tled their fortunes on Fanny Bludyer's little boy.  My
darling Frederick must positively be an eldest son; and--
and do ask Papa to bring us back his account in
Lombard Street, will you, dear? It doesn't look well, his going
to Stumpy and Rowdy's." After which kind of speeches,
in which fashion and the main chance were blended
together, and after a kiss, which was like the contact of an
oyster--Mrs. Frederick Bullock would gather her
starched nurslings and simper back into her carriage.

Every visit which this leader of ton paid to her family
was more unlucky for her.  Her father paid more money
into Stumpy and Rowdy's.  Her patronage became more
and more insufferable.  The poor widow in the little
cottage at Brompton, guarding her treasure there, little
knew how eagerly some people coveted it.

On that night when Jane Osborne had told her father
that she had seen his grandson, the old man had made
her no reply, but he had shown no anger--and had bade
her good-night on going himself to his room in rather a
kindly voice.  And he must have meditated on what she
said and have made some inquiries of the Dobbin family
regarding her visit, for a fortnight after it took place, he
asked her where was her little French watch and chain
she used to wear?

"I bought it with my money, sir," she said in a great
fright.

"Go and order another like it, or a better if you can
get it," said the old gentleman and lapsed again into
silence.

Of late the Misses Dobbin more than once repeated
their entreaties to Amelia, to allow George to visit them.
His aunt had shown her inclination; perhaps his
grandfather himself, they hinted, might be disposed to be
reconciled to him.  Surely, Amelia could not refuse such
advantageous chances for the boy.  Nor could she, but
she acceded to their overtures with a very heavy and
suspicious heart, was always uneasy during the child's
absence from her, and welcomed him back as if he was
rescued out of some danger.  He brought back money and
toys, at which the widow looked with alarm and jealousy;
she asked him always if he had seen any gentleman--
"Only old Sir William, who drove him about in the four-
wheeled chaise, and Mr. Dobbin, who arrived on the
beautiful bay horse in the afternoon--in the green coat
and pink neck-cloth, with the gold-headed whip, who
promised to show him the Tower of London and take
him out with the Surrey hounds." At last, he said, "There
was an old gentleman, with thick eyebrows, and a broad
hat, and large chain and seals." He came one day as the
coachman was lunging Georgy round the lawn on the
gray pony.  "He looked at me very much.  He shook very
much.  I said 'My name is Norval' after dinner.  My aunt
began to cry.  She is always crying." Such was George's
report on that night.

Then Amelia knew that the boy had seen his
grandfather; and looked out feverishly for a proposal
which she was sure would follow, and which came, in fact,
in a few days afterwards.  Mr. Osborne formally offered to
take the boy and make him heir to the fortune which he
had intended that his father should inherit.  He would
make Mrs. George Osborne an allowance, such as to
assure her a decent competency.  If Mrs. George Osborne
proposed to marry again, as Mr. O.  heard was her
intention, he would not withdraw that allowance.  But it
must be understood that the child would live entirely with
his grandfather in Russell Square, or at whatever other
place Mr. O.  should select, and that he would be
occasionally permitted to see Mrs. George Osborne at her
own residence.  This message was brought or read to her
in a letter one day, when her mother was from home
and her father absent as usual in the City.

She was never seen angry but twice or thrice in her
life, and it was in one of these moods that Mr. Osborne's
attorney had the fortune to behold her.  She rose up
trembling and flushing very much as soon as, after
reading the letter, Mr. Poe handed it to her, and she tore the
paper into a hundred fragments, which she trod on.  "I
marry again!  I take money to part from my child!  Who
dares insult me by proposing such a thing? Tell Mr.
Osborne it is a cowardly letter, sir--a cowardly letter--
I will not answer it.  I wish you good morning, sir--and
she bowed me out of the room like a tragedy Queen,"
said the lawyer who told the story.

Her parents never remarked her agitation on that day,
and she never told them of the interview.  They had their
own affairs to interest them, affairs which deeply
interested this innocent and unconscious lady.  The old
gentleman, her father, was always dabbling in speculation.
We have seen how the wine company and the coal
company had failed him.  But, prowling about the City
always eagerly and restlessly still, he lighted upon some
other scheme, of which he thought so well that he
embarked in it in spite of the remonstrances of Mr. Clapp,
to whom indeed he never dared to tell how far he had
engaged himself in it.  And as it was always Mr. Sedley's
maxim not to talk about money matters before women,
they had no inkling of the misfortunes that were in store
for them until the unhappy old gentleman was forced to
make gradual confessions.

The bills of the little household, which had been settled
weekly, first fell into arrear.  The remittances had not
arrived from India, Mr. Sedley told his wife with a disturbed
face.  As she had paid her bills very regularly hitherto,
one or two of the tradesmen to whom the poor lady was
obliged to go round asking for time were very angry at
a delay to which they were perfectly used from more
irregular customers.  Emmy's contribution, paid over
cheerfully without any questions, kept the little company
in half-rations however.  And the first six months passed
away pretty easily, old Sedley still keeping up with the
notion that his shares must rise and that all would be
well.

No sixty pounds, however, came to help the household
at the end of the half year, and it fell deeper and deeper
into trouble--Mrs. Sedley, who was growing infirm and
was much shaken, remained silent or wept a great deal
with Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen.  The butcher was
particularly surly, the grocer insolent:  once or twice little
Georgy had grumbled about the dinners, and Amelia, who
still would have been satisfied with a slice of bread for
her own dinner, could not but perceive that her son was
neglected and purchased little things out of her private
purse to keep the boy in health.

At last they told her, or told her such a garbled story
as people in difficulties tell.  One day, her own money
having been received, and Amelia about to pay it over,
she, who had kept an account of the moneys expended
by her, proposed to keep a certain portion back out of
her dividend, having contracted engagements for a new
suit for Georgy.

Then it came out that Jos's remittances were not paid,
that the house was in difficulties, which Amelia ought to
have seen before, her mother said, but she cared for
nothing or nobody except Georgy.  At this she passed all
her money across the table, without a word, to her
mother, and returned to her room to cry her eyes out.
She had a great access of sensibility too that day, when
obliged to go and countermand the clothes, the darling
clothes on which she had set her heart for Christmas
Day, and the cut and fashion of which she had arranged
in many conversations with a small milliner, her friend.

Hardest of all, she had to break the matter to Georgy,
who made a loud outcry.  Everybody had new clothes at
Christmas.  The others would laugh at him.  He would
have new clothes.  She had promised them to him.  The
poor widow had only kisses to give him.  She darned the
old suit in tears.  She cast about among her little ornaments
to see if she could sell anything to procure the desired
novelties.  There was her India shawl that Dobbin had
sent her.  She remembered in former days going with her
mother to a fine India shop on Ludgate Hill, where the
ladies had all sorts of dealings and bargains in these
articles.  Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone with
pleasure as she thought of this resource, and she kissed
away George to school in the morning, smiling brightly
after him.  The boy felt that there was good news in her
look.

Packing up her shawl in a handkerchief (another of
the gifts of the good Major), she hid them under her
cloak and walked flushed and eager all the way to
Ludgate Hill, tripping along by the park wall and running
over the crossings, so that many a man turned as she
hurried by him and looked after her rosy pretty face.  She
calculated how she should spend the proceeds of her
shawl--how, besides the clothes, she would buy the books
that he longed for, and pay his half-year's schooling; and
how she would buy a cloak for her father instead of
that old great-coat which he wore.  She was not mistaken
as to the value of the Major's gift.  It was a very fine and
beautiful web, and the merchant made a very good
bargain when he gave her twenty guineas for her shawl.

She ran on amazed and flurried with her riches to
Darton's shop, in St.  Paul's Churchyard, and there
purchased the Parents' Assistant and the Sandford and
Merton Georgy longed for, and got into the coach there
with her parcel, and went home exulting.  And she pleased
herself by writing in the fly-leaf in her neatest little
hand, "George Osborne, A Christmas gift from his
affectionate-mother." The books are extant to this day,
with the fair delicate superscription.

She was going from her own room with the books in
her hand to place them on George's table, where he
might find them on his return from school, when in
the passage, she and her mother met.  The gilt bindings
of the seven handsome little volumes caught the old lady's
eye.

"What are those?" she said.

"Some books for Georgy," Amelia replied--I--I
promised them to him at Christmas."

"Books!" cried the elder lady indignantly, "Books,
when the whole house wants bread!  Books, when to keep
you and your son in luxury, and your dear father out of
gaol, I've sold every trinket I had, the India shawl from
my back even down to the very spoons, that our tradesmen
mightn't insult us, and that Mr. Clapp, which indeed
he is justly entitled, being not a hard landlord, and a
civil man, and a father, might have his rent.  Oh, Amelia!
you break my heart with your books and that boy of
yours, whom you are ruining, though part with him you
will not.  Oh, Amelia, may God send you a more dutiful
child than I have had!  There's Jos, deserts his father in
his old age; and there's George, who might be provided
for, and who might be rich, going to school like a lord,
with a gold watch and chain round his neck--while my
dear, dear old man is without a sh--shilling." Hysteric
sobs and cries ended Mrs. Sedley's speech--it echoed
through every room in the small house, whereof the other
female inmates heard every word of the colloquy.

"Oh, Mother, Mother!" cried poor Amelia in reply.
"You told me nothing--I--I promised him the books.
I--I only sold my shawl this morning.  Take the money
--take everything"--and with quivering hands she took
out her silver, and her sovereigns--her precious golden
sovereigns, which she thrust into the hands of her
mother, whence they overflowed and tumbled, rolling
down the stairs.

And then she went into her room, and sank down in
despair and utter misery.  She saw it all now.  Her
selfishness was sacrificing the boy.  But for her he might have
wealth, station, education, and his father's place, which
the elder George had forfeited for her sake.  She had but
to speak the words, and her father was restored to
competency and the boy raised to fortune.  Oh, what a
conviction it was to that tender and stricken heart!




