t fading
away in her lonely chamber, with no more heed paid to
her than to a weed in the park.

The young ladies, too, lost much of the inestimable
benefit of their governess's instruction, So affectionate a
nurse was Miss Sharp, that Miss Crawley would take
her medicines from no other hand.  Firkin had been
deposed long before her mistress's departure from the
country.  That faithful attendant found a gloomy consolation
on returning to London, in seeing Miss Briggs suffer
the same pangs of jealousy and undergo the same
faithless treatment to which she herself had been subject.

Captain Rawdon got an extension of leave on his
aunt's illness, and remained dutifully at home.  He was
always in her antechamber.  (She lay sick in the state
bedroom, into which you entered by the little blue
saloon.) His father was always meeting him there; or if he
came down the corridor ever so quietly, his father's
door was sure to open, and the hyena face of the old
gentleman to glare out.  What was it set one to watch
the other so?  A generous rivalry, no doubt, as to which
should be most attentive to the dear sufferer in the state
bedroom.  Rebecca used to come out and comfort both
of them; or one or the other of them rather.  Both of
these worthy gentlemen were most anxious to have news
of the invalid from her little confidential messenger.

At dinner--to which meal she descended for half an
hour--she kept the peace between them: after which she
disappeared for the night; when Rawdon would ride over
to the depot of the 150th at Mudbury, leaving his papa
to the society of Mr. Horrocks and his rum and water.
She passed as weary a fortnight as ever mortal spent in
Miss Crawley's sick-room; but her little nerves seemed
to be of iron, as she was quite unshaken by the duty and
the tedium of the sick-chamber.

She never told until long afterwards how painful that
duty was; how peevish a patient was the jovial old lady;
how angry; how sleepless; in what horrors of death;
during what long nights she lay moaning, and in almost
delirious agonies respecting that future world which she
quite ignored when she was in good health.--Picture to
yourself, oh fair young reader, a worldly, selfish,
graceless, thankless, religionless old woman, writhing in pain
and fear, and without her wig.  Picture her to yourself,
and ere you be old, learn to love and pray!

Sharp watched this graceless bedside with indomitable
patience.  Nothing escaped her; and, like a prudent steward,
she found a use for everything.  She told many a
good story about Miss Crawley's illness in after days--
stories which made the lady blush through her artificial
carnations.  During the illness she was never out of
temper; always alert; she slept light, having a perfectly clear
conscience; and could take that refreshment at almost
any minute's warning.  And so you saw very few traces of
fatigue in her appearance.  Her face might be a trifle
paler, and the circles round her eyes a little blacker than
usual; but whenever she came out from the sick-room
she was always smiling, fresh, and neat, and looked as
trim in her little dressing-gown and cap, as in her
smartest evening suit.

The Captain thought so, and raved about her in
uncouth convulsions.  The barbed shaft of love had
penetrated his dull hide.  Six weeks--appropinquity--
opportunity--had victimised him completely.  He made a
confidante of his aunt at the Rectory, of all persons in the
world.  She rallied him about it; she had perceived his
folly; she warned him; she finished by owning that little
Sharp was the most clever, droll, odd, good-natured,
simple, kindly creature in England.  Rawdon must not
trifle with her affections, though--dear Miss Crawley
would never pardon him for that; for she, too, was quite
overcome by the little governess, and loved Sharp like a
daughter.  Rawdon must go away--go back to his
regiment and naughty London, and not play with a poor
artless girl's feelings.

Many and many a time this good-natured lady,
compassionating the forlorn life-guardsman's condition,
gave him an opportunity of seeing Miss Sharp at the Rectory,
and of walking home with her, as we have seen.  When
men of a certain sort, ladies, are in love, though they
see the hook and the string, and the whole apparatus
with which they are to be taken, they gorge the bait
nevertheless--they must come to it--they must swallow
it--and are presently struck and landed gasping.  Rawdon
saw there was a manifest intention on Mrs. Bute's part
to captivate him with Rebecca.  He was not very wise;
but he was a man about town, and had seen several
seasons.  A light dawned upon his dusky soul, as he thought,
through a speech of Mrs. Bute's.

"Mark my words, Rawdon," she said.  "You will have
Miss Sharp one day for your relation."

"What relation--my cousin, hey, Mrs. Bute? James
sweet on her, hey?" inquired the waggish officer.

"More than that," Mrs. Bute said, with a flash from
her black eyes.

"Not Pitt?  He sha'n't have her.  The sneak a'n't
worthy of her.  He's booked to Lady Jane Sheepshanks."

"You men perceive nothing.  You silly, blind creature
--if anything happens to Lady Crawley, Miss Sharp will
be your mother-in-law; and that's what will happen."

Rawdon Crawley, Esquire, gave vent to a prodigious
whistle, in token of astonishment at this announcement.
He couldn't deny it.  His father's evident liking for Miss
Sharp had not escaped him.  He knew the old gentleman's
character well; and a more unscrupulous old--whyou--
he did not conclude the sentence, but walked home,
curling his mustachios, and convinced he had found a
clue to Mrs. Bute's mystery.

"By Jove, it's too bad," thought Rawdon, "too bad, by
Jove! I do believe the woman wants the poor girl to be
ruined, in order that she shouldn't come into the family
as Lady Crawley."

When he saw Rebecca alone, he rallied her about his
father's attachment in his graceful way.  She flung up her
head scornfully, looked him full in the face, and said,

"Well, suppose he is fond of me.  I know he is, and
others too.  You don't think I am afraid of him, Captain
Crawley?  You don't suppose I can't defend my own
honour," said the little woman, looking as stately as a
queen.

"Oh, ah, why--give you fair warning--look out, you
know--that's all," said the mustachio-twiddler.

"You hint at something not honourable, then?" said
she, flashing out.

"O Gad--really--Miss Rebecca," the heavy dragoon
interposed.

"Do you suppose I have no feeling of self-respect,
because I am poor and friendless, and because rich people
have none?  Do you think, because I am a governess, I
have not as much sense, and feeling, and good breeding
as you gentlefolks in Hampshire? I'm a Montmorency.
Do you suppose a Montmorency is not as good as a
Crawley?"

When Miss Sharp was agitated, and alluded to her
maternal relatives, she spoke with ever so slight a
foreign accent, which gave a great charm to her clear
ringing voice.  "No," she continued, kindling as she spoke to
the Captain; "I can endure poverty, but not shame--
neglect, but not insult; and insult from--from you."

Her feelings gave way, and she burst into tears.

"Hang it, Miss Sharp--Rebecca--by Jove--upon my
soul, I wouldn't for a thousand pounds.  Stop, Rebecca!"

She was gone.  She drove out with Miss Crawley that
day.  It was before the latter's illness.  At dinner she was
unusually brilliant and lively; but she would take no
notice of the hints, or the nods, or the clumsy expostulations
of the humiliated, infatuated guardsman.  Skirmishes
of this sort passed perpetually during the little campaign
--tedious to relate, and similar in result.  The Crawley
heavy cavalry was maddened by defeat, and routed
every day.

If the Baronet of Queen's Crawley had not had the
fear of losing his sister's legacy before his eyes, he never
would have permitted his dear girls to lose the educational
blessings which their invaluable governess was conferring
upon them.  The old house at home seemed a desert
without her, so useful and pleasant had Rebecca
made herself there.  Sir Pitt's letters were not copied and
corrected; his books not made up; his household
business and manifold schemes neglected, now that his little
secretary was away.  And it was easy to see how necessary
such an amanuensis was to him, by the tenor and
spelling of the numerous letters which he sent to her,
entreating her and commanding her to return.  Almost every
day brought a frank from the Baronet, enclosing the
most urgent prayers to Becky for her return, or conveying
pathetic statements to Miss Crawley, regarding the
neglected state of his daughters' education; of which
documents Miss Crawley took very little heed.

Miss Briggs was not formally dismissed, but her place
as companion was a sinecure and a derision; and her
company was the fat spaniel in the drawing-room, or
occasionally the discontented Firkin in the housekeeper's
closet.  Nor though the old lady would by no means
hear of Rebecca's departure, was the latter regularly
installed in office in Park Lane.  Like many wealthy people,
it was Miss Crawley's habit to accept as much service as
she could get from her inferiors; and good-naturedly to
take leave of them when she no longer found them
useful.  Gratitude among certain rich folks is scarcely natural
or to be thought of.  They take needy people's services
as their due.  Nor have you, O poor parasite and humble
hanger-on, much reason to complain!  Your friendship
for Dives is about as sincere as the return which it usually
gets.  It is money you love, and not the man; and were
Croesus and his footman to change places you know,
you poor rogue, who would have the benefit of your
allegiance.

And I am not sure that, in spite of Rebecca's simplicity
and activity, and gentleness and untiring good
humour, the shrewd old London lady, upon whom these
treasures of friendship were lavished, had not a lurking
suspicion all the while of her affectionate nurse and friend.
It must have often crossed Miss Crawley's mind that
nobody does anything for nothing.  If she measured her own
feeling towards the world, she must have been pretty
well able to gauge those of the world towards herself;
and perhaps she reflected that it is the ordinary lot of
people to have no friends if they themselves care for
nobody.

Well, meanwhile Becky was the greatest comfort and
convenience to her, and she gave her a couple of new
gowns, and an old necklace and shawl, and showed her
friendship by abusing all her intimate acquaintances to
her new confidante (than which there can't be a more
touching proof of regard), and meditated vaguely some
great future benefit--to marry her perhaps to Clump,
the apothecary, or to settle her in some advantageous
way of life; or at any rate, to send her back to Queen's
Crawley when she had done with her, and the full
London season had begun.

When Miss Crawley was convalescent and descended
to the drawing-room, Becky sang to her, and otherwise
amused her; when she was well enough to drive out,
Becky accompanied her.  And amongst the drives which
they took, whither, of all places in the world, did Miss
Crawley's admirable good-nature and friendship actually
induce her to penetrate, but to Russell Square,
Bloomsbury, and the house of John Sedley, Esquire.

Ere that event, many notes had passed, as may be
imagined, between the two dear friends.  During the
months of Rebecca's stay in Hampshire, the eternal
friendship had (must it be owned?) suffered considerable
diminution, and grown so decrepit and feeble with old
age as to threaten demise altogether.  The fact is, both
girls had their own real affairs to think of: Rebecca her
advance with her employers--Amelia her own absorbing
topic.  When the two girls met, and flew into each other's
arms with that impetuosity which distinguishes the
behaviour of young ladies towards each other, Rebecca
performed her part of the embrace with the most perfect
briskness and energy.  Poor little Amelia blushed as she
kissed her friend, and thought she had been guilty of
something very like coldness towards her.

