prompt:
Chapter: In Which the Reader Has to Double the Cape

The astonished reader must be called upon to transport himself ten
thousand miles to the military station of Bundlegunge, in the Madras
division of our Indian empire, where our gallant old friends of the
--th regiment are quartered under the command of the brave Colonel, Sir
Michael O'Dowd.  Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer, as it
does ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good tempers and
are not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain. The Colonel plays
a good knife and fork at tiffin and resumes those weapons with great
success at dinner.  He smokes his hookah after both meals and puffs as
quietly while his wife scolds him as he did under the fire of the
French at Waterloo.  Age and heat have not diminished the activity or
the eloquence of the descendant of the Malonys and the Molloys.  Her
Ladyship, our old acquaintance, is as much at home at Madras as at
Brussels in the cantonment as under the tents.  On the march you saw
her at the head of the regiment seated on a royal elephant, a noble
sight. Mounted on that beast, she has been into action with tigers in
the jungle, she has been received by native princes, who have welcomed
her and Glorvina into the recesses of their zenanas and offered her
shawls and jewels which it went to her heart to refuse.  The sentries
of all arms salute her wherever she makes her appearance, and she
touches her hat gravely to their salutation.  Lady O'Dowd is one of the
greatest ladies in the Presidency of Madras--her quarrel with Lady
Smith, wife of Sir Minos Smith the puisne judge, is still remembered by
some at Madras, when the Colonel's lady snapped her fingers in the
Judge's lady's face and said SHE'D never walk behind ever a beggarly
civilian.  Even now, though it is five-and-twenty years ago, people
remember Lady O'Dowd performing a jig at Government House, where she
danced down two Aides-de-Camp, a Major of Madras cavalry, and two
gentlemen of the Civil Service; and, persuaded by Major Dobbin, C.B.,
second in command of the --th, to retire to the supper-room, lassata
nondum satiata recessit.

Peggy O'Dowd is indeed the same as ever, kind in act and thought;
impetuous in temper; eager to command; a tyrant over her Michael; a
dragon amongst all the ladies of the regiment; a mother to all the
young men, whom she tends in their sickness, defends in all their
scrapes, and with whom Lady Peggy is immensely popular.  But the
Subalterns' and Captains' ladies (the Major is unmarried) cabal against
her a good deal.  They say that Glorvina gives herself airs and that
Peggy herself is intolerably domineering.  She interfered with a
little congregation which Mrs. Kirk had got up and laughed the young
men away from her sermons, stating that a soldier's wife had no
business to be a parson--that Mrs. Kirk would be much better mending
her husband's clothes; and, if the regiment wanted sermons, that she
had the finest in the world, those of her uncle, the Dean. She abruptly
put a termination to a flirtation which Lieutenant Stubble of the
regiment had commenced with the Surgeon's wife, threatening to come
down upon Stubble for the money which he had borrowed from her (for the
young fellow was still of an extravagant turn) unless he broke off at
once and went to the Cape on sick leave.  On the other hand, she housed
and sheltered Mrs. Posky, who fled from her bungalow one night, pursued
by her infuriate husband, wielding his second brandy bottle, and
actually carried Posky through the delirium tremens and broke him of
the habit of drinking, which had grown upon that officer, as all evil
habits will grow upon men.  In a word, in adversity she was the best of
comforters, in good fortune the most troublesome of friends, having a
perfectly good opinion of herself always and an indomitable resolution
to have her own way.

Among other points, she had made up her mind that Glorvina should marry
our old friend Dobbin.  Mrs. O'Dowd knew the Major's expectations and
appreciated his good qualities and the high character which he enjoyed
in his profession.  Glorvina, a very handsome, fresh-coloured,
black-haired, blue-eyed young lady, who could ride a horse, or play a
sonata with any girl out of the County Cork, seemed to be the very
person destined to insure Dobbin's happiness--much more than that poor
good little weak-spur'ted Amelia, about whom he used to take on
so.--"Look at Glorvina enter a room," Mrs. O'Dowd would say, "and
compare her with that poor Mrs. Osborne, who couldn't say boo to a
goose.  She'd be worthy of you, Major--you're a quiet man yourself, and
want some one to talk for ye.  And though she does not come of such
good blood as the Malonys or Molloys, let me tell ye, she's of an
ancient family that any nobleman might be proud to marry into."

But before she had come to such a resolution and determined to
subjugate Major Dobbin by her endearments, it must be owned that
Glorvina had practised them a good deal elsewhere.  She had had a
season in Dublin, and who knows how many in Cork, Killarney, and
Mallow? She had flirted with all the marriageable officers whom the
depots of her country afforded, and all the bachelor squires who seemed
eligible.  She had been engaged to be married a half-score times in
Ireland, besides the clergyman at Bath who used her so ill. She had
flirted all the way to Madras with the Captain and chief mate of the
Ramchunder East Indiaman, and had a season at the Presidency with her
brother and Mrs. O'Dowd, who was staying there, while the Major of the
regiment was in command at the station. Everybody admired her there;
everybody danced with her; but no one proposed who was worth the
marrying--one or two exceedingly young subalterns sighed after her, and
a beardless civilian or two, but she rejected these as beneath her
pretensions--and other and younger virgins than Glorvina were married
before her.  There are women, and handsome women too, who have this
fortune in life.  They fall in love with the utmost generosity; they
ride and walk with half the Army-list, though they draw near to forty,
and yet the Misses O'Grady are the Misses O'Grady still:  Glorvina
persisted that but for Lady O'Dowd's unlucky quarrel with the Judge's
lady, she would have made a good match at Madras, where old Mr.
Chutney, who was at the head of the civil service (and who afterwards
married Miss Dolby, a young lady only thirteen years of age who had
just arrived from school in Europe), was just at the point of proposing
to her.

