
enormous sum, the penalty of her cowardly husband's extravagance.
    It has been described in former pages how the elder Pendennis had become the
adviser of the Clavering family, and in his quality of intimate friend of the
house, had gone over every room of it, and even seen that ugly closet which we
all of us have, and in which, according to the proverb, the family skeleton is
locked up. About the Baronet's pecuniary matters, if the Major did not know, it
was because Clavering himself did not know them, and hid them from himself and
others in such a hopeless entanglement of lies, that it was impossible for
adviser or attorney or principal to get an accurate knowledge of his affairs.
But, concerning Lady Clavering, the Major was much better informed; and when the
unlucky mishap of the Derby arose, he took upon himself to become completely and
thoroughly acquainted with all her means, whatsoever they were; and was now
accurately informed of the vast and repeated sacrifices which the widow Amory
had made in behalf of her present husband.
    He did not conceal - and he had won no small favour from Miss Blanche by
avowing it - his opinion, that Lady Clavering's daughter had been hardly treated
at the expense of her son by her second marriage, and in his conversations with
Lady Clavering had fairly hinted that he thought Miss Blanche ought to have a
better provision. We have said that he had already given the widow to understand
that he knew all the particulars of her early and unfortunate history, having
been in India at the time when - when the painful circumstances occurred which
had ended in her parting from her first husband. He could tell her where to find
the Calcutta newspaper which contained the account of Amory's trial; and he
showed - and the Begum was not a little grateful to him for his forbearance -
how, being aware all along of this mishap which had befallen her, he had kept
all knowledge of it to himself, and been constantly the friend of her family.
    »Interested motives, my dear Lady Clavering,« he said, »of course I may have
had. We all have interested motives; and mine, I don't conceal from you, was to
make a marriage between my nephew and your daughter.« To which Lady Clavering,
perhaps with some surprise that the Major should choose her family for a union
with his own, said she was quite willing to consent.
    But frankly he said, »My dear lady, my boy has but five hundred a year, and
a wife with ten thousand pounds