Their first interview was but a very short one.  Amelia
was just ready to go out for a walk.  Miss Crawley was
waiting in her carriage below, her people wondering at
the locality in which they found themselves, and gazing
upon honest Sambo, the black footman of Bloomsbury,
as one of the queer natives of the place.  But when Amelia
came down with her kind smiling looks (Rebecca must
introduce her to her friend, Miss Crawley was longing
to see her, and was too ill to leave her carriage)--when,
I say, Amelia came down, the Park Lane shoulder-knot
aristocracy wondered more and more that such a thing
could come out of Bloomsbury; and Miss Crawley was
fairly captivated by the sweet blushing face of the young
lady who came forward so timidly and so gracefully to
pay her respects to the protector of her friend.

"What a complexion, my dear! What a sweet voice!"
Miss Crawley said, as they drove away westward after
the little interview.  "My dear Sharp, your young friend
is charming.  Send for her to Park Lane, do you hear?"
Miss Crawley had a good taste.  She liked natural
manners--a little timidity only set them off.  She liked pretty
faces near her; as she liked pretty pictures and nice
china.  She talked of Amelia with rapture half a dozen
times that day.  She mentioned her to Rawdon Crawley,
who came dutifully to partake of his aunt's chicken.

Of course, on this Rebecca instantly stated that Amelia
was engaged to be married--to a Lieutenant Osborne--
a very old flame.

"Is he a man in a line-regiment?" Captain Crawley
asked, remembering after an effort, as became a
guardsman, the number of the regiment, the --th.

Rebecca thought that was the regiment.  "The
Captain's name," she said, "was Captain Dobbin."

"A lanky gawky fellow," said Crawley, "tumbles over
everybody.  I know him; and Osborne's a goodish-looking
fellow, with large black whiskers?"

"Enormous," Miss Rebecca Sharp said, "and
enormously proud of them, I assure you."

Captain Rawdon Crawley burst into a horse-laugh by
way of reply; and being pressed by the ladies to explain,
did so when the explosion of hilarity was over.  "He
fancies he can play at billiards," said he.  "I won two
hundred of him at the Cocoa-Tree.  HE play, the young
flat!  He'd have played for anything that day, but his friend
Captain Dobbin carried him off, hang him!"

"Rawdon, Rawdon, don't be so wicked," Miss Crawley
remarked, highly pleased.

"Why, ma'am, of all the young fellows I've seen out
of the line, I think this fellow's the greenest.  Tarquin and
Deuceace get what money they like out of him.  He'd go
to the deuce to be seen with a lord.  He pays their
dinners at Greenwich, and they invite the company."

"And very pretty company too, I dare say."

"Quite right, Miss Sharp.  Right, as usual, Miss Sharp.
Uncommon pretty company--haw, haw!" and the
Captain laughed more and more, thinking he had made a
good joke.

"Rawdon, don't be naughty!" his aunt exclaimed.

"Well, his father's a City man--immensely rich, they
say.  Hang those City fellows, they must bleed; and I've
not done with him yet, I can tell you.  Haw, haw!"

"Fie, Captain Crawley; I shall warn Amelia.  A
gambling husband!"

"Horrid, ain't he, hey?" the Captain said with great
solemnity; and then added, a sudden thought having
struck him: "Gad, I say, ma'am, we'll have him here."

"Is he a presentable sort of a person?" the aunt
inquired.

"Presentable?--oh, very well.  You wouldn't see any
difference," Captain Crawley answered.  "Do let's have
him, when you begin to see a few people; and his
whatdyecallem--his inamorato--eh, Miss Sharp; that's what
you call it--comes.  Gad, I'll write him a note, and have
him; and I'll try if he can play piquet as well as billiards.
Where does he live, Miss Sharp?"

Miss Sharp told Crawley the Lieutenant's town address;
and a few days after this conversation, Lieutenant
Osborne received a letter, in Captain Rawdon's
schoolboy hand, and enclosing a note of invitation from
Miss Crawley.

Rebecca despatched also an invitation to her darling
Amelia, who, you may be sure, was ready enough to
accept it when she heard that George was to be of the
party.  It was arranged that Amelia was to spend the
morning with the ladies of Park Lane, where all were
very kind to her.  Rebecca patronised her with calm
superiority: she was so much the cleverer of the two, and
her friend so gentle and unassuming, that she always
yielded when anybody chose to command, and so took
Rebecca's orders with perfect meekness and good humour.
Miss Crawley's graciousness was also remarkable.  She
continued her raptures about little Amelia, talked about
her before her face as if she were a doll, or a servant,
or a picture, and admired her with the most benevolent
wonder possible.  I admire that admiration which the
genteel world sometimes extends to the commonalty.
There is no more agreeable object in life than to see
Mayfair folks condescending.  Miss Crawley's prodigious
benevolence rather fatigued poor little Amelia, and I am
not sure that of the three ladies in Park Lane she did
not find honest Miss Briggs the most agreeable.  She
sympathised with Briggs as with all neglected or gentle
people: she wasn't what you call a woman of spirit.

George came to dinner--a repast en garcon with
Captain Crawley.

The great family coach of the Osbornes transported
him to Park Lane from Russell Square; where the young
ladies, who were not themselves invited, and professed
the greatest indifference at that slight, nevertheless looked
at Sir Pitt Crawley's name in the baronetage; and learned
everything which that work had to teach about the
Crawley family and their pedigree, and the Binkies, their
relatives, &c., &c.  Rawdon Crawley received George Osborne
with great frankness and graciousness: praised his play at
billiards: asked him when he would have his revenge:
was interested about Osborne's regiment: and would have
proposed piquet to him that very evening, but Miss
Crawley absolutely forbade any gambling in her house;
so that the young Lieutenant's purse was not lightened
by his gallant patron, for that day at least.  However, they
made an engagement for the next, somewhere: to look
at a horse that Crawley had to sell, and to try him in the
Park; and to dine together, and to pass the evening with
some jolly fellows.  "That is, if you're not on duty to that
pretty Miss Sedley," Crawley said, with a knowing wink.
"Monstrous nice girl, 'pon my honour, though, Osborne,"
he was good enough to add.  "Lots of tin, I suppose, eh?"

Osborne wasn't on duty; he would join Crawley with
pleasure: and the latter, when they met the next day,
praised his new friend's horsemanship--as he might with
perfect honesty--and introduced him to three or four
young men of the first fashion, whose acquaintance
immensely elated the simple young officer.

"How's little Miss Sharp, by-the-bye?" Osborne inquired
of his friend over their wine, with a dandified air.
"Good-natured little girl that.  Does she suit you well at
Queen's Crawley? Miss Sedley liked her a good deal last
year."

Captain Crawley looked savagely at the Lieutenant out
of his little blue eyes, and watched him when he went up
to resume his acquaintance with the fair governess.  Her
conduct must have relieved Crawley if there was any
jealousy in the bosom of that life-guardsman.

When the young men went upstairs, and after
Osborne's introduction to Miss Crawley, he walked up to
Rebecca with a patronising, easy swagger.  He was going
to be kind to her and protect her.  He would even shake
hands with her, as a friend of Amelia's; and saying, "Ah,
Miss Sharp! how-dy-doo?" held out his left hand towards
her, expecting that she would be quite confounded at
the honour.

Miss Sharp put out her right forefinger, and gave him
a little nod, so cool and killing, that Rawdon Crawley,
watching the operations from the other room, could
hardly restrain his laughter as he saw the Lieutenant's
entire discomfiture; the start he gave, the pause, and the
perfect clumsiness with which he at length condescended
to take the finger which was offered for his embrace.

"She'd beat the devil, by Jove!" the Captain said, in a
rapture; and the Lieutenant, by way of beginning the
conversation, agreeably asked Rebecca how she liked her
new place.

"My place?" said Miss Sharp, coolly, "how kind of you
to remind me of it!  It's a tolerably good place: the wages
are pretty good--not so good as Miss Wirt's, I believe,
with your sisters in Russell Square.  How are those young
ladies?--not that I ought to ask."

"Why not?" Mr. Osborne said, amazed.

"Why, they never condescended to speak to me, or to
ask me into their house, whilst I was staying with Amelia;
but we poor governesses, you know, are used to slights of
this sort."

"My dear Miss Sharp!" Osborne ejaculated.

"At least in some families," Rebecca continued.  "You
can't think what a difference there is though.  We are not
so wealthy in Hampshire as you lucky folks of the City.
But then I am in a gentleman's family--good old
English stock.  I suppose you know Sir Pitt's father refused a
peerage.  And you see how I am treated.  I am pretty
comfortable.  Indeed it is rather a good place.  But how
very good of you to inquire!"

Osborne was quite savage.  The little governess
patronised him and persiffled him until this young
British Lion felt quite uneasy; nor could he muster sufficient
presence of mind to find a pretext for backing out
of this most delectable conversation.

"I thought you liked the City families pretty well," he
said, haughtily.

"Last year you mean, when I was fresh from that
horrid vulgar school?  Of course I did.  Doesn't every girl like
to come home for the holidays?  And how was I to know
any better?  But oh, Mr. Osborne, what a difference
eighteen months' experience makes! eighteen months spent,
pardon me for saying so, with gentlemen.  As for dear
Amelia, she, I grant you, is a pearl, and would be charming anywhere.  There now, I see you are beginning to be
in a good humour; but oh these queer odd City people!
And Mr. Jos--how is that wonderful Mr. Joseph?"

"It seems to me you didn't dislike that wonderful Mr.
Joseph last year," Osborne said kindly.

"How severe of you!  Well, entre nous, I didn't break
my heart about him; yet if he had asked me to do what
you mean by your looks (and very expressive and kind
they are, too), I wouldn't have said no."

Mr. Osborne gave a look as much as to say, "Indeed,
how very obliging!"

"What an honour to have had you for a brother-in-law,
you are thinking? To be sister-in-law to George
Osborne, Esquire, son of John Osborne, Esquire, son of--
what was your grandpapa, Mr. Osborne?  Well, don't be
angry.  You can't help your pedigree, and I quite agree
with you that I would have married Mr. Joe Sedley; for
could a poor penniless girl do better?  Now you know
the whole secret.  I'm frank and open; considering all
things, it was very kind of you to allude to the
circumstance--very kind and polite.  Amelia dear, Mr.
Osborne and I were talking about your poor brother Joseph.
How is he?"

Thus was George utterly routed.  Not that Rebecca was
in the right; but she had managed most successfully to
put him in the wrong.  And he now shamefully fled,
feeling, if he stayed another minute, that he would have
been made to look foolish in the presence of Amelia.

Though Rebecca had had the better of him, George was
above the meanness of talebearing or revenge upon a
lady--only he could not help cleverly confiding to
Captain Crawley, next day, some notions of his regarding
Miss Rebecca--that she was a sharp one, a dangerous
one, a desperate flirt, &c.; in all of which opinions
Crawley agreed laughingly, and with every one of which Miss
Rebecca was made acquainted before twenty-four hours
were over.  They added to her original regard for Mr.
Osborne.  Her woman's instinct had told her that it was
George who had interrupted the success of her first
love-passage, and she esteemed him accordingly.

"I only just warn you," he said to Rawdon Crawley,
with a knowing look--he had bought the horse, and lost
some score of guineas after dinner, "I just warn you--I
know women, and counsel you to be on the look-out."