CHAPTER XLVII


Gaunt House

All the world knows that Lord Steyne's town palace
stands in Gaunt Square, out of which Great Gaunt Street
leads, whither we first conducted Rebecca, in the time
of the departed Sir Pitt Crawley.  Peering over the railings
and through the black trees into the garden of the
Square, you see a few miserable governesses with
wan-faced pupils wandering round and round it, and round
the dreary grass-plot in the centre of which rises the
statue of Lord Gaunt, who fought at Minden, in a
three-tailed wig, and otherwise habited like a Roman
Emperor.  Gaunt House occupies nearly a side of the Square.
The remaining three sides are composed of mansions that
have passed away into dowagerism--tall, dark houses,
with window-frames of stone, or picked out of a lighter
red.  Little light seems to be behind those lean,
comfortless casements now, and hospitality to have passed
away from those doors as much as the laced lacqueys
and link-boys of old times, who used to put out their
torches in the blank iron extinguishers that still flank the
lamps over the steps.  Brass plates have penetrated into
the square--Doctors, the Diddlesex Bank Western
Branch--the English and European Reunion, &c.--it has
a dreary look--nor is my Lord Steyne's palace less
dreary.  All I have ever seen of it is the vast wall in
front, with the rustic columns at the great gate, through
which an old porter peers sometimes with a fat and
gloomy red face--and over the wall the garret and
bedroom windows, and the chimneys, out of which there
seldom comes any smoke now.  For the present Lord
Steyne lives at Naples, preferring the view of the Bay
and Capri and Vesuvius to the dreary aspect of the wall
in Gaunt Square.

A few score yards down New Gaunt Street, and leading
into Gaunt Mews indeed, is a little modest back
door, which you would not remark from that of any of
the other stables.  But many a little close carriage has
stopped at that door, as my informant (little Tom Eaves,
who knows everything, and who showed me the place)
told me.  "The Prince and Perdita have been in and out
of that door, sir," he had often told me; "Marianne
Clarke has entered it with the Duke of --.  It conducts
to the famous petits appartements of Lord Steyne--one,
sir, fitted up all in ivory and white satin, another in
ebony and black velvet; there is a little banqueting-room
taken from Sallust's house at Pompeii, and painted by
Cosway--a little private kitchen, in which every saucepan
was silver and all the spits were gold.  It was there
that Egalite Orleans roasted partridges on the night
when he and the Marquis of Steyne won a hundred
thousand from a great personage at ombre.  Half of the
money went to the French Revolution, half to purchase
Lord Gaunt's Marquisate and Garter--and the
remainder--" but it forms no part of our scheme to tell
what became of the remainder, for every shilling of
which, and a great deal more, little Tom Eaves, who
knows everybody's affairs, is ready to account.

Besides his town palace, the Marquis had castles and
palaces in various quarters of the three kingdoms,
whereof the descriptions may be found in the road-books
--Castle Strongbow, with its woods, on the Shannon
shore; Gaunt Castle, in Carmarthenshire, where Richard
II was taken prisoner--Gauntly Hall in Yorkshire, where
I have been informed there were two hundred silver
teapots for the breakfasts of the guests of the house, with
everything to correspond in splendour; and Stillbrook in
Hampshire, which was my lord's farm, an humble place
of residence, of which we all remember the wonderful
furniture which was sold at my lord's demise by a late
celebrated auctioneer.

The Marchioness of Steyne was of the renowned and
ancient family of the Caerlyons, Marquises of Camelot,
who have preserved the old faith ever since the
conversion of the venerable Druid, their first ancestor, and
whose pedigree goes far beyond the date of the arrival of
King Brute in these islands.  Pendragon is the title of the
eldest son of the house.  The sons have been called
Arthurs, Uthers, and Caradocs, from immemorial time.
Their heads have fallen in many a loyal conspiracy.
Elizabeth chopped off the head of the Arthur of her day,
who had been Chamberlain to Philip and Mary, and
carried letters between the Queen of Scots and her uncles
the Guises.  A cadet of the house was an officer of the
great Duke and distinguished in the famous Saint
Bartholomew conspiracy.  During the whole of Mary's
confinement, the house of Camelot conspired in her behalf.
It was as much injured by its charges in fitting out an
armament against the Spaniards, during the time of the
Armada, as by the fines and confiscations levied on it
by Elizabeth for harbouring of priests, obstinate
recusancy, and popish misdoings.  A recreant of James's time
was momentarily perverted from his religion by the
arguments of that great theologian, and the fortunes of the
family somewhat restored by his timely weakness.  But
the Earl of Camelot, of the reign of Charles, returned to
the old creed of his family, and they continued to fight
for it, and ruin themselves for it, as long as there was a
Stuart left to head or to instigate a rebellion.

Lady Mary Caerlyon was brought up at a Parisian
convent; the Dauphiness Marie Antoinette was her
godmother.  In the pride of her beauty she had been
married--sold, it was said--to Lord Gaunt, then at Paris,
who won vast sums from the lady's brother at some of
Philip of Orleans's banquets.  The Earl of Gaunt's famous
duel with the Count de la Marche, of the Grey
Musqueteers, was attributed by common report to the
pretensions of that officer (who had been a page, and
remained a favourite of the Queen) to the hand of the
beautiful Lady Mary Caerlyon.  She was married to Lord
Gaunt while the Count lay ill of his wound, and came to
dwell at Gaunt House, and to figure for a short time in
the splendid Court of the Prince of Wales.  Fox had
toasted her.  Morris and Sheridan had written songs about
her.  Malmesbury had made her his best bow; Walpole
had pronounced her charming; Devonshire had been
almost jealous of her; but she was scared by the wild
pleasures and gaieties of the society into which she was
flung, and after she had borne a couple of sons, shrank
away into a life of devout seclusion.  No wonder that
my Lord Steyne, who liked pleasure and cheerfulness,
was not often seen after their marriage by the side of
this trembling, silent, superstitious, unhappy lady.

The before-mentioned Tom Eaves (who has no part
in this history, except that he knew all the great folks in
London, and the stories and mysteries of each family)
had further information regarding my Lady Steyne,
which may or may not be true.  "The humiliations," Tom
used to say, "which that woman has been made to
undergo, in her own house, have been frightful; Lord
Steyne has made her sit down to table with women with
whom I would rather die than allow Mrs. Eaves to
associate--with Lady Crackenbury, with Mrs. Chippenham,
with Madame de la Cruchecassee, the French secretary's
wife (from every one of which ladies Tom Eaves--
who would have sacrificed his wife for knowing them--
was too glad to get a bow or a dinner) with the REIGNING
FAVOURITE in a word.  And do you suppose that that
woman, of that family, who are as proud as the Bourbons,
and to whom the Steynes are but lackeys, mushrooms of
yesterday (for after all, they are not of the Old Gaunts,
but of a minor and doubtful branch of the house); do
you suppose, I say (the reader must bear in mind that
it is always Tom Eaves who speaks) that the Marchioness
of Steyne, the haughtiest woman in England, would
bend down to her husband so submissively if there were
not some cause? Pooh!  I tell you there are secret reasons.
I tell you that, in the emigration, the Abbe de la
Marche who was here and was employed in the
Quiberoon business with Puisaye and Tinteniac, was the
same Colonel of Mousquetaires Gris with whom Steyne
fought in the year '86--that he and the Marchioness met
again--that it was after the Reverend Colonel was shot
in Brittany that Lady Steyne took to those extreme
practices of devotion which she carries on now; for she is
closeted with her director every day--she is at service
at Spanish Place, every morning, I've watched her there
--that is, I've happened to be passing there--and
depend on it, there's a mystery in her case.  People are not
so unhappy unless they have something to repent of,"
added Tom Eaves with a knowing wag of his head; "and
depend on it, that woman would not be so submissive
as she is if the Marquis had not some sword to hold
over her."

So, if Mr. Eaves's information be correct, it is very
likely that this lady, in her high station, had to submit
to many a private indignity and to hide many secret
griefs under a calm face.  And let us, my brethren who
have not our names in the Red Book, console ourselves
by thinking comfortably how miserable our betters may
be, and that Damocles, who sits on satin cushions and
is served on gold plate, has an awful sword hanging
over his head in the shape of a bailiff, or an hereditary
disease, or a family secret, which peeps out every now
and then from the embroidered arras in a ghastly
manner, and will be sure to drop one day or the other in the
right place.

In comparing, too, the poor man's situation with that
of the great, there is (always according to Mr. Eaves)
another source of comfort for the former.  You who have
little or no patrimony to bequeath or to inherit, may be
on good terms with your father or your son, whereas the
heir of a great prince, such as my Lord Steyne, must
naturally be angry at being kept out of his kingdom, and
eye the occupant of it with no very agreeable glances.
"Take it as a rule," this sardonic old Laves would say,
"the fathers and elder sons of all great families hate each
other.  The Crown Prince is always in opposition to the
crown or hankering after it.  Shakespeare knew the world,
my good sir, and when he describes Prince Hal (from
whose family the Gaunts pretend to be descended, though
they are no more related to John of Gaunt than you are)
trying on his father's coronet, he gives you a natural
description of all heirs apparent.  If you were heir to a
dukedom and a thousand pounds a day, do you mean to
say you would not wish for possession? Pooh!  And it
stands to reason that every great man, having experienced
this feeling towards his father, must be aware that his
son entertains it towards himself; and so they can't but
be suspicious and hostile.

"Then again, as to the feeling of elder towards younger
sons.  My dear sir, you ought to know that every elder
brother looks upon the cadets of the house as his natural
enemies, who deprive him of so much ready money which
ought to be his by right.  I have often heard George Mac
Turk, Lord Bajazet's eldest son, say that if he had his
will when he came to the title, he would do what the
sultans do, and clear the estate by chopping off all his
younger brothers' heads at once; and so the case is,
more or less, with them all.  I tell you they are all Turks
in their hearts.  Pooh! sir, they know the world." And
here, haply, a great man coming up, Tom Eaves's hat
would drop off his head, and he would rush forward with
a bow and a grin, which showed that he knew the world
too--in the Tomeavesian way, that is.  And having laid
out every shilling of his fortune on an annuity, Tom
could afford to bear no malice to his nephews and nieces,
and to have no other feeling with regard to his betters
but a constant and generous desire to dine with them.

Between the Marchioness and the natural and tender
regard of mother for children, there was that cruel
barrier placed of difference of faith.  The very love which she
might feel for her sons only served to render the timid
and pious lady more fearful and unhappy.  The gulf which
separated them was fatal and impassable.  She could not
stretch her weak arms across it, or draw her children
over to that side away from which her belief told her
there was no safety.  During the youth of his sons, Lord
Steyne, who was a good scholar and amateur casuist,
had no better sport in the evening after dinner in the
country than in setting the boys' tutor, the Reverend
Mr. Trail (now my Lord Bishop of Ealing) on her
ladyship's director, Father Mole, over their wine, and in
pitting Oxford against St.  Acheul.  He cried "Bravo,
Latimer!  Well said, Loyola!" alternately; he promised
Mole a bishopric if he would come over, and vowed he
would use all his influence to get Trail a cardinal's hat
if he would secede.  Neither divine allowed himself to be
conquered, and though the fond mother hoped that her
youngest and favourite son would be reconciled to her
church--his mother church--a sad and awful disappointment
awaited the devout lady--a disappointment which
seemed to be a judgement upon her for the sin of her
marriage.

