At first she bestowed on Miss Newcome,
too, a share of this haughty dislike, and rejected the advances which
that young lady, who professed to like my wife very much, made towards an
intimacy. When I appealed to her (for Newcome's house was after all a
very pleasant one, and you met the best people there), my wife looked at
me with an expression of something like scorn, and said: "Why don't I
like Miss Newcome? Of course because I am jealous of her--all women, you
know, Arthur, are jealous of such beauties." I could get for a long while
no better explanation than these sneers, for my wife's antipathy towards
this branch of the Newcome family; but an event presently came which
silenced my remonstrances, and showed to me, that Laura had judged Barnes
and his wife only too well.
Poor Mrs. Hobson Newcome had reason to be sulky at the neglect which
all the Richmond party showed her, for nobody, not even Major Pendennis,
as we have seen, would listen to her intellectual conversation; nobody,
not even Lord Highgate, would drive back to town in her carriage, though
the vehicle was large and empty, and Lady Clara's barouche, in which his
lordship chose to take a place, had already three occupants within it:--
but in spite of these rebuffs and disappointments the virtuous lady of
Bryanstone Square was bent upon being good-natured and hospitable; and I
have to record, in the present chapter, yet one more feast of which Mr.
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