"Thank you, my boy," said Crawley, with a look of
peculiar gratitude.  "You're wide awake, I see." And
George went off, thinking Crawley was quite right.

He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had
counselled Rawdon Crawley--a devilish good,
straightforward fellow--to be on his guard against that
little sly, scheming Rebecca.

"Against whom?" Amelia cried.

"Your friend the governess.--Don't look so astonished."

"O George, what have you done?" Amelia said.  For her
woman's eyes, which Love had made sharp-sighted, had
in one instant discovered a secret which was invisible to
Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and above all,
to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig,
Lieutenant Osborne.

For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment,
where these two friends had an opportunity for a
little of that secret talking and conspiring which form
the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to Rebecca,
and taking her two little hands in hers, said, "Rebecca,
I see it all."

Rebecca kissed her.

And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable
more was said by either of the young women.  But it was
destined to come out before long.

Some short period after the above events, and Miss
Rebecca Sharp still remaining at her patroness's house
in Park Lane, one more hatchment might have been seen
in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many which
usually ornament that dismal quarter.  It was over Sir
Pitt Crawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy
baronet's demise.  It was a feminine hatchment, and
indeed a few years back had served as a funeral compliment
to Sir Pitt's old mother, the late dowager Lady Crawley.
Its period of service over, the hatchment had come
down from the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt's mansion.
It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson.  Sir Pitt
was a widower again.  The arms quartered on the shield
along with his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's.
She had no arms.  But the cherubs painted on the
scutcheon answered as well for her as for Sir Pitt's
mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat,
flanked by the Crawley Dove and Serpent.  Arms and
Hatchments, Resurgam.--Here is an opportunity for
moralising!

Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless
bedside.  She went out of the world strengthened by such
words and comfort as he could give her.  For many years
his was the only kindness she ever knew; the only
friendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul.
Her heart was dead long before her body.  She had sold
it to become Sir Pitt Crawley's wife.  Mothers and
daughters are making the same bargain every day in
Vanity Fair.

When the demise took place, her husband was in
London attending to some of his innumerable schemes,
and busy with his endless lawyers.  He had found time,
nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatch
many notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her,
commanding her to return to her young pupils in the
country, who were now utterly without companionship
during their mother's illness.  But Miss Crawley would
not hear of her departure; for though there was no lady
of fashion in London who would desert her friends more
complacently as soon as she was tired of their society,
and though few tired of them sooner, yet as long as her
engoument lasted her attachment was prodigious, and
she clung still with the greatest energy to Rebecca.

The news of Lady Crawley's death provoked no more
grief or comment than might have been expected in Miss
Crawley's family circle.  "I suppose I must put off my
party for the 3rd," Miss Crawley said; and added, after a
pause, "I hope my brother will have the decency not to
marry again." "What a confounded rage Pitt will be in if
he does," Rawdon remarked, with his usual regard for his
elder brother.  Rebecca said nothing.  She seemed by far the
gravest and most impressed of the family.  She left the
room before Rawdon went away that day; but they met
by chance below, as he was going away after taking leave,
and had a parley together.

On the morrow, as Rebecca was gazing from the window,
she startled Miss Crawley, who was placidly occupied
with a French novel, by crying out in an alarmed
tone, "Here's Sir Pitt, Ma'am!" and the Baronet's knock
followed this announcement.

"My dear, I can't see him.  I won't see him.  Tell Bowls
not at home, or go downstairs and say I'm too ill to
receive any one.  My nerves really won't bear my brother
at this moment," cried out Miss Crawley, and resumed
the novel.

"She's too ill to see you, sir," Rebecca said, tripping
down to Sir Pitt, who was preparing to ascend.

"So much the better," Sir Pitt answered.  "I want to
see YOU, Miss Becky.  Come along a me into the parlour,"
and they entered that apartment together.

"I wawnt you back at Queen's Crawley, Miss," the
baronet said, fixing his eyes upon her, and taking off his
black gloves and his hat with its great crape hat-band.
His eyes had such a strange look, and fixed upon her so
steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble.

"I hope to come soon," she said in a low voice, "as
soon as Miss Crawley is better--and return to--to the
dear children."

"You've said so these three months, Becky," replied
Sir Pitt, "and still you go hanging on to my sister, who'll
fling you off like an old shoe, when she's wore you out.
I tell you I want you.  I'm going back to the Vuneral.
Will you come back?  Yes or no?"

"I daren't--I don't think--it would be right--to be
alone--with you, sir," Becky said, seemingly in great
agitation.

"I say agin, I want you," Sir Pitt said, thumping the
table.  "I can't git on without you.  I didn't see what it was
till you went away.  The house all goes wrong.  It's not
the same place.  All my accounts has got muddled agin.
You MUST come back.  Do come back.  Dear Becky, do
come."

"Come--as what, sir?" Rebecca gasped out.

"Come as Lady Crawley, if you like," the Baronet
said, grasping his crape hat.  "There! will that zatusfy you?
Come back and be my wife.  Your vit vor't.  Birth be
hanged.  You're as good a lady as ever I see.  You've got
more brains in your little vinger than any baronet's wife
in the county.  Will you come? Yes or no?"

"Oh, Sir Pitt!" Rebecca said, very much moved.

"Say yes, Becky," Sir Pitt continued.  "I'm an old man,
but a good'n.  I'm good for twenty years.  I'll make you
happy, zee if I don't.  You shall do what you like; spend
what you like; and 'ave it all your own way.  I'll make
you a zettlement.  I'll do everything reglar.  Look year!"
and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at
her like a satyr.

Rebecca started back a picture of consternation.  In
the course of this history we have never seen her lose her
presence of mind; but she did now, and wept some of the
most genuine tears that ever fell from her eyes.

"Oh, Sir Pitt!" she said.  "Oh, sir--I--I'm married
ALREADY."




CHAPTER XV

In Which Rebecca's Husband Appears
for a Short Time

Every reader of a sentimental turn (and we desire
no other) must have been pleased with the
tableau with which the last act of our little
drama concluded; for what can be prettier than
an image of Love on his knees before Beauty?

But when Love heard that awful confession from
Beauty that she was married already, he
bounced up from his attitude of humility on the carpet,
uttering exclamations which caused poor little Beauty to
be more frightened than she was when she made her
avowal.  "Married; you're joking," the Baronet cried, after
the first explosion of rage and wonder.  "You're
making vun of me, Becky.  Who'd ever go to marry you
without a shilling to your vortune?"

"Married! married!" Rebecca said, in an agony of tears
--her voice choking with emotion, her handkerchief up
to her ready eyes, fainting against the mantelpiece a
figure of woe fit to melt the most obdurate heart.  "0
Sir Pitt, dear Sir Pitt, do not think me ungrateful for all
your goodness to me.  It is only your generosity that has
extorted my secret."

"Generosity be hanged!" Sir Pitt roared out.  "Who is
it tu, then, you're married? Where was it?"

"Let me come back with you to the country, sir!  Let
me watch over you as faithfully as ever!  Don't, don't
separate me from dear Queen's Crawley!"

"The feller has left you, has he?" the Baronet said,
beginning, as he fancied, to comprehend.  "Well, Becky--
come back if you like.  You can't eat your cake and have
it.  Any ways I made you a vair offer.  Coom back as
governess--you shall have it all your own way." She
held out one hand.  She cried fit to break her heart; her
ringlets fell over her face, and over the marble
mantelpiece where she laid it.

"So the rascal ran off, eh?"  Sir Pitt said, with a hideous
attempt at consolation.  "Never mind, Becky, I'LL take
care of 'ee."

"Oh, sir! it would be the pride of my life to go back
to Queen's Crawley, and take care of the children, and
of you as formerly, when you said you were pleased with
the services of your little Rebecca.  When I think of what
you have just offered me, my heart fills with gratitude
indeed it does.  I can't be your wife, sir; let me--let me be
your daughter."

Saying which, Rebecca went down on HER knees in a
most tragical way, and, taking Sir Pitt's horny black
hand between her own two (which were very pretty and
white, and as soft as satin), looked up in his face with an
expression of exquisite pathos and confidence, when--
when the door opened, and Miss Crawley sailed in.

Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs, who happened by chance
to be at the parlour door soon after the Baronet and
Rebecca entered the apartment, had also seen accidentally,
through the keyhole, the old gentleman prostrate
before the governess, and had heard the generous proposal
which he made her.  It was scarcely out of his mouth
when Mrs. Firkin and Miss Briggs had streamed up the
stairs, had rushed into the drawing-room where Miss
Crawley was reading the French novel, and had given
that old lady the astounding intelligence that Sir Pitt
was on his knees, proposing to Miss Sharp.  And if you
calculate the time for the above dialogue to take place
--the time for Briggs and Firkin to fly to the drawing-
room--the time for Miss Crawley to be astonished, and
to drop her volume of Pigault le Brun--and the time for
her to come downstairs--you will see how exactly
accurate this history is, and how Miss Crawley must have
appeared at the very instant when Rebecca had assumed
the attitude of humility.

"It is the lady on the ground, and not the gentleman,"
Miss Crawley said, with a look and voice of great scorn.
"They told me that YOU were on your knees, Sir Pitt: do
kneel once more, and let me see this pretty couple!"

"I have thanked Sir Pitt Crawley, Ma'am," Rebecca
said, rising, "and have told him that--that I never can
become Lady Crawley."

"Refused him!"  Miss Crawley said, more bewildered
than ever.  Briggs and Firkin at the door opened the eyes
of astonishment and the lips of wonder.

"Yes--refused," Rebecca continued, with a sad,
tearful voice.

"And am I to credit my ears that you absolutely
proposed to her, Sir Pitt?" the old lady asked.

"Ees," said the Baronet, "I did."

"And she refused you as she says?"

"Ees," Sir Pitt said, his features on a broad grin.

"It does not seem to break your heart at any rate,"
Miss Crawley remarked.

"Nawt a bit," answered Sir Pitt, with a coolness and
good-humour which set Miss Crawley almost mad with
bewilderment.  That an old gentleman of station should
fall on his knees to a penniless governess, and burst out
laughing because she refused to marry him--that a
penniless governess should refuse a Baronet with four
thousand a year--these were mysteries which Miss Crawley
could never comprehend.  It surpassed any complications
of intrigue in her favourite Pigault le Brun.

"I'm glad you think it good sport, brother," she
continued, groping wildly through this amazement.

"Vamous," said Sir Pitt.  "Who'd ha' thought it! what a
sly little devil! what a little fox it waws!" he muttered
to himself, chuckling with pleasure.

"Who'd have thought what?" cries Miss Crawley,
stamping with her foot.  "Pray, Miss Sharp, are you
waiting for the Prince Regent's divorce, that you don't think
our family good enough for you?"

"My attitude," Rebecca said, "when you came in,
ma'am, did not look as if I despised such an honour as
this good--this noble man has deigned to offer me.  Do
you think I have no heart?  Have you all loved me, and
been so kind to the poor orphan--deserted--girl, and
am I to feel nothing?  O my friends!  O my benefactors!
may not my love, my life, my duty, try to repay the
confidence you have shown me?  Do you grudge me even
gratitude, Miss Crawley?  It is too much--my heart is
too full"; and she sank down in a chair so pathetically,
that most of the audience present were perfectly melted
with her sadness.