My Lord Gaunt married, as every person who frequents
the Peerage knows, the Lady Blanche Thistlewood,
a daughter of the noble house of Bareacres, before
mentioned in this veracious history.  A wing of
Gaunt House was assigned to this couple; for the head
of the family chose to govern it, and while he reigned to
reign supreme; his son and heir, however, living little at
home, disagreeing with his wife, and borrowing upon
post-obits such moneys as he required beyond the very
moderate sums which his father was disposed to allow
him.  The Marquis knew every shilling of his son's debts.
At his lamented demise, he was found himself to be
possessor of many of his heir's bonds, purchased for their
benefit, and devised by his Lordship to the children of
his younger son.

As, to my Lord Gaunt's dismay, and the chuckling
delight of his natural enemy and father, the Lady Gaunt
had no children--the Lord George Gaunt was desired to
return from Vienna, where he was engaged in waltzing
and diplomacy, and to contract a matrimonial alliance
with the Honourable Joan, only daughter of John Johnes,
First Baron Helvellyn, and head of the firm of Jones,
Brown, and Robinson, of Threadneedle Street, Bankers;
from which union sprang several sons and daughters,
whose doings do not appertain to this story.

The marriage at first was a happy and prosperous one.
My Lord George Gaunt could not only read, but write
pretty correctly.  He spoke French with considerable
fluency; and was one of the finest waltzers in Europe.  With
these talents, and his interest at home, there was little
doubt that his lordship would rise to the highest dignities
in his profession.  The lady, his wife, felt that courts were
her sphere, and her wealth enabled her to receive
splendidly in those continental towns whither her husband's
diplomatic duties led him.  There was talk of appointing
him minister, and bets were laid at the Travellers' that
he would be ambassador ere long, when of a sudden,
rumours arrived of the secretary's extraordinary behaviour.
At a grand diplomatic dinner given by his chief, he
had started up and declared that a pate de foie gras was
poisoned.  He went to a ball at the hotel of the Bavarian
envoy, the Count de Springbock-Hohenlaufen, with his
head shaved and dressed as a Capuchin friar.  It was not
a masked ball, as some folks wanted to persuade you.  It
was something queer, people whispered.  His grandfather
was so.  It was in the family.

His wife and family returned to this country and took
up their abode at Gaunt House.  Lord George gave up
his post on the European continent, and was gazetted to
Brazil.  But people knew better; he never returned from
that Brazil expedition--never died there--never lived
there--never was there at all.  He was nowhere; he was
gone out altogether.  "Brazil," said one gossip to another,
with a grin--"Brazil is St.  John's Wood.  Rio de Janeiro
is a cottage surrounded by four walls, and George Gaunt
is accredited to a keeper, who has invested him with the
order of the Strait-Waistcoat." These are the kinds of
epitaphs which men pass over one another in Vanity
Fair.

Twice or thrice in a week, in the earliest morning, the
poor mother went for her sins and saw the poor invalid.
Sometimes he laughed at her (and his laughter was more
pitiful than to hear him cry); sometimes she found the
brilliant dandy diplomatist of the Congress of Vienna
dragging about a child's toy, or nursing the keeper's
baby's doll.  Sometimes he knew her and Father Mole,
her director and companion; oftener he forgot her, as he
had done wife, children, love, ambition, vanity.  But he
remembered his dinner-hour, and used to cry if his
wine-and-water was not strong enough.

It was the mysterious taint of the blood; the poor
mother had brought it from her own ancient race.  The
evil had broken out once or twice in the father's family,
long before Lady Steyne's sins had begun, or her fasts
and tears and penances had been offered in their
expiation.  The pride of the race was struck down as the
first-born of Pharaoh.  The dark mark of fate and doom was
on the threshold--the tall old threshold surmounted by
coronets and caned heraldry.

The absent lord's children meanwhile prattled and
grew on quite unconscious that the doom was over them
too.  First they talked of their father and devised plans
against his return.  Then the name of the living dead man
was less frequently in their mouth--then not mentioned
at all.  But the stricken old grandmother trembled to think
that these too were the inheritors of their father's shame
as well as of his honours, and watched sickening for the
day when the awful ancestral curse should come down
on them.

This dark presentiment also haunted Lord Steyne.  He
tried to lay the horrid bedside ghost in Red Seas of wine
and jollity, and lost sight of it sometimes in the crowd
and rout of his pleasures.  But it always came back to
him when alone, and seemed to grow more threatening
with years.  "I have taken your son," it said, "why not
you? I may shut you up in a prison some day like your
son George.  I may tap you on the head to-morrow, and
away go pleasure and honours, feasts and beauty, friends,
flatterers, French cooks, fine horses and houses--in
exchange for a prison, a keeper, and a straw mattress like
George Gaunt's." And then my lord would defy the ghost
which threatened him, for he knew of a remedy by which
he could baulk his enemy.

So there was splendour and wealth, but no great
happiness perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt
House with its smoky coronets and ciphers.  The feasts
there were of the grandest in London, but there was not
overmuch content therewith, except among the guests
who sat at my lord's table.  Had he not been so great a
Prince very few possibly would have visited him; but in
Vanity Fair the sins of very great personages are looked
at indulgently.  "Nous regardons a deux fois" (as the
French lady said) before we condemn a person of my
lord's undoubted quality.  Some notorious carpers and
squeamish moralists might be sulky with Lord Steyne,
but they were glad enough to come when he asked them.

"Lord Steyne is really too bad," Lady Slingstone said,
"but everybody goes, and of course I shall see that my
girls come to no harm." "His lordship is a man to whom
I owe much, everything in life," said the Right Reverend
Doctor Trail, thinking that the Archbishop was rather
shaky, and Mrs. Trail and the young ladies would as
soon have missed going to church as to one of his
lordship's parties.  "His morals are bad," said little Lord
Southdown to his sister, who meekly expostulated,
having heard terrific legends from her mamma with respect
to the doings at Gaunt House; "but hang it, he's got the
best dry Sillery in Europe!" And as for Sir Pitt Crawley,
Bart.--Sir Pitt that pattern of decorum, Sir Pitt who
had led off at missionary meetings--he never for one
moment thought of not going too.  "Where you see such
persons as the Bishop of Ealing and the Countess of
Slingstone, you may be pretty sure, Jane," the Baronet
would say, "that we cannot be wrong.  The great rank
and station of Lord Steyne put him in a position to
command people in our station in life.  The Lord Lieutenant
of a County, my dear, is a respectable man.  Besides,
George Gaunt and I were intimate in early life; he was
my junior when we were attaches at Pumpernickel
together."

In a word everybody went to wait upon this great man
--everybody who was asked, as you the reader (do not
say nay) or I the writer hereof would go if we had an
invitation.



CHAPTER XLVIII


In Which the Reader Is Introduced to the Very
Best of Company

At last Becky's kindness and attention to the chief of
her husband's family were destined to meet with an
exceeding great reward, a reward which, though certainly
somewhat unsubstantial, the little woman coveted with
greater eagerness than more positive benefits.  If she did
not wish to lead a virtuous life, at least she desired to
enjoy a character for virtue, and we know that no lady
in the genteel world can possess this desideratum, until
she has put on a train and feathers and has been
presented to her Sovereign at Court.  From that august
interview they come out stamped as honest women.  The
Lord Chamberlain gives them a certificate of virtue.  And
as dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven
at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then
pronounced clean, many a lady, whose reputation would
be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes
through the wholesome ordeal of the Royal presence and
issues from it free from all taint.

It might be very well for my Lady Bareacres, my
Lady Tufto, Mrs. Bute Crawley in the country, and other
ladies who had come into contact with Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley to cry fie at the idea of the odious little
adventuress making her curtsey before the Sovereign, and
to declare that, if dear good Queen Charlotte had been
alive, she never would have admitted such an extremely
ill-regulated personage into her chaste drawing-room.  But
when we consider that it was the First Gentleman in
Europe in whose high presence Mrs. Rawdon passed her
examination, and as it were, took her degree in reputation,
it surely must be flat disloyalty to doubt any more
about her virtue.  I, for my part, look back with love and
awe to that Great Character in history.  Ah, what a high
and noble appreciation of Gentlewomanhood there must
have been in Vanity Fair, when that revered and august
being was invested, by the universal acclaim of the
refined and educated portion of this empire, with the title
of Premier Gentilhomme of his Kingdom.  Do you
remember, dear M--, oh friend of my youth, how one
blissful night five-and-twenty years since, the "Hypocrite"
being acted, Elliston being manager, Dowton and Liston
performers, two boys had leave from their loyal masters
to go out from Slaughter-House School where they were
educated and to appear on Drury Lane stage, amongst a
crowd which assembled there to greet the king.  THE
KING? There he was.  Beefeaters were before the
august box; the Marquis of Steyne (Lord of the Powder
Closet) and other great officers of state were behind the
chair on which he sat, HE sat--florid of face, portly of
person, covered with orders, and in a rich curling head of
hair--how we sang God save him!  How the house rocked
and shouted with that magnificent music.  How they
cheered, and cried, and waved handkerchiefs.  Ladies
wept; mothers clasped their children; some fainted with
emotion.  People were suffocated in the pit, shrieks and
groans rising up amidst the writhing and shouting mass
there of his people who were, and indeed showed them-
selves almost to be, ready to die for him.  Yes, we saw
him.  Fate cannot deprive us of THAT.  Others have seen
Napoleon.  Some few still exist who have beheld Frederick
the Great, Doctor Johnson, Marie Antoinette, &c.--be it
our reasonable boast to our children, that we saw George
the Good, the Magnificent, the Great.

Well, there came a happy day in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's
existence when this angel was admitted into the
paradise of a Court which she coveted, her sister-in-law
acting as her godmother.  On the appointed day, Sir Pitt
and his lady, in their great family carriage (just newly
built, and ready for the Baronet's assumption of the
office of High Sheriff of his county), drove up to the little
house in Curzon Street, to the edification of Raggles, who
was watching from his greengrocer's shop, and saw fine
plumes within, and enormous bunches of flowers in the
breasts of the new livery-coats of the footmen.

Sir Pitt, in a glittering uniform, descended and went
into Curzon Street, his sword between his legs.  Little
Rawdon stood with his face against the parlour window-
panes, smiling and nodding with all his might to his aunt
in the carriage within; and presently Sir Pitt issued forth
from the house again, leading forth a lady with grand
feathers, covered in a white shawl, and holding up
daintily a train of magnificent brocade.  She stepped into the
vehicle as if she were a princess and accustomed all her
life to go to Court, smiling graciously on the footman at
the door and on Sir Pitt, who followed her into the
carriage.

