her
Madonna front. »Mong cure a boco souffare,« she said, laying her hand on the
part she designated as her cure. »Il est more en Espang, Madame,« she said with
a sigh. She was proud of her intimacy with the French language, and spoke it
with more volubility than correctness. Mrs. Pendennis did not care to penetrate
the secrets of this wounded heart: except to her few intimates, she was a
reserved, and it may be a very proud, woman. She looked upon her son's tutor
merely as an attendant on that young prince, to be treated with respect as a
clergyman certainly, but with proper dignity as a dependant on the house of
Pendennis. Nor were Madame's constant allusions to the Curate particularly
agreeable to her. It required a very ingenious sentimental turn indeed to find
out that the widow had a secret regard for Mr. Smirke, to which pernicious
error, however, Madame Fribsby persisted in holding.
    Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this subject with his
soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she praised the Curate to Mrs.
Pendennis, she came away from the latter with the notion that the widow herself
had been praising him. »Etre soul au monde est bien ouneeyong,« she would say,
glancing up at a print of a French carabineer in a green coat and brass cuirass
which decorated her apartment. »Depend upon it, when Master Pendennis goes to
College, his ma will find herself very lonely. She is quite young yet - you
wouldn't suppose her to be five-and-twenty. Monsieur le Cury, song cure est
touchy - j'ong suis sure - Je conny cela biang - Ally, Monsieur Smirke.«
    He softly blushed; he