"Whether you marry me or not, you're a good little
girl, Becky, and I'm your vriend, mind," said Sir Pitt, and
putting on his crape-bound hat, he walked away--greatly
to Rebecca's relief; for it was evident that her secret
was unrevealed to Miss Crawley, and she had the
advantage of a brief reprieve.

Putting her handkerchief to her eyes, and nodding
away honest Briggs, who would have followed her
upstairs, she went up to her apartment; while Briggs and
Miss Crawley, in a high state of excitement, remained
to discuss the strange event, and Firkin, not less moved,
dived down into the kitchen regions, and talked of it
with all the male and female company there.  And so
impressed was Mrs. Firkin with the news, that she thought
proper to write off by that very night's post, "with her
humble duty to Mrs. Bute Crawley and the family at the
Rectory, and Sir Pitt has been and proposed for to marry
Miss Sharp, wherein she has refused him, to the wonder
of all."

The two ladies in the dining-room (where worthy
Miss Briggs was delighted to be admitted once more to
confidential conversation with her patroness) wondered
to their hearts' content at Sir Pitt's offer, and Rebecca's
refusal; Briggs very acutely suggesting that there must
have been some obstacle in the shape of a previous
attachment, otherwise no young woman in her senses would
ever have refused so advantageous a proposal.

"You would have accepted it yourself, wouldn't you,
Briggs?" Miss Crawley said, kindly.

"Would it not be a privilege to be Miss Crawley's
sister?" Briggs replied, with meek evasion.

"Well, Becky would have made a good Lady Crawley,
after all," Miss Crawley remarked (who was mollified by
the girl's refusal, and very liberal and generous now there
was no call for her sacrifices).  "She has brains in plenty
(much more wit in her little finger than you have, my
poor dear Briggs, in all your head).  Her manners are
excellent, now I have formed her.  She is a Montmorency,
Briggs, and blood is something, though I despise it for
my part; and she would have held her own amongst those
pompous stupid Hampshire people much better than that
unfortunate ironmonger's daughter."

Briggs coincided as usual, and the "previous attachment"
was then discussed in conjectures.  "You poor
friendless creatures are always having some foolish
tendre," Miss Crawley said.  "You yourself, you know,
were in love with a writing-master (don't cry, Briggs--
you're always crying, and it won't bring him to life again),
and I suppose this unfortunate Becky has been silly
and sentimental too--some apothecary, or house-steward,
or painter, or young curate, or something of that sort."

"Poor thing! poor thing!" says Briggs (who was thinking
of twenty-four years back, and that hectic young
writing-master whose lock of yellow hair, and whose
letters, beautiful in their illegibility, she cherished in
her old desk upstairs).  "Poor thing, poor thing!" says
Briggs.  Once more she was a fresh-cheeked lass of eighteen;
she was at evening church, and the hectic writing-master
and she were quavering out of the same psalm-book.

"After such conduct on Rebecca's part," Miss Crawley
said enthusiastically, "our family should do something.
Find out who is the objet, Briggs.  I'll set him up in a
shop; or order my portrait of him, you know; or speak
to my cousin, the Bishopand I'll doter Becky, and
we'll have a wedding, Briggs, and you shall make the
breakfast, and be a bridesmaid."

Briggs declared that it would be delightful, and vowed
that her dear Miss Crawley was always kind and generous,
and went up to Rebecca's bedroom to console her
and prattle about the offer, and the refusal, and the
cause thereof; and to hint at the generous intentions of
Miss Crawley, and to find out who was the gentleman
that had the mastery of Miss Sharp's heart.

Rebecca was very kind, very affectionate and affected
--responded to Briggs's offer of tenderness with grateful
fervour--owned there was a secret attachment--a
delicious mystery--what a pity Miss Briggs had not
remained half a minute longer at the keyhole!  Rebecca
might, perhaps, have told more: but five minutes after
Miss Briggs's arrival in Rebecca's apartment, Miss Crawley
actually made her appearance there--an unheard-of
honour--her impatience had overcome her; she could not
wait for the tardy operations of her ambassadress: so
she came in person, and ordered Briggs out of the room.
And expressing her approval of Rebecca's conduct, she
asked particulars of the interview, and the previous
transactions which had brought about the astonishing
offer of Sir Pitt.

Rebecca said she had long had some notion of the
partiality with which Sir Pitt honoured her (for he was
in the habit of making his feelings known in a very frank
and unreserved manner) but, not to mention private
reasons with which she would not for the present trouble
Miss Crawley, Sir Pitt's age, station, and habits were
such as to render a marriage quite impossible; and
could a woman with any feeling of self-respect and any
decency listen to proposals at such a moment, when
the funeral of the lover's deceased wife had not actually
taken place?

"Nonsense, my dear, you would never have refused
him had there not been some one else in the case," Miss
Crawley said, coming to her point at once.  "Tell me the
private reasons; what are the private reasons?  There is
some one; who is it that has touched your heart?"

Rebecca cast down her eyes, and owned there was.
"You have guessed right, dear lady," she said, with a
sweet simple faltering voice.  "You wonder at one so
poor and friendless having an attachment, don't you?
I have never heard that poverty was any safeguard
against it.  I wish it were."

"My poor dear child," cried Miss Crawley, who was
always quite ready to be sentimental, "is our passion
unrequited, then?  Are we pining in secret? Tell me all,
and let me console you."

"I wish you could, dear Madam," Rebecca said in the
same tearful tone.  "Indeed, indeed, I need it." And she
laid her head upon Miss Crawley's shoulder and wept
there so naturally that the old lady, surprised into
sympathy, embraced her with an almost maternal
kindness, uttered many soothing protests of regard and
affection for her, vowed that she loved her as a daughter,
and would do everything in her power to serve her.  "And
now who is it, my dear?  Is it that pretty Miss Sedley's
brother?  You said something about an affair with him.
I'll ask him here, my dear.  And you shall have him:
indeed you shall."

"Don't ask me now," Rebecca said.  "You shall know
all soon.  Indeed you shall.  Dear kind Miss Crawley--
dear friend, may I say so?"

"That you may, my child," the old lady replied, kissing
her.

"I can't tell you now," sobbed out Rebecca, "I am
very miserable.  But O! love me always--promise you will
love me always." And in the midst of mutual tears--for
the emotions of the younger woman had awakened the
sympathies of the elder--this promise was solemnly given
by Miss Crawley, who left her little protege, blessing
and admiring her as a dear, artless, tender-hearted,
affectionate, incomprehensible creature.

And now she was left alone to think over the sudden
and wonderful events of the day, and of what had been
and what might have been.  What think you were the
private feelings of Miss, no (begging her pardon) of
Mrs. Rebecca?  If, a few pages back, the present writer
claimed the privilege of peeping into Miss Amelia
Sedley's bedroom, and understanding with the omniscience
of the novelist all the gentle pains and passions which
were tossing upon that innocent pillow, why should he
not declare himself to be Rebecca's confidante too,
master of her secrets, and seal-keeper of that young
woman's conscience?

Well, then, in the first place, Rebecca gave way to
some very sincere and touching regrets that a piece of
marvellous good fortune should have been so near her,
and she actually obliged to decline it.  In this natural
emotion every properly regulated mind will certainly
share.  What good mother is there that would not
commiserate a penniless spinster, who might have been
my lady, and have shared four thousand a year?  What
well-bred young person is there in all Vanity Fair, who
will not feel for a hard-working, ingenious, meritorious
girl, who gets such an honourable, advantageous, provoking
offer, just at the very moment when it is out of her
power to accept it?  I am sure our friend Becky's
disappointment deserves and will command every
sympathy.

I remember one night being in the Fair myself, at an
evening party.  I observed old Miss Toady there also
present, single out for her special attentions and flattery
little Mrs. Briefless, the barrister's wife, who is of a
good family certainly, but, as we all know, is as poor
as poor can be.

What, I asked in my own mind, can cause this
obsequiousness on the part of Miss Toady; has Briefless
got a county court, or has his wife had a fortune left her?
Miss Toady explained presently, with that simplicity
which distinguishes all her conduct.  "You know," she
said, "Mrs.Briefless is granddaughter of Sir John Redhand,
who is so ill at Cheltenham that he can't last six
months.  Mrs.  Briefless's papa succeeds; so you see she
will be a baronet's daughter." And Toady asked Briefless
and his wife to dinner the very next week.

If the mere chance of becoming a baronet's daughter
can procure a lady such homage in the world, surely,
surely we may respect the agonies of a young woman
who has lost the opportunity of becoming a baronet's
wife.  Who would have dreamed of Lady Crawley dying
so soon?  She was one of those sickly women that
might have lasted these ten years--Rebecca thought to
herself, in all the woes of repentance--and I might have
been my lady!  I might have led that old man whither I
would.  I might have thanked Mrs. Bute for her
patronage, and Mr. Pitt for his insufferable condescension.  I
would have had the town-house newly furnished and
decorated.  I would have had the handsomest carriage in
London, and a box at the opera; and I would have
been presented next season.  All this might have been;
and now--now all was doubt and mystery.

But Rebecca was a young lady of too much resolution
and energy of character to permit herself much useless
and unseemly sorrow for the irrevocable past; so, having
devoted only the proper portion of regret to it, she wisely
turned her whole attention towards the future, which
was now vastly more important to her.  And she
surveyed her position, and its hopes, doubts, and chances.

In the first place, she was MARRIED--that was a great
fact.  Sir Pitt knew it.  She was not so much surprised into
the avowal, as induced to make it by a sudden calculation.
It must have come some day: and why not now
as at a later period? He who would have married her
himself must at least be silent with regard to her marriage.
How Miss Crawley would bear the news--was the great
question.  Misgivings Rebecca had; but she remembered
all Miss Crawley had said; the old lady's avowed
contempt for birth; her daring liberal opinions; her
general romantic propensities; her almost doting attachment
to her nephew, and her repeatedly expressed fondness for
Rebecca herself.  She is so fond of him, Rebecca thought,
that she will forgive him anything: she is so used to me
that I don't think she could be comfortable without
me: when the eclaircissement comes there will be a
scene, and hysterics, and a great quarrel, and then a
great reconciliation.  At all events, what use was there
in delaying? the die was thrown, and now or to-morrow
the issue must be the same.  And so, resolved that Miss
Crawley should have the news, the young person
debated in her mind as to the best means of conveying it
to her; and whether she should face the storm that must
come, or fly and avoid it until its first fury was blown
over.  In this state of meditation she wrote the following
letter:

Dearest Friend,

The great crisis which we have debated
about so often is COME.  Half of my secret is known, and
I have thought and thought, until I am quite sure that
now is the time to reveal THE WHOLE OF THE MYSTERY.  Sir
Pitt came to me this morning, and made--what do you
think?--A DECLARATION IN FORM.  Think of that!  Poor
little me.  I might have been Lady Crawley.  How pleased
Mrs. Bute would have been: and ma tante if I had taken
precedence of her! I might have been somebody's
mamma, instead of--O, I tremble, I tremble, when I
think how soon we must tell all!