Then Rawdon followed in his old Guards' uniform,
which had grown woefully shabby, and was much too
tight.  He was to have followed the procession and waited
upon his sovereign in a cab, but that his good-natured
sister-in-law insisted that they should be a family party.
The coach was large, the ladies not very big, they would
hold their trains in their laps--finally, the four went
fraternally together, and their carriage presently joined
the line of royal equipages which was making its way
down Piccadilly and St.  James's Street, towards the old
brick palace where the Star of Brunswick was in waiting
to receive his nobles and gentlefolks.

Becky felt as if she could bless the people out of the
carriage windows, so elated was she in spirit, and so
strong a sense had she of the dignified position which
she had at last attained in life.  Even our Becky had her
weaknesses, and as one often sees how men pride
themselves upon excellences which others are slow to
perceive:  how, for instance, Comus firmly believes that he
is the greatest tragic actor in England; how Brown, the
famous novelist, longs to be considered, not a man of
genius, but a man of fashion; while Robinson, the great
lawyer, does not in the least care about his reputation in
Westminster Hall, but believes himself incomparable
across country and at a five-barred gate--so to be, and
to be thought, a respectable woman was Becky's aim in
life, and she got up the genteel with amazing assiduity,
readiness, and success.  We have said, there were times
when she believed herself to be a fine lady and forgot
that there was no money in the chest at home--duns
round the gate, tradesmen to coax and wheedle--no
ground to walk upon, in a word.  And as she went to
Court in the carriage, the family carriage, she adopted a
demeanour so grand, self-satisfied, deliberate, and
imposing that it made even Lady Jane laugh.  She walked
into the royal apartments with a toss of the head which
would have befitted an empress, and I have no doubt had
she been one, she would have become the character
perfectly.

We are authorized to state that Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's
costume de cour on the occasion of her presentation
to the Sovereign was of the most elegant and brilliant
description.  Some ladies we may have seen--we
who wear stars and cordons and attend the St.  James's
assemblies, or we, who, in muddy boots, dawdle up and
down Pall Mall and peep into the coaches as they drive
up with the great folks in their feathers--some ladies of
fashion, I say, we may have seen, about two o'clock of
the forenoon of a levee day, as the laced-jacketed band
of the Life Guards are blowing triumphal marches seated
on those prancing music-stools, their cream-coloured
chargers--who are by no means lovely and enticing
objects at that early period of noon.  A stout countess of
sixty, decolletee, painted, wrinkled with rouge up to her
drooping eyelids, and diamonds twinkling in her wig, is a
wholesome and edifying, but not a pleasant sight.  She
has the faded look of a St.  James's Street illumination, as
it may be seen of an early morning, when half the lamps
are out, and the others are blinking wanly, as if they
were about to vanish like ghosts before the dawn.  Such
charms as those of which we catch glimpses while her
ladyship's carriage passes should appear abroad at night
alone.  If even Cynthia looks haggard of an afternoon, as
we may see her sometimes in the present winter season,
with Phoebus staring her out of countenance from the
opposite side of the heavens, how much more can old
Lady Castlemouldy keep her head up when the sun is
shining full upon it through the chariot windows, and
showing all the chinks and crannies with which time has
marked her face!  No.  Drawing-rooms should be
announced for November, or the first foggy day, or the
elderly sultanas of our Vanity Fair should drive up in
closed litters, descend in a covered way, and make their
curtsey to the Sovereign under the protection of lamplight.

Our beloved Rebecca had no need, however, of any
such a friendly halo to set off her beauty.  Her complexion
could bear any sunshine as yet, and her dress, though if
you were to see it now, any present lady of Vanity Fair
would pronounce it to be the most foolish and preposterous
attire ever worn, was as handsome in her eyes
and those of the public, some five-and-twenty years since,
as the most brilliant costume of the most famous beauty
of the present season.  A score of years hence that too,
that milliner's wonder, will have passed into the domain
of the absurd, along with all previous vanities.  But we
are wandering too much.  Mrs. Rawdon's dress was
pronounced to be charmante on the eventful day of her
presentation.  Even good little Lady Jane was forced to
acknowledge this effect, as she looked at her kinswoman,
and owned sorrowfully to herself that she was quite
inferior in taste to Mrs. Becky.

She did not know how much care, thought, and genius
Mrs. Rawdon had bestowed upon that garment.  Rebecca
had as good taste as any milliner in Europe, and such a
clever way of doing things as Lady Jane little understood.
The latter quickly spied out the magnificence of the
brocade of Becky's train, and the splendour of the lace on
her dress.

The brocade was an old remnant, Becky said; and as
for the lace, it was a great bargain.  She had had it these
hundred years.

"My dear Mrs. Crawley, it must have cost a little
fortune," Lady Jane said, looking down at her own lace,
which was not nearly so good; and then examining the
quality of the ancient brocade which formed the
material of Mrs. Rawdon's Court dress, she felt inclined to
say that she could not afford such fine clothing, but
checked that speech, with an effort, as one uncharitable
to her kinswoman.

And yet, if Lady Jane had known all, I think even her
kindly temper would have failed her.  The fact is, when
she was putting Sir Pitt's house in order, Mrs. Rawdon
had found the lace and the brocade in old wardrobes,
the property of the former ladies of the house, and had
quietly carried the goods home, and had suited them to
her own little person.  Briggs saw her take them, asked
no questions, told no stories; but I believe quite
sympathised with her on this matter, and so would
many another honest woman.

And the diamonds--"Where the doose did you get the
diamonds, Becky?" said her husband, admiring some
jewels which he had never seen before and which sparkled
in her ears and on her neck with brilliance and profusion.

Becky blushed a little and looked at him hard for a
moment.  Pitt Crawley blushed a little too, and looked
out of window.  The fact is, he had given her a very
small portion of the brilliants; a pretty diamond clasp,
which confined a pearl necklace which she wore- and the
Baronet had omitted to mention the circumstance to
his lady.

Becky looked at her husband, and then at Sir Pitt,
with an air of saucy triumph--as much as to say, "Shall
I betray you?"

"Guess!" she said to her husband.  "Why, you silly
man," she continued, "where do you suppose I got them?
--all except the little clasp, which a dear friend of mine
gave me long ago.  I hired them, to be sure.  I hired them
at Mr. Polonius's, in Coventry Street.  You don't suppose
that all the diamonds which go to Court belong to the
wearers; like those beautiful stones which Lady Jane has,
and which are much handsomer than any which I have,
I am certain."

"They are family jewels," said Sir Pitt, again looking
uneasy.  And in this family conversation the carriage
rolled down the street, until its cargo was finally
discharged at the gates of the palace where the Sovereign
was sitting in state.

The diamonds, which had created Rawdon's admiration,
never went back to Mr. Polonius, of Coventry Street, and
that gentleman never applied for their restoration, but
they retired into a little private repository, in an old desk,
which Amelia Sedley had given her years and years ago,
and in which Becky kept a number of useful and,
perhaps, valuable things, about which her husband
knew nothing.  To know nothing, or little, is in the
nature of some husbands.  To hide, in the nature of how
many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have
surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns
and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear
trembling?--trembling, and coaxing with smiles the
husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet
gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last
year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow
lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is
writing dunning letters every week for the money!

Thus Rawdon knew nothing about the brilliant diamond
ear-rings, or the superb brilliant ornament which
decorated the fair bosom of his lady; but Lord Steyne,
who was in his place at Court, as Lord of the Powder
Closet, and one of the great dignitaries and illustrious
defences of the throne of England, and came up with all
his stars, garters, collars, and cordons, and paid particular
attention to the little woman, knew whence the jewels
came and who paid for them.

As he bowed over her he smiled, and quoted the
hackneyed and beautiful lines from The Rape of the Lock
about Belinda's diamonds, "which Jews might kiss and
infidels adore."

"But I hope your lordship is orthodox," said the little
lady with a toss of her head.  And many ladies round
about whispered and talked, and many gentlemen nodded
and whispered, as they saw what marked attention the
great nobleman was paying to the little adventuress.

What were the circumstances of the interview between
Rebecca Crawley, nee Sharp, and her Imperial Master,
it does not become such a feeble and inexperienced pen
as mine to attempt to relate.  The dazzled eyes close
before that Magnificent Idea.  Loyal respect and decency tell
even the imagination not to look too keenly and audaciously
about the sacred audience-chamber, but to back away
rapidly, silently, and respectfully, making profound
bows out of the August Presence.

This may be said, that in all London there was no
more loyal heart than Becky's after this interview.  The
name of her king was always on her lips, and he was
proclaimed by her to be the most charming of men.  She
went to Colnaghi's and ordered the finest portrait of him
that art had produced, and credit could supply.  She chose
that famous one in which the best of monarchs is
represented in a frock-coat with a fur collar, and breeches
and silk stockings, simpering on a sofa from under his
curly brown wig.  She had him painted in a brooch and
wore it--indeed she amused and somewhat pestered her
acquaintance with her perpetual talk about his urbanity
and beauty.  Who knows!  Perhaps the little woman
thought she might play the part of a Maintenon or a
Pompadour.

But the finest sport of all after her presentation was to
hear her talk virtuously.  She had a few female acquaintances,
not, it must be owned, of the very highest reputation
in Vanity Fair.  But being made an honest woman of,
so to speak, Becky would not consort any longer with
these dubious ones, and cut Lady Crackenbury when the
latter nodded to her from her opera-box, and gave Mrs.
Washington White the go-by in the Ring.  "One must, my
dear, show one is somebody," she said.  "One mustn't be
seen with doubtful people.  I pity Lady Crackenbury from
my heart, and Mrs. Washington White may be a very
good-natured person.  YOU may go and dine with them,
as you like your rubber.  But I mustn't, and won't; and
you will have the goodness to tell Smith to say I am not
at home when either of them calls."

The particulars of Becky's costume were in the newspapers
--feathers, lappets, superb diamonds, and all the
rest.  Lady Crackenbury read the paragraph in bitterness
of spirit and discoursed to her followers about the airs
which that woman was giving herself.  Mrs. Bute Crawley
and her young ladies in the country had a copy of the
Morning Post from town, and gave a vent to their honest
indignation.  "If you had been sandy-haired, green-eyed,
and a French rope-dancer's daughter," Mrs. Bute said
to her eldest girl (who, on the contrary, was a very
swarthy, short, and snub-nosed young lady), "You might
have had superb diamonds forsooth, and have been
presented at Court by your cousin, the Lady Jane.  But you're
only a gentlewoman, my poor dear child.  You have only
some of the best blood in England in your veins, and
good principles and piety for your portion.  I, myself,
the wife of a Baronet's younger brother, too, never
thought of such a thing as going to Court--nor would
other people, if good Queen Charlotte had been alive."
In this way the worthy Rectoress consoled herself, and
her daughters sighed and sat over the Peerage all night.