Sir Pitt knows I am married, and not knowing to
whom, is not very much displeased as yet.  Ma tante is
ACTUALLY ANGRY that I should have refused him.  But she
is all kindness and graciousness.  She condescends to say
I would have made him a good wife; and vows that
she will be a mother to your little Rebecca.  She will be
shaken when she first hears the news.  But need we fear
anything beyond a momentary anger?  I think not: I AM
SURE not.  She dotes upon you so (you naughty, good-for-
nothing man), that she would pardon you ANYTHING:
and, indeed, I believe, the next place in her heart is
mine: and that she would be miserable without me.
Dearest! something TELLS ME we shall conquer.  You shall
leave that odious regiment: quit gaming, racing, and BE
A GOOD BOY; and we shall all live in Park Lane, and ma
tante shall leave us all her money.

I shall try and walk to-morrow at 3 in the usual place.
If Miss B. accompanies me, you must come to dinner,
and bring an answer, and put it in the third volume of
Porteus's Sermons.  But, at all events, come to your own

R.

To Miss Eliza Styles,
At Mr. Barnet's, Saddler, Knightsbridge.

And I trust there is no reader of this little story who
has not discernment enough to perceive that the Miss
Eliza Styles (an old schoolfellow, Rebecca said, with
whom she had resumed an active correspondence of late,
and who used to fetch these letters from the saddler's),
wore brass spurs, and large curling mustachios, and was
indeed no other than Captain Rawdon Crawley.




CHAPTER XVI



The Letter on the Pincushion

How they were married is not of the slightest
consequence to anybody.  What is to hinder a Captain who
is a major, and a young lady who is of age, from purchasing
a licence, and uniting themselves at any church in this
town?  Who needs to be told, that if a woman has a will
she will assuredly find a way?--My belief is that one
day, when Miss Sharp had gone to pass the forenoon
with her dear friend Miss Amelia Sedley in Russell
Square, a lady very like her might have been seen
entering a church in the City, in company with a gentleman
with dyed mustachios, who, after a quarter of an hour's
interval, escorted her back to the hackney-coach in
waiting, and that this was a quiet bridal party.

And who on earth, after the daily experience we have,
can question the probability of a gentleman marrying
anybody? How many of the wise and learned have
married their cooks?  Did not Lord Eldon himself, the
most prudent of men, make a runaway match? Were not
Achilles and Ajax both in love with their servant maids?
And are we to expect a heavy dragoon with strong
desires and small brains, who had never controlled a
passion in his life, to become prudent all of a sudden,
and to refuse to pay any price for an indulgence to
which he had a mind?  If people only made prudent
marriages, what a stop to population there would be!

It seems to me, for my part, that Mr. Rawdon's marriage
was one of the honestest actions which we shall have to
record in any portion of that gentleman's biography which
has to do with the present history.  No one will say it is
unmanly to be captivated by a woman, or, being
captivated, to marry her; and the admiration, the delight, the
passion, the wonder, the unbounded confidence, and frantic adoration with which, by degrees, this big warrior got
to regard the little Rebecca, were feelings which the ladies
at least will pronounce were not altogether discreditable
to him.  When she sang, every note thrilled in his dull
soul, and tingled through his huge frame.  When she spoke,
he brought all the force of his brains to listen and wonder.
If she was jocular, he used to revolve her jokes in his
mind, and explode over them half an hour afterwards in
the street, to the surprise of the groom in the tilbury by
his side, or the comrade riding with him in Rotten Row.
Her words were oracles to him, her smallest actions
marked by an infallible grace and wisdom.  "How she
sings,--how she paints," thought he.  "How she rode that
kicking mare at Queen's Crawley!"  And he would say to
her in confidential moments, "By Jove, Beck, you're fit
to be Commander-in-Chief, or Archbishop of Canterbury,
by Jove."  Is his case a rare one? and don't we see every
day in the world many an honest Hercules at the
apron-strings of Omphale, and great whiskered Samsons
prostrate in Delilah's lap?

When, then, Becky told him that the great crisis was
near, and the time for action had arrived, Rawdon
expressed himself as ready to act under her orders, as he
would be to charge with his troop at the command of his
colonel.  There was no need for him to put his letter into
the third volume of Porteus.  Rebecca easily found a
means to get rid of Briggs, her companion, and met her
faithful friend in "the usual place" on the next day.  She
had thought over matters at night, and communicated to
Rawdon the result of her determinations.  He agreed, of
course, to everything; was quite sure that it was all
right: that what she proposed was best; that Miss Crawley
would infallibly relent, or "come round," as he said, after
a time.  Had Rebecca's resolutions been entirely different,
he would have followed them as implicitly.  "You have
head enough for both of us, Beck," said he.  "You're sure
to get us out of the scrape.  I never saw your equal, and
I've met with some clippers in my time too." And with
this simple confession of faith, the love-stricken dragoon
left her to execute his part of the project which she had
formed for the pair.

It consisted simply in the hiring of quiet lodgings at
Brompton, or in the neighbourhood of the barracks, for
Captain and Mrs. Crawley.  For Rebecca had determined,
and very prudently, we think, to fly.  Rawdon was
only too happy at her resolve; he had been entreating
her to take this measure any time for weeks past.  He
pranced off to engage the lodgings with all the impetuosity
of love.  He agreed to pay two guineas a week so readily,
that the landlady regretted she had asked him so little.
He ordered in a piano, and half a nursery-house full of
flowers: and a heap of good things.  As for shawls, kid
gloves, silk stockings, gold French watches, bracelets and
perfumery, he sent them in with the profusion of blind
love and unbounded credit.  And having relieved his mind
by this outpouring of generosity, he went and dined
nervously at the club, waiting until the great moment of his
life should come.

  The occurrences of the previous day; the admirable
conduct of Rebecca in refusing an offer so advantageous
to her, the secret unhappiness preying upon her, the
sweetness and silence with which she bore her affliction,
made Miss Crawley much more tender than usual.  An
event of this nature, a marriage, or a refusal, or a
proposal, thrills through a whole household of women, and
sets all their hysterical sympathies at work.  As an
observer of human nature, I regularly frequent St. George's,
Hanover Square, during the genteel marriage season; and
though I have never seen the bridegroom's male friends
give way to tears, or the beadles and officiating clergy
any way affected, yet it is not at all uncommon to see
women who are not in the least concerned in the
operations going on--old ladies who are long past marrying,
stout middle-aged females with plenty of sons and daughters,
let alone pretty young creatures in pink bonnets, who
are on their promotion, and may naturally take an
interest in the ceremony--I say it is quite common to see
the women present piping, sobbing, sniffling; hiding their
little faces in their little useless pocket-handkerchiefs;
and heaving, old and young, with emotion.  When my
friend, the fashionable John Pimlico, married the lovely
Lady Belgravia Green Parker, the excitement was so
general that even the little snuffy old pew-opener who let me
into the seat was in tears.  And wherefore? I inquired of
my own soul: she was not going to be married.

Miss Crawley and Briggs in a word, after the affair of
Sir Pitt, indulged in the utmost luxury of sentiment, and
Rebecca became an object of the most tender interest to
them.  In her absence Miss Crawley solaced herself with
the most sentimental of the novels in her library.  Little
Sharp, with her secret griefs, was the heroine of the day.

That night Rebecca sang more sweetly and talked more
pleasantly than she had ever been heard to do in Park
Lane.  She twined herself round the heart of Miss Crawley.
She spoke lightly and laughingly of Sir Pitt's proposal,
ridiculed it as the foolish fancy of an old man; and her
eyes filled with tears, and Briggs's heart with unutterable
pangs of defeat, as she said she desired no other lot than
to remain for ever with her dear benefactress.  "My dear
little creature," the old lady said, "I don't intend to let
you stir for years, that you may depend upon it.  As for
going back to that odious brother of mine after what
has passed, it is out of the question.  Here you stay with me
and Briggs.  Briggs wants to go to see her relations very
often.  Briggs, you may go when you like.  But as for you,
my dear, you must stay and take care of the old woman."

If Rawdon Crawley had been then and there present,
instead of being at the club nervously drinking claret, the
pair might have gone down on their knees before the old
spinster, avowed all, and been forgiven in a twinkling.
But that good chance was denied to the young couple,
doubtless in order that this story might be written, in
which numbers of their wonderful adventures are narrated
--adventures which could never have occurred to them
if they had been housed and sheltered under the
comfortable uninteresting forgiveness of Miss Crawley.

Under Mrs. Firkin's orders, in the Park Lane establishment,
was a young woman from Hampshire, whose business it was,
among other duties, to knock at Miss Sharp's door with
that jug of hot water which Firkin would rather have
perished than have presented to the intruder.  This
girl, bred on the family estate, had a brother in Captain
Crawley's troop, and if the truth were known, I daresay
it would come out that she was aware of certain arrangements,
which have a great deal to do with this history.
At any rate she purchased a yellow shawl, a pair of green
boots, and a light blue hat with a red feather with three
guineas which Rebecca gave her, and as little Sharp was
by no means too liberal with her money, no doubt it
was for services rendered that Betty Martin was so bribed.

On the second day after Sir Pitt Crawley's offer to
Miss Sharp, the sun rose as usual, and at the usual hour
Betty Martin, the upstairs maid, knocked at the door of
the governess's bedchamber.

No answer was returned, and she knocked again.  Silence
was still uninterrupted; and Betty, with the hot water,
opened the door and entered the chamber.

The little white dimity bed was as smooth and trim as
on the day previous, when Betty's own hands had helped
to make it.  Two little trunks were corded in one end of
the room; and on the table before the window--on the
pincushionthe great fat pincushion lined with pink
inside, and twilled like a lady's nightcap--lay a letter.  It
had been reposing there probably all night.

Betty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were
afraid to awake it--looked at it, and round the room,
with an air of great wonder and satisfaction; took up the
letter, and grinned intensely as she turned it round and
over, and finally carried it into Miss Briggs's room
below.

How could Betty tell that the letter was for Miss Briggs,
I should like to know?  All the schooling Betty had had
was at Mrs. Bute Crawley's Sunday school, and she could
no more read writing than Hebrew.

"La, Miss Briggs," the girl exclaimed, "O, Miss,
something must have happened--there's nobody in Miss
Sharp's room; the bed ain't been slep in, and she've run
away, and left this letter for you, Miss."

"WHAT!" cries Briggs, dropping her comb, the thin wisp
of faded hair falling over her shoulders; "an elopement!
Miss Sharp a fugitive!  What, what is this?" and she eagerly
broke the neat seal, and, as they say, "devoured the
contents" of the letter addressed to her.

Dear Miss Briggs [the refugee wrote], the kindest
heart in the world, as yours is, will pity and sympathise
with me and excuse me.  With tears, and prayers, and
blessings, I leave the home where the poor orphan has
ever met with kindness and affection.  Claims even
superior to those of my benefactress call me hence.  I go to
my duty--to my HUSBAND.  Yes, I am married.  My
husband COMMANDS me to seek the HUMBLE HOME which
we call ours.  Dearest Miss Briggs, break the news as your
delicate sympathy will know how to do it--to my dear,
my beloved friend and benefactress.  Tell her, ere I went,
I shed tears on her dear pillow--that pillow that I have
so often soothed in sickness--that I long AGAIN to watch
--Oh, with what joy shall I return to dear Park Lane!
How I tremble for the answer which is to SEAL MY FATE!
When Sir Pitt deigned to offer me his hand, an honour
of which my beloved Miss Crawley said I was DESERVING
(my blessings go with her for judging the poor orphan
worthy to be HER SISTER!) I told Sir Pitt that I was already
A WIFE.  Even he forgave me.  But my courage failed me,
when I should have told him all--that I could not be
his wife, for I WAS HIS DAUGHTER!  I am wedded to the best
and most generous of men--Miss Crawley's Rawdon is
MY Rawdon.  At his COMMAND I open my lips, and
follow him to our humble home, as I would THROUGH THE
WORLD.  O, my excellent and kind friend, intercede with
my Rawdon's beloved aunt for him and the poor girl to
whom all HIS NOBLE RACE have shown such UNPARALLELED
AFFECTION.  Ask Miss Crawley to receive HER CHILDREN.  I
can say no more, but blessings, blessings on all in the
dear house I leave, prays

Your affectionate and GRATEFUL
Rebecca Crawley.
Midnight.

Just as Briggs had finished reading this affecting and
interesting document, which reinstated her in her position
as first confidante of Miss Crawley, Mrs. Firkin entered
the room.  "Here's Mrs. Bute Crawley just arrived by
the mail from Hampshire, and wants some tea; will you
come down and make breakfast, Miss?"

And to the surprise of Firkin, clasping her dressing-gown
around her, the wisp of hair floating dishevelled
behind her, the little curl-papers still sticking in bunches
round her forehead, Briggs sailed down to Mrs. Bute with
the letter in her hand containing the wonderful news.

"Oh, Mrs. Firkin," gasped Betty, "sech a business.  Miss
Sharp have a gone and run away with the Capting, and
they're off to Gretney Green!"  We would devote a chapter
to describe the emotions of Mrs. Firkin, did not the
passions of her mistresses occupy our genteeler muse.

When Mrs. Bute Crawley, numbed with midnight travelling,
and warming herself at the newly crackling parlour
fire, heard from Miss Briggs the intelligence of the
clandestine marriage, she declared it was quite providential
that she should have arrived at such a time to assist poor
dear Miss Crawley in supporting the shock--that Rebecca
was an artful little hussy of whom she had always
had her suspicions; and that as for Rawdon Crawley, she
never could account for his aunt's infatuation regarding
him, and had long considered him a profligate, lost,
and abandoned being.  And this awful conduct, Mrs. Bute
said, will have at least this good effect, it will open poor
dear Miss Crawley's eyes to the real character of this
wicked man.  Then Mrs. Bute had a comfortable hot toast
and tea; and as there was a vacant room in the house
now, there was no need for her to remain at the Gloster
Coffee House where the Portsmouth mail had set her
down, and whence she ordered Mr. Bowls's aide-de-camp
the footman to bring away her trunks.

Miss Crawley, be it known, did not leave her room until
near noon--taking chocolate in bed in the morning, while
Becky Sharp read the Morning Post to her, or otherwise
amusing herself or dawdling.  The conspirators below
agreed that they would spare the dear lady's feelings
until she appeared in her drawing-room: meanwhile it was
announced to her that Mrs. Bute Crawley had come up
from Hampshire by the mail, was staying at the Gloster,
sent her love to Miss Crawley, and asked for breakfast
with Miss Briggs.  The arrival of Mrs. Bute, which would
not have caused any extreme delight at another period,
was hailed with pleasure now; Miss Crawley being pleased
at the notion of a gossip with her sister-in-law regarding
the late Lady Crawley, the funeral arrangements pending,
and Sir Pitt's abrupt proposal to Rebecca.

It was not until the old lady was fairly ensconced in
her usual arm-chair in the drawing-room, and the
preliminary embraces and inquiries had taken place between
the ladies, that the conspirators thought it advisable to
submit her to the operation.  Who has not admired the
artifices and delicate approaches with which women
"prepare" their friends for bad news?  Miss Crawley's two
friends made such an apparatus of mystery before they
broke the intelligence to her, that they worked her up to
the necessary degree of doubt and alarm.

"And she refused Sir Pitt, my dear, dear Miss Crawley,
prepare yourself for it," Mrs. Bute said, "because--
because she couldn't help herself."

"Of course there was a reason," Miss Crawley answered.
"She liked somebody else.  I told Briggs so yesterday."

"LIKES somebody else!" Briggs gasped.  "O my dear
friend, she is married already."

"Married already," Mrs. Bute chimed in; and both sate
with clasped hands looking from each other at their
victim.

"Send her to me, the instant she comes in.  The little
sly wretch: how dared she not tell me?" cried out Miss
Crawley.

"She won't come in soon.  Prepare yourself, dear friend
--she's gone out for a long time--she's--she's gone
altogether."

"Gracious goodness, and who's to make my chocolate?
Send for her and have her back; I desire that she come
back," the old lady said.

"She decamped last night, Ma'am," cried Mrs. Bute.

"She left a letter for me," Briggs exclaimed.  "She's
married to--"

"Prepare her, for heaven's sake.  Don't torture her, my
dear Miss Briggs."

"She's married to whom?" cries the spinster in a
nervous fury.

"To--to a relation of--"

"She refused Sir Pitt," cried the victim.  "Speak at once.
Don't drive me mad."

"O Ma'am--prepare her, Miss Briggs--she's married
to Rawdon Crawley."

"Rawdon married Rebecca--governess--nobod--
Get out of my house, you fool, you idiot--you stupid old
Briggs how dare you? You're in the plot--you made
him marry, thinking that I'd leave my money from him--
you did, Martha," the poor old lady screamed in hysteric
sentences.

"I, Ma'am, ask a member of this family to marry a
drawing-master's daughter?"

"Her mother was a Montmorency," cried out the old
lady, pulling at the bell with all her might.

"Her mother was an opera girl, and she has been on
the stage or worse herself," said Mrs. Bute.

Miss Crawley gave a final scream, and fell back in a
faint.  They were forced to take her back to the room
which she had just quitted.  One fit of hysterics succeeded
another.  The doctor was sent for--the apothecary arrived.
Mrs. Bute took up the post of nurse by her bedside.  "Her
relations ought to be round about her," that amiable
woman said.

She had scarcely been carried up to her room, when a
new person arrived to whom it was also necessary to break
the news.  This was Sir Pitt.  "Where's Becky?" he said,
coming in.  "Where's her traps? She's coming with me to
Queen's Crawley."

"Have you not heard the astonishing intelligence
regarding her surreptitious union?" Briggs asked.

"What's that to me?" Sir Pitt asked.  "I know she's
married.  That makes no odds.  Tell her to come down at
once, and not keep me."

"Are you not aware, sir," Miss Briggs asked, "that she
has left our roof, to the dismay of Miss Crawley, who is
nearly killed by the intelligence of Captain Rawdon's union
with her?"

When Sir Pitt Crawley heard that Rebecca was married
to his son, he broke out into a fury of language, which it
would do no good to repeat in this place, as indeed it
sent poor Briggs shuddering out of the room; and with her
we will shut the door upon the figure of the frenzied old
man, wild with hatred and insane with baffled desire.

One day after he went to Queen's Crawley, he burst
like a madman into the room she had used when there
--dashed open her boxes with his foot, and flung about
her papers, clothes, and other relics.  Miss Horrocks, the
butler's daughter, took some of them.  The children
dressed themselves and acted plays in the others.  It was
but a few days after the poor mother had gone to her
lonely burying-place; and was laid, unwept and
disregarded, in a vault full of strangers.

"Suppose the old lady doesn't come to," Rawdon said to
his little wife, as they sate together in the snug little
Brompton lodgings.  She had been trying the new piano
all the morning.  The new gloves fitted her to a nicety; the
new shawls became her wonderfully; the new rings
glittered on her little hands, and the new watch ticked at her
waist; "suppose she don't come round, eh, Becky?"

"I'LL make your fortune," she said; and Delilah patted
Samson's cheek.

"You can do anything," he said, kissing the little hand.
"By Jove you can; and we'll drive down to the Star and
Garter, and dine, by Jove."



CHAPTER XVII

How Captain Dobbin Bought a Piano

If there is any exhibition in all Vanity Fair which Satire
and Sentiment can visit arm in arm together; where you
light on the strangest contrasts laughable and tearful:
where you may be gentle and pathetic, or savage and
cynical with perfect propriety: it is at one of those public
assemblies, a crowd of which are advertised every day in
the last page of the Times newspaper, and over which
the late Mr. George Robins used to preside with so much
dignity.  There are very few London people, as I fancy,
who have not attended at these meetings, and all with a
taste for moralizing must have thought, with a sensation
and interest not a little startling and queer, of the day
when their turn shall come too, and Mr. Hammerdown
will sell by the orders of Diogenes' assignees, or will be
instructed by the executors, to offer to public competition,
the library, furniture, plate, wardrobe, and choice cellar
of wines of Epicurus deceased.

Even with the most selfish disposition, the Vanity Fairian,
as he witnesses this sordid part of the obsequies of a
departed friend, can't but feel some sympathies and regret.
My Lord Dives's remains are in the family vault: the
statuaries are cutting an inscription veraciously
commemorating his virtues, and the sorrows of his heir,
who is disposing of his goods.  What guest at Dives's table
can pass the familiar house without a sigh? .--the familiar
house of which the lights used to shine so cheerfully at
seven o'clock, of which the hall-doors opened so readily,
of which the obsequious servants, as you passed up the
comfortable stair, sounded your name from landing to
landing, until it reached the apartment where jolly old
Dives welcomed his friends!  What a number of them he
had; and what a noble way of entertaining them.  How
witty people used to be here who were morose when they
got out of the door; and how courteous and friendly men
who slandered and hated each other everywhere else!  He
was pompous, but with such a cook what would one not
swallow? he was rather dull, perhaps, but would not
such wine make any conversation pleasant?  We must get
some of his Burgundy at any price, the mourners cry at
his club.  "I got this box at old Dives's sale," Pincher says,
handing it round, "one of Louis XV's mistresses--pretty
thing, is it not?--sweet miniature," and they talk of the
way in which young Dives is dissipating his fortune.