A few days after the famous presentation, another
great and exceeding honour was vouchsafed to the
virtuous Becky.  Lady Steyne's carriage drove up to Mr.
Rawdon Crawley's door, and the footman, instead of driving
down the front of the house, as by his tremendous
knocking he appeared to be inclined to do, relented and only
delivered in a couple of cards, on which were engraven
the names of the Marchioness of Steyne and the
Countess of Gaunt.  If these bits of pasteboard had been
beautiful pictures, or had had a hundred yards of Malines lace
rolled round them, worth twice the number of guineas,
Becky could not have regarded them with more pleasure.
You may be sure they occupied a conspicuous place in
the china bowl on the drawing-room table, where Becky
kept the cards of her visitors.  Lord! lord! how poor
Mrs. Washington White's card and Lady Crackenbury's
card--which our little friend had been glad enough to
get a few months back, and of which the silly little
creature was rather proud once--Lord! lord! I say, how soon
at the appearance of these grand court cards, did those
poor little neglected deuces sink down to the bottom of
the pack.  Steyne!  Bareacres, Johnes of Helvellyn!  and
Caerylon of Camelot! we may be sure that Becky and
Briggs looked out those august names in the Peerage,
and followed the noble races up through all the
ramifications of the family tree.

My Lord Steyne coming to call a couple of hours
afterwards, and looking about him, and observing
everything as was his wont, found his ladies' cards already
ranged as the trumps of Becky's hand, and grinned, as
this old cynic always did at any naive display of human
weakness.  Becky came down to him presently; whenever
the dear girl expected his lordship, her toilette was
prepared, her hair in perfect order, her mouchoirs, aprons,
scarfs, little morocco slippers, and other female
gimcracks arranged, and she seated in some artless and
agreeable posture ready to receive him--whenever she
was surprised, of course, she had to fly to her apartment
to take a rapid survey of matters in the glass, and
to trip down again to wait upon the great peer.

She found him grinning over the bowl.  She was
discovered, and she blushed a little.  "Thank you,
Monseigneur," she said.  "You see your ladies have
been here.  How good of you!  I couldn't come before
--I was in the kitchen making a pudding."

"I know you were, I saw you through the area-railings
as I drove up," replied the old gentleman.

"You see everything," she replied.

"A few things, but not that, my pretty lady," he said
good-naturedly.  "You silly little fibster!  I heard you in
the room overhead, where I have no doubt you were
putting a little rouge on--you must give some of yours to
my Lady Gaunt, whose complexion is quite preposterous
--and I heard the bedroom door open, and then you
came downstairs."

"Is it a crime to try and look my best when YOU come
here?" answered Mrs. Rawdon plaintively, and she rubbed
her cheek with her handkerchief as if to show there was
no rouge at all, only genuine blushes and modesty in her
case.  About this who can tell? I know there is some
rouge that won't come off on a pocket-handkerchief,
and some so good that even tears will not disturb it.

"Well," said the old gentleman, twiddling round his
wife's card, "you are bent on becoming a fine lady.
You pester my poor old life out to get you into the
world.  You won't be able to hold your own there, you
silly little fool.  You've got no money."

"You will get us a place," interposed Becky, "as quick
as possible."

"You've got no money, and you want to compete with
those who have.  You poor little earthenware pipkin, you
want to swim down the stream along with the great cop-
per kettles.  All women are alike.  Everybody is striving
for what is not worth the having!  Gad!  I dined with the
King yesterday, and we had neck of mutton and turnips.
A dinner of herbs is better than a stalled ox very often.
You will go to Gaunt House.  You give an old fellow no
rest until you get there.  It's not half so nice as here.
You'll be bored there.  I am.  My wife is as gay as Lady
Macbeth, and my daughters as cheerful as Regan and
Goneril.  I daren't sleep in what they call my bedroom.
The bed is like the baldaquin of St.  Peter's, and the
pictures frighten me.  I have a little brass bed in a
dressing-room, and a little hair mattress like an anchorite.
I am an anchorite.  Ho!  ho!  You'll be asked to dinner next
week.  And gare aux femmes, look out and hold your
own!  How the women will bully you!" This was a very
long speech for a man of few words like my Lord Steyne;
nor was it the first which he uttered for Becky's benefit
on that day.

Briggs looked up from the work-table at which she
was seated in the farther room and gave a deep sigh
as she heard the great Marquis speak so lightly of her sex.

"If you don't turn off that abominable sheep-dog," said
Lord Steyne, with a savage look over his shoulder at
her, "I will have her poisoned."

"I always give my dog dinner from my own plate,"
said Rebecca, laughing mischievously; and having
enjoyed for some time the discomfiture of my lord, who
hated poor Briggs for interrupting his tete-a-tete
with the fair Colonel's wife, Mrs. Rawdon at length had
pity upon her admirer, and calling to Briggs, praised the
fineness of the weather to her and bade her to take out
the child for a walk.

"I can't send her away," Becky said presently, after
a pause, and in a very sad voice.  Her eyes filled with
tears as she spoke, and she turned away her head.

"You owe her her wages, I suppose?" said the Peer.

"Worse than that," said Becky, still casting down her
eyes; "I have ruined her."

"Ruined her? Then why don't you turn her out?" the
gentleman asked.

"Men do that," Becky answered bitterly.  "Women are
not so bad as you.  Last year, when we were reduced
to our last guinea, she gave us everything.  She shall
never leave me, until we are ruined utterly ourselves,
which does not seem far off, or until I can pay her the
utmost farthing."

--it, how much is it?" said the Peer with an oath.
And Becky, reflecting on the largeness of his means,
mentioned not only the sum which she had borrowed from
Miss Briggs, but one of nearly double the amount.

This caused the Lord Steyne to break out in another
brief and energetic expression of anger, at which Rebecca
held down her head the more and cried bitterly.  "I could
not help it.  It was my only chance.  I dare not tell my
husband.  He would kill me if I told him what I have
done.  I have kept it a secret from everybody but you
--and you forced it from me.  Ah, what shall I do, Lord
Steyne? for I am very, very unhappy!"

Lord Steyne made no reply except by beating the
devil's tattoo and biting his nails.  At last he clapped
his hat on his head and flung out of the room.  Rebecca
did not rise from her attitude of misery until the door
slammed upon him and his carriage whirled away.  Then
she rose up with the queerest expression of victorious
mischief glittering in her green eyes.  She burst out laughing
once or twice to herself, as she sat at work, and
sitting down to the piano, she rattled away a triumphant
voluntary on the keys, which made the people pause
under her window to listen to her brilliant music.

That night, there came two notes from Gaunt House
for the little woman, the one containing a card of
invitation from Lord and Lady Steyne to a dinner at Gaunt
House next Friday, while the other enclosed a slip of
gray paper bearing Lord Steyne's signature and the
address of Messrs.  Jones, Brown, and Robinson, Lombard
Street.

Rawdon heard Becky laughing in the night once or
twice.  It was only her delight at going to Gaunt House
and facing the ladies there, she said, which amused her
so.  But the truth was that she was occupied with a great
number of other thoughts.  Should she pay off old Briggs
and give her her conge? Should she astonish Raggles
by settling his account? She turned over all these thoughts
on her pillow, and on the next day, when Rawdon went
out to pay his morning visit to the Club, Mrs. Crawley
(in a modest dress with a veil on) whipped off in a
hackney-coach to the City:  and being landed at Messrs.
Jones and Robinson's bank, presented a document there
to the authority at the desk, who, in reply, asked her
"How she would take it?"

She gently said "she would take a hundred and fifty
pounds in small notes and the remainder in one note":
and passing through St.  Paul's Churchyard stopped there
and bought the handsomest black silk gown for Briggs
which money could buy; and which, with a kiss and the
kindest speeches, she presented to the simple old
spinster.

Then she walked to Mr. Raggles, inquired about his
children affectionately, and gave him fifty pounds on
account.  Then she went to the livery-man from whom
she jobbed her carriages and gratified him with a similar
sum.  "And I hope this will be a lesson to you, Spavin,"
she said, "and that on the next drawing-room day my
brother, Sir Pitt, will not be inconvenienced by being
obliged to take four of us in his carriage to wait upon
His Majesty, because my own carriage is not forthcoming."
It appears there had been a difference on the last
drawing-room day.  Hence the degradation which the
Colonel had almost suffered, of being obliged to enter
the presence of his Sovereign in a hack cab.

These arrangements concluded, Becky paid a visit
upstairs to the before-mentioned desk, which Amelia
Sedley had given her years and years ago, and which
contained a number of useful and valuable little things--in
which private museum she placed the one note which
Messrs.  Jones and Robinson's cashier had given her.



CHAPTER XLIX


In Which We Enjoy Three Courses and a Dessert

When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that
morning, Lord Steyne (who took his chocolate in private
and seldom disturbed the females of his household,
or saw them except upon public days, or when they
crossed each other in the hall, or when from his
pit-box at the opera he surveyed them in their box on the
grand tier) his lordship, we say, appeared among the
ladies and the children who were assembled over the
tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of
Rebecca.

"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list
for your dinner on Friday; and I want you, if you please,
to write a card for Colonel and Mrs. Crawley."

"Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said in a flutter.
"Lady Gaunt writes them."

"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said,
a tall and stately lady, who looked up for an instant
and then down again after she had spoken.  It was not
good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who had
offended him.

"Send the children out of the room.  Go!" said he
pulling at the bell-rope.  The urchins, always frightened
before him, retired:  their mother would have followed
too.  "Not you," he said.  "You stop."

"My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more will you have
the goodness to go to the desk and write that card for
your dinner on Friday?"

"My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt
said; "I will go home."

"I wish you would, and stay there.  You will find
the bailiffs at Bareacres very pleasant company, and I
shall be freed from lending money to your relations and
from your own damned tragedy airs.  Who are you to
give orders here? You have no money.  You've got no
brains.  You were here to have children, and you have
not had any.  Gaunt's tired of you, and George's wife
is the only person in the family who doesn't wish you
were dead.  Gaunt would marry again if you were."

"I wish I were," her Ladyship answered with tears
and rage in her eyes.

"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while
my wife, who is an immaculate saint, as everybody knows,
and never did wrong in her life, has no objection to meet
my young friend Mrs. Crawley.  My Lady Steyne knows
that appearances are sometimes against the best of
women; that lies are often told about the most innocent
of them.  Pray, madam, shall I tell you some little
anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, your mamma?"