How changed the house is, though!  The front is patched
over with bills, setting forth the particulars of the furniture
in staring capitals.  They have hung a shred of carpet out
of an upstairs window--a half dozen of porters are lounging
on the dirty steps--the hall swarms with dingy guests
of oriental countenance, who thrust printed cards into
your hand, and offer to bid.  Old women and amateurs
have invaded the upper apartments, pinching the bed-
curtains, poking into the feathers, shampooing the
mattresses, and clapping the wardrobe drawers to and fro.
Enterprising young housekeepers are measuring the
looking-glasses and hangings to see if they will suit the new
menage (Snob will brag for years that he has purchased
this or that at Dives's sale), and Mr. Hammerdown is
sitting on the great mahogany dining-tables, in the dining-
room below, waving the ivory hammer, and employing all
the artifices of eloquence, enthusiasm, entreaty, reason,
despair; shouting to his people; satirizing Mr. Davids for
his sluggishness; inspiriting Mr. Moss into action;
imploring, commanding, bellowing, until down comes the
hammer like fate, and we pass to the next lot.  O Dives,
who would ever have thought, as we sat round the broad
table sparkling with plate and spotless linen, to have seen
such a dish at the head of it as that roaring auctioneer?

It was rather late in the sale.  The excellent drawing-
room furniture by the best makers; the rare and famous
wines selected, regardless of cost, and with the well-known
taste of the purchaser; the rich and complete set of family
plate had been sold on the previous days.  Certain of the
best wines (which all had a great character among
amateurs in the neighbourhood) had been purchased for his
master, who knew them very well, by the butler of our
friend John Osborne, Esquire, of Russell Square.  A small
portion of the most useful articles of the plate had been
bought by some young stockbrokers from the City.  And
now the public being invited to the purchase of minor
objects, it happened that the orator on the table was
expatiating on the merits of a picture, which he sought
to recommend to his audience: it was by no means so
select or numerous a company as had attended the
previous days of the auction.

"No. 369," roared Mr. Hammerdown.  "Portrait of a
gentleman on an elephant.  Who'll bid for the gentleman
on the elephant?  Lift up the picture, Blowman, and let
the company examine this lot." A long, pale, military-
looking gentleman, seated demurely at the mahogany
table, could not help grinning as this valuable lot was
shown by Mr. Blowman.  "Turn the elephant to the
Captain, Blowman.  What shall we say, sir, for the elephant?"
but the Captain, blushing in a very hurried and discomfited
manner, turned away his head.

"Shall we say twenty guineas for this work of art?--
fifteen, five, name your own price.  The gentleman
without the elephant is worth five pound."

"I wonder it ain't come down with him," said a
professional wag, "he's anyhow a precious big one"; at
which (for the elephant-rider was represented as of a very
stout figure) there was a general giggle in the room.

"Don't be trying to deprecate the value of the lot, Mr.
Moss," Mr. Hammerdown said; "let the company
examine it as a work of art--the attitude of the gallant
animal quite according to natur'; the gentleman in a
nankeen jacket, his gun in his hand, is going to the
chase; in the distance a banyhann tree and a pagody,
most likely resemblances of some interesting spot in our
famous Eastern possessions.  How much for this lot?
Come, gentlemen, don't keep me here all day."

Some one bid five shillings, at which the military
gentleman looked towards the quarter from which this
splendid offer had come, and there saw another officer
with a young lady on his arm, who both appeared to be
highly amused with the scene, and to whom, finally, this
lot was knocked down for half a guinea.  He at the
table looked more surprised and discomposed than ever
when he spied this pair, and his head sank into his
military collar, and he turned his back upon them, so as
to avoid them altogether.

Of all the other articles which Mr. Hammerdown had
the honour to offer for public competition that day it is
not our purpose to make mention, save of one only, a
little square piano, which came down from the upper
regions of the house (the state grand piano having
been disposed of previously); this the young lady tried
with a rapid and skilful hand (making the officer blush
and start again), and for it, when its turn came, her
agent began to bid.

But there was an opposition here.  The Hebrew aide-de-
camp in the service of the officer at the table bid against
the Hebrew gentleman employed by the elephant
purchasers, and a brisk battle ensued over this little piano,
the combatants being greatly encouraged by Mr.
Hammerdown.

At last, when the competition had been prolonged for
some time, the elephant captain and lady desisted from
the race; and the hammer coming down, the auctioneer
said:--"Mr. Lewis, twenty-five," and Mr. Lewis's chief
thus became the proprietor of the little square piano.
Having effected the purchase, he sate up as if he was
greatly relieved, and the unsuccessful competitors
catching a glimpse of him at this moment, the lady
said to her friend,

"Why, Rawdon, it's Captain Dobbin."

I suppose Becky was discontented with the new piano
her husband had hired for her, or perhaps the
proprietors of that instrument had fetched it away,
declining farther credit, or perhaps she had a particular
attachment for the one which she had just tried to purchase,
recollecting it in old days, when she used to play upon
it, in the little sitting-room of our dear Amelia Sedley.

The sale was at the old house in Russell Square, where
we passed some evenings together at the beginning of
this story.  Good old John Sedley was a ruined man.  His
name had been proclaimed as a defaulter on the Stock
Exchange, and his bankruptcy and commercial extermination
had followed.  Mr. Osborne's butler came to buy some of the
famous port wine to transfer to the cellars over the way.
As for one dozen well-manufactured silver spoons and
forks at per oz., and one dozen dessert ditto ditto,
there were three young stockbrokers (Messrs. Dale,
Spiggot, and Dale, of Threadneedle Street, indeed),
who, having had dealings with the old man, and
kindnesses from him in days when he was kind to
everybody with whom he dealt, sent this little spar out
of the wreck with their love to good Mrs. Sedley; and with
respect to the piano, as it had been Amelia's, and as she
might miss it and want one now, and as Captain William
Dobbin could no more play upon it than he could dance
on the tight rope, it is probable that he did not purchase
the instrument for his own use.

In a word, it arrived that evening at a wonderful small
cottage in a street leading from the Fulham Road--one
of those streets which have the finest romantic names--
(this was called St. Adelaide Villas, Anna-Maria Road
West), where the houses look like baby-houses; where
the people, looking out of the first-floor windows, must
infallibly, as you think, sit with their feet in the parlours;
where the shrubs in the little gardens in front bloom with
a perennial display of little children's pinafores, little red
socks, caps, &c. (polyandria polygynia); whence you
hear the sound of jingling spinets and women singing;
where little porter pots hang on the railings sunning
themselves; whither of evenings you see City clerks
padding wearily: here it was that Mr. Clapp, the clerk of
Mr. Sedley, had his domicile, and in this asylum the good
old gentleman hid his head with his wife and daughter
when the crash came.

Jos Sedley had acted as a man of his disposition
would, when the announcement of the family misfortune
reached him.  He did not come to London, but he wrote
to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatever
money was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old
parents had no present poverty to fear.  This done, Jos
went on at the boarding-house at Cheltenham pretty
much as before.  He drove his curricle; he drank his
claret; he played his rubber; he told his Indian stories,
and the Irish widow consoled and flattered him as usual.
His present of money, needful as it was, made little
impression on his parents; and I have heard Amelia say
that the first day on which she saw her father lift up his
head after the failure was on the receipt of the packet
of forks and spoons with the young stockbrokers' love,
over which he burst out crying like a child, being greatly
more affected than even his wife, to whom the present
was addressed.  Edward Dale, the junior of the house,
who purchased the spoons for the firm, was, in fact, very
sweet upon Amelia, and offered for her in spite of all.
He married Miss Louisa Cutts (daughter of Higham and
Cutts, the eminent cornfactors) with a handsome fortune
in 1820; and is now living in splendour, and with a
numerous family, at his elegant villa, Muswell Hill.  But
we must not let the recollections of this good fellow
cause us to diverge from the principal history.

I hope the reader has much too good an opinion of
Captain and Mrs. Crawley to suppose that they ever
would have dreamed of paying a visit to so remote a
district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the family whom
they proposed to honour with a visit were not merely
out of fashion, but out of money, and could be
serviceable to them in no possible manner.  Rebecca was
entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortable old house
where she had met with no small kindness, ransacked by
brokers and bargainers, and its quiet family treasures
given up to public desecration and plunder.  A month
after her flight, she had bethought her of Amelia, and
Rawdon, with a horse-laugh, had expressed a perfect
willingness to see young George Osborne again.  "He's a
very agreeable acquaintance, Beck," the wag added.  "I'd
like to sell him another horse, Beck.  I'd like to play a
few more games at billiards with him.  He'd be what I
call useful just now, Mrs. C.--ha, ha!" by which sort of
speech it is not to be supposed that Rawdon Crawley had
a deliberate desire to cheat Mr. Osborne at play, but only
wished to take that fair advantage of him which almost
every sporting gentleman in Vanity Fair considers to be
his due from his neighbour.

The old aunt was long in "coming-to." A month had
elapsed.  Rawdon was denied the door by Mr. Bowls; his
servants could not get a lodgment in the house at Park
Lane; his letters were sent back unopened.  Miss Crawley
never stirred out--she was unwell--and Mrs. Bute
remained still and never left her.  Crawley and his wife both
of them augured evil from the continued presence of
Mrs. Bute.

"Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always
bringing us together at Queen's Crawley," Rawdon said.

"What an artful little woman!" ejaculated Rebecca.

"Well, I don't regret it, if you don't," the Captain
cried, still in an amorous rapture with his wife, who
rewarded him with a kiss by way of reply, and was
indeed not a little gratified by the generous confidence
of her husband.

"If he had but a little more brains," she thought to
herself, "I might make something of him"; but she never
let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened
with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the
stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the
greatest interest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse
had come down, and Bob Martingale, who had been
taken up in a gambling-house, and Tom Cinqbars, who
was going to ride the steeplechase.  When he came home
she was alert and happy: when he went out she pressed
him to go: when he stayed at home, she played and
sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his
dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in
comfort.  The best of women (I have heard my grandmother
say) are hypocrites.  We don't know how much
they hide from us: how watchful they are when they
seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank
smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or
elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes,
but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue.
Who has not seen a woman hide the dulness of a stupid
husband, or coax the fury of a savage one?  We accept
this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we
call this pretty treachery truth.  A good housewife is of
necessity a humbug; and Cornelia's husband was
hoodwinked, as Potiphar was--only in a different way.

By these attentions, that veteran rake, Rawdon Crawley,
found himself converted into a very happy and submissive
married man.  His former haunts knew him not.
They asked about him once or twice at his clubs, but did
not miss him much: in those booths of Vanity Fair people
seldom do miss each other.  His secluded wife ever smiling
and cheerful, his little comfortable lodgings, snug
meals, and homely evenings, had all the charms of novelty
and secrecy.  The marriage was not yet declared to the
world, or published in the Morning Post.  All his creditors
would have come rushing on him in a body, had they
known that he was united to a woman without fortune.
"My relations won't cry fie upon me," Becky said, with
rather a bitter laugh; and she was quite contented to wait
until the old aunt should be reconciled, before she claimed
her place in society.  So she lived at Brompton, and
meanwhile saw no one, or only those few of her husband's
male companions who were admitted into her little
dining-room.  These were all charmed with her.  The little
dinners, the laughing and chatting, the music afterwards,
delighted all who participated in these enjoyments.  Major
Martingale never thought about asking to
see the marriage licence, Captain Cinqbars was perfectly
enchanted with her skill in making punch.  And young
Lieutenant Spatterdash (who was fond of piquet, and
whom Crawley would often invite) was evidently and
quickly smitten by Mrs. Crawley; but her own
circumspection and modesty never forsook her for a
moment, and Crawley's reputation as a fire-eating and
jealous warrior was a further and complete defence to
his little wife.