"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel
blow," Lady Gaunt said.  To see his wife and daughter
suffering always put his Lordship into a good humour.

"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and
never lay my hand upon a woman, save in the way of
kindness.  I only wish to correct little faults in your
character.  You women are too proud, and sadly lack
humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady
Steyne if he were here.  You mustn't give yourselves airs;
you must be meek and humble, my blessings.  For all
Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated, simple, good-
humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent--even more
innocent than herself.  Her husband's character is not
good, but it is as good as Bareacres', who has played
a little and not paid a great deal, who cheated you out
of the only legacy you ever had and left you a pauper
on my hands.  And Mrs. Crawley is not very well-born,
but she is not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor,
the first de la Jones."

"The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady
George cried out--

"You purchased a contingent reversion with it," the
Marquis said darkly.  "If Gaunt dies, your husband may
come to his honours; your little boys may inherit them,
and who knows what besides? In the meanwhile, ladies,
be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, but don't
give ME any airs.  As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I
shan't demean myself or that most spotless and perfectly
irreproachable lady by even hinting that it requires a
defence.  You will be pleased to receive her with the
utmost cordiality, as you will receive all persons whom
I present in this house.  This house?" He broke out with
a laugh.  "Who is the master of it? and what is it?
This Temple of Virtue belongs to me.  And if I invite all
Newgate or all Bedlam here, by -- they shall be
welcome."

After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort
Lord Steyne treated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms
of insubordination appeared in his household, the
crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey.  Lady Gaunt
wrote the invitation which his Lordship required, and
she and her mother-in-law drove in person, and with
bitter and humiliated hearts, to leave the cards on Mrs.
Rawdon, the reception of which caused that innocent
woman so much pleasure.

There were families in London who would have
sacrificed a year's income to receive such an honour at the
hands of those great ladies.  Mrs. Frederick Bullock, for
instance, would have gone on her knees from May Fair
to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had
been waiting in the City to raise her up and say, "Come
to us next Friday"--not to one of the great crushes and
grand balls of Gaunt House, whither everybody went, but
to the sacred, unapproachable, mysterious, delicious
entertainments, to be admitted to one of which was a
privilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed.

Severe, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the
very highest rank in Vanity Fair.  The distinguished
courtesy with which Lord Steyne treated her charmed
everybody who witnessed his behaviour, caused the severest
critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to
own that his Lordship's heart at least was in the right
place.

The ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to
their aid, in order to repulse the common enemy.  One
of Lady Gaunt's carriages went to Hill Street for her
Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages were in the hands
of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe, it was
said, had been seized by those inexorable Israelites.
Bareacres Castle was theirs, too, with all its costly
pictures, furniture, and articles of vertu--the magnificent
Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; the Lawrence
portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago,
deemed as precious as works of real genius; the matchless
Dancing Nymph of Canova, for which Lady Bareacres
had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacres splendid then,
and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless,
bald, old woman now--a mere rag of a former robe of
state.  Her lord, painted at the same time by Lawrence,
as waving his sabre in front of Bareacres Castle, and
clothed in his uniform as Colonel of the Thistlewood
Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a
greatcoat and a Brutus wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of
mornings chiefly and dining alone at clubs.  He did not
like to dine with Steyne now.  They had run races of
pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the
winner.  But Steyne had more bottom than he and had lasted
him out.  The Marquis was ten times a greater man now
than the young Lord Gaunt of '85, and Bareacres
nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and broken
down.  He had borrowed too much money of Steyne to
find it pleasant to meet his old comrade often.  The latter,
whenever he wished to be merry, used jeeringly to ask
Lady Gaunt why her father had not come to see her.
"He has not been here for four months," Lord Steyne
would say.  "I can always tell by my cheque-book
afterwards, when I get a visit from Bareacres.  What a
comfort it is, my ladies, I bank with one of my sons'
fathers-in-law, and the other banks with me!"

Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the
honour to encounter on this her first presentation to the
grand world, it does not become the present historian
to say much.  There was his Excellency the Prince of
Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly
girthed, with a large military chest, on which the plaque
of his order shone magnificently, and wearing the red
collar of the Golden Fleece round his neck.  He was the
owner of countless flocks.  "Look at his face.  I think he
must be descended from a sheep," Becky whispered to
Lord Steyne.  Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long,
solemn, and white, with the ornament round his neck,.
bore some resemblance to that of a venerable bell-wether.

There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly
attached to the American Embassy and correspondent
of the New York Demagogue, who, by way of making
himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,
during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his
dear friend, George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and
George had been most intimate at Naples and had gone
up Vesuvius together.  Mr. Jones wrote a full and
particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in
the Demagogue.  He mentioned the names and titles of
all the guests, giving biographical sketches of the principal
people.  He described the persons of the ladies with
great eloquence; the service of the table; the size and
costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and wines
served; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable
value of the plate.  Such a dinner he calculated could not
be dished up under fifteen or eighteen dollars per head.
And he was in the habit, until very lately, of sending
over proteges, with letters of recommendation to the
present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the
intimate terms on which he had lived with his dear
friend, the late lord.  He was most indignant that a
young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl of Southdown,
should have taken the pas of him in their procession to
the dining-room.  "Just as I was stepping up to offer my
hand to a very pleasing and witty fashionable, the
brilliant and exclusive Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote
--"the young patrician interposed between me and the
lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology.
I was fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the
lady's husband, a stout red-faced warrior who
distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he had better luck
than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans."

The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite
society wore as many blushes as the face of a boy of
sixteen assumes when he is confronted with his sister's
schoolfellows.  It has been told before that honest Rawdon
had not been much used at any period of his life to
ladies' company.  With the men at the Club or the mess
room, he was well enough; and could ride, bet, smoke,
or play at billiards with the boldest of them.  He had had
his time for female friendships too, but that was twenty
years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of those with
whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as
having been familiar before he became abashed in the
presence of Miss Hardcastle.  The times are such that
one scarcely dares to allude to that kind of company
which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are
frequenting every day, which nightly fills casinos and
dancing-rooms, which is known to exist as well as the
Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at St.  James's
--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral
of societies is determined to ignore.  In a word, although
Colonel Crawley was now five-and-forty years of age,
it had not been his lot in life to meet with a half dozen
good women, besides his paragon of a wife.  All except
her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature
had tamed and won him, scared the worthy Colonel,
and on occasion of his first dinner at Gaunt House he
was not heard to make a single remark except to state
that the weather was very hot.  Indeed Becky would have
left him at home, but that virtue ordained that her
husband should be by her side to protect the timid and
fluttering little creature on her first appearance in polite
society.

On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward,
taking her hand, and greeting her with great courtesy,
and presenting her to Lady Steyne, and their ladyships,
her daughters.  Their ladyships made three stately curtsies,
and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to the
newcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.

Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and
performing a reverence which would have done credit
to the best dancer-master, put herself at Lady Steyne's
feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordship had been
her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she,
Becky, had learned to honour and respect the Steyne
family from the days of her childhood.  The fact is that Lord
Steyne had once purchased a couple of pictures of the
late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan could never
forget her gratitude for that favour.

The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance
--to whom the Colonel's lady made also a most respectful
obeisance:  it was returned with severe dignity by the
exalted person in question.

"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's
acquaintance at Brussels, ten years ago," Becky said in
the most winning manner.  "I had the good fortune to
meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball,
the night before the Battle of Waterloo.  And I recollect
your Ladyship, and my Lady Blanche, your daughter,
sitting in the carriage in the porte-cochere at the Inn,
waiting for horses.  I hope your Ladyship's diamonds are
safe."

Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's.  The
famous diamonds had undergone a famous seizure, it
appears, about which Becky, of course, knew nothing.
Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown into a
window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately,
as Rawdon told him the story of Lady Bareacres
wanting horses and "knuckling down by Jove," to Mrs.
Crawley.  "I think I needn't be afraid of THAT woman,"
Becky thought.  Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged
terrified and angry looks with her daughter and retreated
to a table, where she began to look at pictures with
great energy.

When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance,
the conversation was carried on in the French language,
and the Lady Bareacres and the younger ladies
found, to their farther mortification, that Mrs. Crawley
was much better acquainted with that tongue, and spoke
it with a much better accent than they.  Becky had met
other Hungarian magnates with the army in France in
1816-17.  She asked after her friends with great interest
The foreign personages thought that she was a lady of
great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess asked
severally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom
they conducted to dinner, who was that petite dame who
spoke so well?

Finally, the procession being formed in the order
described by the American diplomatist, they marched into
the apartment where the banquet was served, and which,
as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it, he shall
have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his
fancy.

But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky
knew the tug of war would come.  And then indeed the
little woman found herself in such a situation as made
her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne's
caution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her
own sphere.  As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen
most are Irishmen; so, assuredly, the greatest tyrants
over women are women.  When poor little Becky,
alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither
the great ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched
away and took possession of a table of drawings.  When
Becky followed them to the table of drawings, they
dropped off one by one to the fire again.  She tried to
speak to one of the children (of whom she was
commonly fond in public places), but Master George Gaunt
was called away by his mamma; and the stranger was
treated with such cruelty finally, that even Lady Steyne
herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless
little woman.

"Lord Steyne," said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks
glowed with a blush, "says you sing and play very
beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wish you would do me the
kindness to sing to me."

"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord
Steyne or to you," said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and
seating herself at the piano, began to sing.

She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been
early favourites of Lady Steyne, and with such sweetness
and tenderness that the lady, lingering round the piano,
sat down by its side and listened until the tears rolled
down her eyes.  It is true that the opposition ladies at
the other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless
buzzing and talking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear
those rumours.  She was a child again--and had
wandered back through a forty years' wilderness to her
convent garden.  The chapel organ had pealed the same tones,
the organist, the sister whom she loved best of the
community, had taught them to her in those early happy
days.  She was a girl once more, and the brief period of
her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--she
started when the jarring doors were flung open, and with
a loud laugh from Lord Steyne, the men of the party
entered full of gaiety.

He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence,
and was grateful to his wife for once.  He went
and spoke to her, and called her by her Christian name,
so as again to bring blushes to her pale face--"My wife
says you have been singing like an angel," he said to
Becky.  Now there are angels of two kinds, and both sorts,
it is said, are charming in their way.

Whatever the previous portion of the evening had
been, the rest of that night was a great triumph for
Becky.  She sang her very best, and it was so good that
every one of the men came and crowded round the
piano.  The women, her enemies, were left quite alone.
And Mr. Paul Jefferson Jones thought he had made a
conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to her Ladyship
and praising her delightful friend's first-rate singing.




CHAPTER L


Contains a Vulgar Incident

The Muse, whoever she be, who presides over this
Comic History must now descend from the genteel heights
in which she has been soaring and have the goodness
to drop down upon the lowly roof of John Sedley at
Brompton, and describe what events are taking place
there.  Here, too, in this humble tenement, live care, and
distrust, and dismay.  Mrs. Clapp in the kitchen is
grumbling in secret to her husband about the rent, and
urging the good fellow to rebel against his old friend
and patron and his present lodger.  Mrs. Sedley has
ceased to visit her landlady in the lower regions now,
and indeed is in a position to patronize Mrs. Clapp
no longer.  How can one be condescending to a lady to
whom one owes a matter of forty pounds, and who is
perpetually throwing out hints for the money? The Irish
maidservant has not altered in the least in her kind and
respectful behaviour; but Mrs. Sedley fancies that she
is growing insolent and ungrateful, and, as the guilty
thief who fears each bush an officer, sees threatening
innuendoes and hints of capture in all the girl's speeches
and answers.  Miss Clapp, grown quite a young woman
now, is declared by the soured old lady to be an unbearable
and impudent little minx.  Why Amelia can be so
fond of her, or have her in her room so much, or walk
out with her so constantly, Mrs. Sedley cannot conceive.
The bitterness of poverty has poisoned the life of the
once cheerful and kindly woman.  She is thankless for
Amelia's constant and gentle bearing towards her; carps
at her for her efforts at kindness or service; rails at her
for her silly pride in her child and her neglect of her
parents.  Georgy's house is not a very lively one since
Uncle Jos's annuity has been withdrawn and the little
family are almost upon famine diet.

Amelia thinks, and thinks, and racks her brain, to find
some means of increasing the small pittance upon which
the household is starving.  Can she give lessons in
anything? paint card-racks? do fine work? She finds that
women are working hard, and better than she can, for
twopence a day.  She buys a couple of begilt Bristol
boards at the Fancy Stationer's and paints her very best
upon them--a shepherd with a red waistcoat on one, and
a pink face smiling in the midst of a pencil landscape
--a shepherdess on the other, crossing a little bridge,
with a little dog, nicely shaded.  The man of the Fancy
Repository and Brompton Emporium of Fine Arts (of
whom she bought the screens, vainly hoping that he
would repurchase them when ornamented by her hand)
can hardly hide the sneer with which he examines these
feeble works of art.  He looks askance at the lady who
waits in the shop, and ties up the cards again in their
envelope of whitey-brown paper, and hands them to the
poor widow and Miss Clapp, who had never seen such
beautiful things in her life, and had been quite
confident that the man must give at least two guineas for
the screens.  They try at other shops in the interior of
London, with faint sickening hopes.  "Don't want 'em,"
says one.  "Be off," says another fiercely.  Three-and-sixpence
has been spent in vain--the screens retire to Miss
Clapp's bedroom, who persists in thinking them lovely.

She writes out a little card in her neatest hand, and
after long thought and labour of composition, in which the
public is informed that "A Lady who has some time at
her disposal, wishes to undertake the education of some
little girls, whom she would instruct in English, in French,
in Geography, in History, and in Music--address A.  O.,
at Mr. Brown's"; and she confides the card to the gentleman
of the Fine Art Repository, who consents to allow
it to lie upon the counter, where it grows dingy and
fly-blown.  Amelia passes the door wistfully many a time,
in hopes that Mr. Brown will have some news to give
her, but he never beckons her in.  When she goes to
make little purchases, there is no news for her.  Poor
simple lady, tender and weak--how are you to battle
with the struggling violent world?

She grows daily more care-worn and sad, fixing upon
her child alarmed eyes, whereof the little boy cannot
interpret the expression.  She starts up of a night and
peeps into his room stealthily, to see that he is sleeping
and not stolen away.  She sleeps but little now.  A
constant thought and terror is haunting her.  How she
weeps and prays in the long silent nights--how she tries
to hide from herself the thought which will return to her,
that she ought to part with the boy, that she is the only
barrier between him and prosperity.  She can't, she can't.
Not now, at least.  Some other day.  Oh! it is too hard to
think of and to bear.

A thought comes over her which makes her blush and
turn from herself--her parents might keep the annuity
--the curate would marry her and give a home to her
and the boy.  But George's picture and dearest memory
are there to rebuke her.  Shame and love say no to the
sacrifice.  She shrinks from it as from something unholy,
and such thoughts never found a resting-place in that
pure and gentle bosom.

The combat, which we describe in a sentence or two,
lasted for many weeks in poor Amelia's heart, during
which she had no confidante; indeed, she could never
have one, as she would not allow to herself the
possibility of yielding, though she was giving way daily
before the enemy with whom she had to battle.  One truth
after another was marshalling itself silently against her
and keeping its ground.  Poverty and misery for all, want
and degradation for her parents, injustice to the boy--
one by one the outworks of the little citadel were taken,
in which the poor soul passionately guarded her only
love and treasure.

At the beginning of the struggle, she had written off a
letter of tender supplication to her brother at Calcutta,
imploring him not to withdraw the support which he had
granted to their parents and painting in terms of artless
pathos their lonely and hapless condition.  She did not
know the truth of the matter.  The payment of Jos's
annuity was still regular, but it was a money-lender in the
City who was receiving it:  old Sedley had sold it for a
sum of money wherewith to prosecute his bootless
schemes.  Emmy was calculating eagerly the time that
would elapse before the letter would arrive and be
answered.  She had written down the date in her pocket-
book of the day when she dispatched it.  To her son's
guardian, the good Major at Madras, she had not
communicated any of her griefs and perplexities.  She had
not written to him since she wrote to congratulate him on
his approaching marriage.  She thought with sickening
despondency, that that friend--the only one, the one
who had felt such a regard for her--was fallen away.

One day, when things had come to a very bad pass
--when the creditors were pressing, the mother in
hysteric grief, the father in more than usual gloom, the
inmates of the family avoiding each other, each secretly
oppressed with his private unhappiness and notion of
wrong--the father and daughter happened to be left
alone together, and Amelia thought to comfort her father
by telling him what she had done.  She had written to
Joseph--an answer must come in three or four months.
He was always generous, though careless.  He could not
refuse, when he knew how straitened were the
circumstances of his parents.

Then the poor old gentleman revealed the whole truth
to her--that his son was still paying the annuity, which
his own imprudence had flung away.  He had not dared
to tell it sooner.  He thought Amelia's ghastly and terrified
look, when, with a trembling, miserable voice he made
the confession, conveyed reproaches to him for his
concealment.  "Ah!" said he with quivering lips and turning
away, "you despise your old father now!"

"Oh, papal it is not that," Amelia cried out, falling
on his neck and kissing him many times.  "You are
always good and kind.  You did it for the best.  It is not
for the money--it is--my God! my God! have mercy
upon me, and give me strength to bear this trial"; and
she kissed him again wildly and went away.

Still the father did not know what that explanation
meant, and the burst of anguish with which the poor
girl left him.  It was that she was conquered.  The sentence
was passed.  The child must go from her--to others--to
forget her.  Her heart and her treasure--her joy, hope,
love, worship--her God, almost!  She must give him up,
and then--and then she would go to George, and they
would watch over the child and wait for him until he
came to them in Heaven.

She put on her bonnet, scarcely knowing what she did,
and went out to walk in the lanes by which George used
to come back from school, and where she was in the
habit of going on his return to meet the boy.  It was
May, a half-holiday.  The leaves were all coming out,
the weather was brilliant; the boy came running to her
flushed with health, singing, his bundle of school-books
hanging by a thong.  There he was.  Both her arms were
round him.  No, it was impossible.  They could not be
going to part.  "What is the matter, Mother?" said he;
"you look very pale."

"Nothing, my child," she said and stooped down and
kissed him.

That night Amelia made the boy read the story of
Samuel to her, and how Hannah, his mother, having
weaned him, brought him to Eli the High Priest to
minister before the Lord.  And he read the song of gratitude
which Hannah sang, and which says, who it is who
maketh poor and maketh rich, and bringeth low and
exalteth--how the poor shall be raised up out of the
dust, and how, in his own might, no man shall be strong.
Then he read how Samuel's mother made him a little
coat and brought it to him from year to year when she
came up to offer the yearly sacrifice.  And then, in her
sweet simple way, George's mother made commentaries
to the boy upon this affecting story.  How Hannah, though
she loved her son so much, yet gave him up because
of her vow.  And how she must always have thought of
him as she sat at home, far away, making the little
coat; and Samuel, she was sure, never forgot his mother;
and how happy she must have been as the time came
(and the years pass away very quick) when she should
see her boy and how good and wise he had grown.  This
little sermon she spoke with a gentle solemn voice, and
dry eyes, until she came to the account of their
meeting--then the discourse broke off suddenly, the tender
heart overflowed, and taking the boy to her breast, she
rocked him in her arms and wept silently over him in
a sainted agony of tears.

Her mind being made up, the widow began to take
such measures as seemed right to her for advancing the
end which she proposed.  One day, Miss Osborne, in
Russell Square (Amelia had not written the name or number
of the house for ten years--her youth, her early story
came back to her as she wrote the superscription) one
day Miss Osborne got a letter from Amelia which made
her blush very much and look towards her father, sitting
glooming in his place at the other end of the table.

In simple terms, Amelia told her the reasons which
had induced her to change her mind respecting her boy.
Her father had met with fresh misfortunes which had
entirely ruined him.  Her own pittance was so small that
it would barely enable her to support her parents and
would not suffice to give George the advantages which
were his due.  Great as her sufferings would be at parting
with him she would, by God's help, endure them for the
boy's sake.  She knew that those to whom he was going
would do all in their power to make him happy.  She
described his disposition, such as she fancied it--quick
and impatient of control or harshness, easily to be moved
by love and kindness.  In a postscript, she stipulated that
she should have a written agreement, that she should
see the child as often as she wished--she could not
part with him under any other terms.

"What? Mrs. Pride has come down, has she?" old
Osborne said, when with a tremulous eager voice Miss
Osborne read him the letter.  "Reg'lar starved out, hey?
Ha, ha!  I knew she would." He tried to keep his dignity
and to read his paper as usual--but he could not follow
it.  He chuckled and swore to himself behind the sheet.

At last he flung it down and, scowling at his daughter,
as his wont was, went out of the room into his study
adjoining, from whence he presently returned with a
key.  He flung it to Miss Osborne.