There are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion
in this city, who never have entered a lady's drawing-
room; so that though Rawdon Crawley's marriage might
be talked about in his county, where, of course, Mrs.
Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or
not heeded, or not talked about at all.  He lived comfortably
on credit.  He had a large capital of debts, which
laid out judiciously, will carry a man along for many
years, and on which certain men about town contrive
to live a hundred times better than even men with ready
money can do.  Indeed who is there that walks London
streets, but can point out a half-dozen of men riding
by him splendidly, while he is on foot, courted by fashion,
bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying
themselves nothing, and living on who knows what?  We
see Jack Thriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his
brougham down Pall Mall: we eat his dinners served on
his miraculous plate.  "How did this begin," we say, "or
where will it end?" "My dear fellow," I heard Jack once
say, "I owe money in every capital in Europe."  The end
must come some day, but in the meantime Jack thrives
as much as ever; people are glad enough to shake him by
the hand, ignore the little dark stories that are whispered
every now and then against him, and pronounce him a
good-natured, jovial, reckless fellow.

Truth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a
gentleman of this order.  Everything was plentiful in his
house but ready money, of which their menage pretty
early felt the want; and reading the Gazette one day,
and coming upon the announcement of "Lieutenant G.
Osborne to be Captain by purchase, vice Smith, who
exchanges," Rawdon uttered that sentiment regarding
Amelia's lover, which ended in the visit to Russell Square.

When Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate
with Captain Dobbin at the sale, and to know particulars
of the catastrophe which had befallen Rebecca's
old acquaintances, the Captain had vanished; and such
information as they got was from a stray porter or broker
at the auction.

"Look at them with their hooked beaks," Becky said,
getting into the buggy, her picture under her arm, in
great glee.  "They're like vultures after a battle."

"Don't know.  Never was in action, my dear.  Ask
Martingale; he was in Spain, aide-de-camp to General
Blazes."

"He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley," Rebecca
said; "I'm really sorry he's gone wrong."

"O stockbrokers--bankrupts--used to it, you know,"
Rawdon replied, cutting a fly off the horse's ear.

"I wish we could have afforded some of the plate,
Rawdon," the wife continued sentimentally.  "Five-and-
twenty guineas was monstrously dear for that little piano.
We chose it at Broadwood's for Amelia, when she came
from school.  It only cost five-and-thirty then."

"What-d'-ye-call'em--'Osborne,' will cry off now, I
suppose, since the family is smashed.  How cut up your
pretty little friend will be; hey, Becky?"

"I daresay she'll recover it," Becky said with a smile
--and they drove on and talked about something else.




CHAPTER XVIII


Who Played on the Piano Captain Dobbin Bought

Our surprised story now finds itself for a moment
among very famous events and personages, and
hanging on to the skirts of history.  When the eagles
of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were
flying from Provence, where they had perched after a brief
sojourn in Elba, and from steeple to steeple until they
reached the towers of Notre Dame, I wonder whether the
Imperial birds had any eye for a little corner of the parish
of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have thought so quiet,
that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty wings
would pass unobserved there?

"Napoleon has landed at Cannes."  Such news might
create a panic at Vienna, and cause Russia to drop his
cards, and take Prussia into a corner, and Talleyrand
and Metternich to wag their heads together, while Prince
Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of Londonderry,
were puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a young
lady in Russell Square, before whose door the watchman
sang the hours when she was asleep: who, if she
strolled in the square, was guarded there by the
railings and the beadle:  who, if she walked ever so short
a distance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row, was
followed by Black Sambo with an enormous cane:  who
was always cared for, dressed, put to bed, and watched
over by ever so many guardian angels, with and without
wages?  Bon Dieu, I say, is it not hard that the fateful
rush of the great Imperial struggle can't take place without
affecting a poor little harmless girl of eighteen, who
is occupied in billing and cooing, or working muslin
collars in Russell Square?  You too, kindly, homely flower!
--is the great roaring war tempest coming to sweep you
down, here, although cowering under the shelter of
Holborn?  Yes; Napoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor
little Emmy Sedley's happiness forms, somehow, part of it.

In the first place, her father's fortune was swept down
with that fatal news.  All his speculations had of late gone
wrong with the luckless old gentleman.  Ventures had
failed; merchants had broken; funds had risen when he
calculated they would fall.  What need to particularize?
If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick
and easy ruin is.  Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel.
Everything seemed to go on as usual in the quiet,
opulent house; the good-natured mistress pursuing, quite
unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easy
avocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender
thought, and quite regardless of all the world besides,
when that final crash came, under which the worthy
family fell.

One night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party;
the Osbornes had given one, and she must not be
behindhand; John Sedley, who had come home very late from
the City, sate silent at the chimney side, while his wife
was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room
ailing and low-spirited.  "She's not happy," the mother
went on.  "George Osborne neglects her.  I've no patience
with the airs of those people.  The girls have not been in
the house these three weeks; and George has been twice
in town without coming.  Edward Dale saw him at the
Opera.  Edward would marry her I'm sure: and there's
Captain Dobbin who, I think, would--only I hate all
army men.  Such a dandy as George has become.  With
his military airs, indeed!  We must show some folks that
we're as good as they.  Only give Edward Dale any
encouragement, and you'll see.  We must have a party, Mr.
S.  Why don't you speak, John?  Shall I say Tuesday fortnight?
Why don't you answer? Good God, John, what has happened?"

John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his
wife, who ran to him.  He seized her in his arms, and
said with a hasty voice, "We're ruined, Mary.  We've
got the world to begin over again, dear.  It's best that you
should know all, and at once."  As he spoke, he trembled
in every limb, and almost fell.  He thought the news would
have overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had
never said a hard word.  But it was he that was the most
moved, sudden as the shock was to her.  When he sank
back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office of
consoler.  She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and
put it round her neck: she called him her John--her dear
John--her old man--her kind old man; she poured out a
hundred words of incoherent love and tenderness; her
faithful voice and simple caresses wrought this sad heart
up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered
and solaced his over-burdened soul.

Only once in the course of the long night as they sate
together, and poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and
told the story of his losses and embarrassments--the
treason of some of his oldest friends, the manly kindness
of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in
a general confession--only once did the faithful wife give
way to emotion.

"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she
said.

The father had forgotten the poor girl.  She was lying,
awake and unhappy, overhead.  In the midst of friends,
home, and kind parents, she was alone.  To how many
people can any one tell all?  Who will be open where there
is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who never
can understand?  Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary.  She
had no confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything
to confide.  She could not tell the old mother her
doubts and cares; the would-be sisters seemed every day
more strange to her.  And she had misgivings and fears
which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she
was always secretly brooding over them.

Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George
Osborne was worthy and faithful to her, though she knew
otherwise.  How many a thing had she said, and got no
echo from him.  How many suspicions of selfishness and
indifference had she to encounter and obstinately
overcome.  To whom could the poor little martyr tell these
daily struggles and tortures?  Her hero himself only half
understood her.  She did not dare to own that the man she
loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had given her
heart away too soon.  Given once, the pure bashful
maiden was too modest, too tender, too trustful, too
weak, too much woman to recall it.  We are Turks with
the affections of our women; and have made them
subscribe to our doctrine too.  We let their bodies go abroad
liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink
bonnets to disguise them instead of veils and yakmaks.  But
their souls must be seen by only one man, and they obey
not unwillingly, and consent to remain at home as our
slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.

So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart,
when in the month of March, Anno Domini 1815,
Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis XVIII fled, and all
Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old John
Sedley was ruined.

We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker
through those last pangs and agonies of ruin through
which he passed before his commercial demise befell.
They declared him at the Stock Exchange; he was
absent from his house of business: his bills were protested:
his act of bankruptcy formal.  The house and furniture of
Russell Square were seized and sold up, and he and his
family were thrust away, as we have seen, to hide their
heads where they might.

John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic
establishment who have appeared now and anon in our
pages and of whom he was now forced by poverty to
take leave.  The wages of those worthy people were
discharged with that punctuality which men frequently show
who only owe in great sums--they were sorry to leave
good places--but they did not break their hearts at parting
from their adored master and mistress.  Amelia's maid
was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resigned
to better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town.  Black
Sambo, with the infatuation of his profession, determined
on setting up a public-house.  Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop
indeed, who had seen the birth of Jos and Amelia, and
the wooing of John Sedley and his wife, was for staying
by them without wages, having amassed a considerable
sum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen
people into their new and humble place of refuge, where
she tended them and grumbled against them for a while.

Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors
which now ensued, and harassed the feelings of the
humiliated old gentleman so severely, that in six weeks he
oldened more than he had done for fifteen years before--
the most determined and obstinate seemed to be John
Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John Osborne,
whom he had set up in life--who was under a hundred
obligations to him--and whose son was to marry Sedley's
daughter.  Any one of these circumstances would account
for the bitterness of Osborne's opposition.

When one man has been under very remarkable
obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels,
a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the
former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger
would be.  To account for your own hard-heartedness and
ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the
other party's crime.  It is not that you are selfish, brutal,
and angry at the failure of a speculation--no, no--it is
that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery
and with the most sinister motives.  From a mere
sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that
the fallen man is a villain--otherwise he, the persecutor,
is a wretch himself.

And as a general rule, which may make all creditors
who are inclined to be severe pretty comfortable in their
minds, no men embarrassed are altogether honest, very
likely.  They conceal something; they exaggerate chances
of good luck; hide away the real state of affairs; say that
things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a
smiling face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of
bankruptcy--are ready to lay hold of any pretext for
delay or of any money, so as to stave off the inevitable
ruin a few days longer.  "Down with such dishonesty,"
says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking
enemy.  "You fool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm
good sense says to the man that is drowning.  "You villain,
why do you shrink from plunging into the irretrievable
Gazette?" says prosperity to the poor devil battling in
that black gulf.  Who has not remarked the readiness with
which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect
and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out
on money matters? Everybody does it.  Everybody is right,
I suppose, and the world is a rogue.

Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former
benefits to goad and irritate him: these are always a
cause of hostility aggravated.  Finally, he had to break off
the match between Sedley's daughter and his son; and
as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's
happiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was
necessary to show the strongest reasons for the rupture,
and for John Osborne to prove John Sedley to be a very
bad character indeed.

At the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself
with a savageness and scorn towards Sedley, which
almost succeeded in breaking the heart of that ruined
bankrupt man.  On George's intercourse with Amelia he
put an instant veto--menacing the youth with maledictions
if he broke his commands, and vilipending the
poor innocent girl as the base