"Get the room over mine--his room that was--ready,"
he said.  "Yes, sir," his daughter replied in a tremble.
It was George's room.  It had not been opened for more
than ten years.  Some of his clothes, papers, handkerchiefs,
whips and caps, fishing-rods and sporting gear,
were still there.  An Army list of 1814, with his name
written on the cover; a little dictionary he was wont to
use in writing; and the Bible his mother had given him,
were on the mantelpiece, with a pair of spurs and a
dried inkstand covered with the dust of ten years.  Ah!
since that ink was wet, what days and people had passed
away!  The writing-book, still on the table, was blotted
with his hand.

Miss Osborne was much affected when she first
entered this room with the servants under her.  She sank
quite pale on the little bed.  "This is blessed news, m'am
--indeed, m'am," the housekeeper said; "and the good
old times is returning, m'am.  The dear little feller, to be
sure, m'am; how happy he will be!  But some folks in
May Fair, m'am, will owe him a grudge, m'am"; and
she clicked back the bolt which held the window-sash
and let the air into the chamber.

"You had better send that woman some money," Mr.
Osborne said, before he went out.  "She shan't want for
nothing.  Send her a hundred pound."

"And I'll go and see her to-morrow?" Miss Osborne
asked.

"That's your look out.  She don't come in here, mind.
No, by --, not for all the money in London.  But she
mustn't want now.  So look out, and get things right." With
which brief speeches Mr. Osborne took leave of his
daughter and went on his accustomed way into the City.

"Here, Papa, is some money," Amelia said that
night, kissing the old man, her father, and putting a bill
for a hundred pounds into his hands.  "And--and, Mamma,
don't be harsh with Georgy.  He--he is not going to stop
with us long." She could say nothing more, and walked
away silently to her room.  Let us close it upon her
prayers and her sorrow.  I think we had best speak little
about so much love and grief.

Miss Osborne came the next day, according to the
promise contained in her note, and saw Amelia.  The
meeting between them was friendly.  A look and a few words
from Miss Osborne showed the poor widow that, with
regard to this woman at least, there need be no fear
lest she should take the first place in her son's affection.
She was cold, sensible, not unkind.  The mother had
not been so well pleased, perhaps, had the rival been
better looking, younger, more affectionate, warmer-
hearted.  Miss Osborne, on the other hand, thought of old
times and memories and could not but be touched with
the poor mother's pitiful situation.  She was conquered,
and laying down her arms, as it were, she humbly
submitted.  That day they arranged together the
preliminaries of the treaty of capitulation.

George was kept from school the next day, and saw
his aunt.  Amelia left them alone together and went to
her room.  She was trying the separation--as that poor
gentle Lady Jane Grey felt the edge of the axe that was
to come down and sever her slender life.  Days were
passed in parleys, visits, preparations.  The widow broke
the matter to Georgy with great caution; she looked to
see him very much affected by the intelligence.  He was
rather elated than otherwise, and the poor woman
turned sadly away.  He bragged about the news that day
to the boys at school; told them how he was going to
live with his grandpapa his father's father, not the one
who comes here sometimes; and that he would be very
rich, and have a carriage, and a pony, and go to a much
finer school, and when he was rich he would buy Leader's
pencil-case and pay the tart-woman.  The boy was the
image of his father, as his fond mother thought.

Indeed I have no heart, on account of our dear
Amelia's sake, to go through the story of George's last
days at home.

At last the day came, the carriage drove up, the little
humble packets containing tokens of love and remembrance
were ready and disposed in the hall long since
--George was in his new suit, for which the tailor had
come previously to measure him.  He had sprung up with
the sun and put on the new clothes, his mother hearing
him from the room close by, in which she had been
lying, in speechless grief and watching.  Days before she
had been making preparations for the end, purchasing
little stores for the boy's use, marking his books and
linen, talking with him and preparing him for the change
--fondly fancying that he needed preparation.

So that he had change, what cared he? He was longing
for it.  By a thousand eager declarations as to what
he would do, when he went to live with his grandfather,
he had shown the poor widow how little the idea of
parting had cast him down.  "He would come and see
his mamma often on the pony," he said.  "He would
come and fetch her in the carriage; they would drive
in the park, and she should have everything she wanted."
The poor mother was fain to content herself with these
selfish demonstrations of attachment, and tried to
convince herself how sincerely her son loved her.  He must
love her.  All children were so:  a little anxious for novelty,
and--no, not selfish, but self-willed.  Her child must
have his enjoyments and ambition in the world.  She
herself, by her own selfishness and imprudent love for him
had denied him his just rights and pleasures hitherto.

I know few things more affecting than that timorous
debasement and self-humiliation of a woman.  How she
owns that it is she and not the man who is guilty; how
she takes all the faults on her side; how she courts in a
manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not
committed and persists in shielding the real culprit!  It
is those who injure women who get the most kindness
from them--they are born timid and tyrants and
maltreat those who are humblest before them.

So poor Amelia had been getting ready in silent misery
for her son's departure, and had passed many and many
a long solitary hour in making preparations for the end.
George stood by his mother, watching her arrangements
without the least concern.  Tears had fallen into his boxes;
passages had been scored in his favourite books; old toys,
relics, treasures had been hoarded away for him, and
packed with strange neatness and care--and of all these
things the boy took no note.  The child goes away smiling
as the mother breaks her heart.  By heavens it is pitiful,
the bootless love of women for children in Vanity Fair.

A few days are past, and the great event of Amelia's
life is consummated.  No angel has intervened.  The child
is sacrificed and offered up to fate, and the widow is
quite alone.

The boy comes to see her often, to be sure.  He rides
on a pony with a coachman behind him, to the delight
of his old grandfather, Sedley, who walks proudly down
the lane by his side.  She sees him, but he is not her boy
any more.  Why, he rides to see the boys at the little
school, too, and to show off before them his new wealth
and splendour.  In two days he has adopted a slightly
imperious air and patronizing manner.  He was born to
command, his mother thinks, as his father was before
him.

It is fine weather now.  Of evenings on the days when
he does not come, she takes a long walk into London
--yes, as far as Russell Square, and rests on the stone
by the railing of the garden opposite Mr. Osborne's house.
It is so pleasant and cool.  She can look up and see the
drawing-room windows illuminated, and, at about nine
o'clock, the chamber in the upper story where Georgy
sleeps.  She knows--he has told her.  She prays there
as the light goes out, prays with an humble heart,
and walks home shrinking and silent.  She is very tired
when she comes home.  Perhaps she will sleep the better
for that long weary walk, and she may dream about
Georgy.

One Sunday she happened to be walking in Russell
Square, at some distance from Mr. Osborne's house (she
could see it from a distance though) when all the bells
of Sabbath were ringing, and George and his aunt came
out to go to church; a little sweep asked for charity,
and the footman, who carried the books, tried to drive
him away; but Georgy stopped and gave him money.  May
God's blessing be on the boy!  Emmy ran round the square
and, coming up to the sweep, gave him her mite too.
All the bells of Sabbath were ringing, and she followed
them until she came to the Foundling Church, into which
she went.  There she sat in a place whence she could
see the head of the boy under his father's tombstone.
Many hundred fresh children's voices rose up there and
sang hymns to the Father Beneficent, and little George's
soul thrilled with delight at the burst of glorious
psalmody.  His mother could not see him for awhile,
through the mist that dimmed her eyes.




CHAPTER LI



In Which a Charade Is Acted Which May or May
Not Puzzle the Reader

After Becky's appearance at my Lord Steyne's private
and select parties, the claims of that estimable woman
as regards fashion were settled, and some of the very
greatest and tallest doors in the metropolis were
speedily opened to her--doors so great and tall that the
beloved reader and writer hereof may hope in vain to
enter at them.  Dear brethren, let us tremble before
those august portals.  I fancy them guarded by grooms
of the chamber with flaming silver forks with which they
prong all those who have not the right of the entree.
They say the honest newspaper-fellow who sits in the
hall and takes down the names of the great ones who
are admitted to the feasts dies after a little time.  He
can't survive the glare of fashion long.  It scorches him
up, as the presence of Jupiter in full dress wasted that
poor imprudent Semele--a giddy moth of a creature who
ruined herself by venturing out of her natural atmosphere.
Her myth ought to be taken to heart amongst the
Tyburnians, the Belgravians--her story, and perhaps
Becky's too.  Ah, ladies!--ask the Reverend Mr. Thurifer
if Belgravia is not a sounding brass and Tyburnia a
tinkling cymbal.  These are vanities.  Even these will pass
away.  And some day or other (but it will be after our
time, thank goodness) Hyde Park Gardens will be no
better known than the celebrated horticultural outskirts
of Babylon, and Belgrave Square will be as desolate as
Baker Street, or Tadmor in the wilderness.

Ladies, are you aware that the great Pitt lived in Baker
Street? What would not your grandmothers have given
to be asked to Lady Hester's parties in that now
decayed mansion? I have dined in it--moi qui vous parle,
I peopled the chamber with ghosts of the mighty dead.
As we sat soberly drinking claret there with men of
to-day, the spirits of the departed came in and took their
places round the darksome board.  The pilot who
weathered the storm tossed off great bumpers of spiritual
port; the shade of Dundas did not leave the ghost of a
heeltap.  Addington sat bowing and smirking in a ghastly
manner, and would not be behindhand when the
noiseless bottle went round; Scott, from under bushy eyebrows,
winked at the apparition of a beeswing; Wilberforce's
eyes went up to the ceiling, so that he did not seem to
know how his glass went up full to his mouth and came
down empty; up to the ceiling which was above us only
yesterday, and which the great of the past days have all
looked at.  They let the house as a furnished lodging
now.  Yes, Lady Hester once lived in Baker Street, and
lies asleep in the wilderness.  Eothen saw her there--
not in Baker Street, but in the other solitude.

It is all vanity to be sure, but who will not own to
liking a little of it? I should like to know what well-
constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes
roast beef? That is a vanity, but may every man who
reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life,
I beg:  aye, though my readers were five hundred
thousand.  Sit down, gentlemen, and fall to, with a good hearty
appetite; the fat, the lean, the gravy, the horse-radish
as you like it--don't spare it.  Another glass of wine,
Jones, my boy--a little bit of the Sunday side.  Yes, let
us eat our fill of the vain thing and be thankful therefor.
And let us make the best of Becky's aristocratic
pleasures likewise--for these too, like all other mortal
delights, were but transitory.

The upshot of her visit to Lord Steyne was that His
Highness the Prince of Peterwaradin took occasion to
renew his acquaintance with Colonel Crawley, when
they met on the next day at the Club, and to compliment
Mrs. Crawley in the Ring of Hyde Park with a
profound salute of the hat.  She and her husband were
invited immediately to one of the Prince's small parties
at Levant House, the