Well, although Lady O'Dowd and Glorvina quarrelled a great number of
times every day, and upon almost every conceivable subject--indeed, if
Mick O'Dowd had not possessed the temper of an angel two such women
constantly about his ears would have driven him out of his senses--yet
they agreed between themselves on this point, that Glorvina should
marry Major Dobbin, and were determined that the Major should have no
rest until the arrangement was brought about. Undismayed by forty or
fifty previous defeats, Glorvina laid siege to him.  She sang Irish
melodies at him unceasingly.  She asked him so frequently and
pathetically, Will ye come to the bower? that it is a wonder how any
man of feeling could have resisted the invitation.  She was never tired
of inquiring, if Sorrow had his young days faded, and was ready to
listen and weep like Desdemona at the stories of his dangers and his
campaigns.  It has been said that our honest and dear old friend used
to perform on the flute in private; Glorvina insisted upon having duets
with him, and Lady O'Dowd would rise and artlessly quit the room when
the young couple were so engaged. Glorvina forced the Major to ride
with her of mornings.  The whole cantonment saw them set out and
return.  She was constantly writing notes over to him at his house,
borrowing his books, and scoring with her great pencil-marks such
passages of sentiment or humour as awakened her sympathy.  She borrowed
his horses, his servants, his spoons, and palanquin--no wonder that
public rumour assigned her to him, and that the Major's sisters in
England should fancy they were about to have a sister-in-law.

Dobbin, who was thus vigorously besieged, was in the meanwhile in a
state of the most odious tranquillity.  He used to laugh when the young
fellows of the regiment joked him about Glorvina's manifest attentions
to him. "Bah!" said he, "she is only keeping her hand in--she
practises upon me as she does upon Mrs. Tozer's piano, because it's the
most handy instrument in the station.  I am much too battered and old
for such a fine young lady as Glorvina." And so he went on riding with
her, and copying music and verses into her albums, and playing at chess
with her very submissively; for it is with these simple amusements that
some officers in India are accustomed to while away their leisure
moments, while others of a less domestic turn hunt hogs, and shoot
snipes, or gamble and smoke cheroots, and betake themselves to
brandy-and-water.  As for Sir Michael O'Dowd, though his lady and her
sister both urged him to call upon the Major to explain himself and not
keep on torturing a poor innocent girl in that shameful way, the old
soldier refused point-blank to have anything to do with the conspiracy.
"Faith, the Major's big enough to choose for himself," Sir Michael
said; "he'll ask ye when he wants ye"; or else he would turn the matter
off jocularly, declaring that "Dobbin was too young to keep house, and
had written home to ask lave of his mamma." Nay, he went farther, and
in private communications with his Major would caution and rally him,
crying, "Mind your oi, Dob, my boy, them girls is bent on mischief--me
Lady has just got a box of gowns from Europe,  and there's a pink satin
for Glorvina, which will finish ye,  Dob, if it's in the power of woman
or satin to move ye."

But the truth is, neither beauty nor fashion could conquer him.  Our
honest friend had but one idea of a woman in his head, and that one did
not in the least resemble Miss Glorvina O'Dowd in pink satin.  A gentle
little woman in black, with large eyes and brown hair, seldom speaking,
save when spoken to, and then in a voice not the least resembling Miss
Glorvina's--a soft young mother tending an infant and beckoning the
Major up with a smile to look at him--a rosy-cheeked lass coming
singing into the room in Russell Square or hanging on George Osborne's
arm, happy and loving--there was but this image that filled our honest
Major's mind, by day and by night, and reigned over it always.  Very
likely Amelia was not like the portrait the Major had formed of her:
there was a figure in a book of fashions which his sisters had in
England, and with which William had made away privately, pasting it
into the lid of his desk, and fancying he saw some resemblance to Mrs.
Osborne in the print, whereas I have seen it, and can vouch that it is
but the picture of a high-waisted gown with an impossible doll's face
simpering over it--and, perhaps, Mr. Dobbin's sentimental Amelia was no
more like the real one than this absurd little print which he
cherished.  But what man in love, of us, is better informed?--or is he
much happier when he sees and owns his delusion? Dobbin was under this
spell.  He did not bother his friends and the public much about his
feelings, or indeed lose his natural rest or appetite on account of
them.  His head has grizzled since we saw him last, and a line or two
of silver may be seen in the soft brown hair likewise.  But his
feelings are not in the least changed or oldened, and his love remains
as fresh as a man's recollections of boyhood are.

We have said how the two Misses Dobbin and Amelia, the Major's
correspondents in Europe, wrote him letters from England, Mrs. Osborne
congratulating him with great candour and cordiality upon his
approaching nuptials with Miss O'Dowd. "Your sister has just kindly
visited me," Amelia wrote in her letter, "and informed me of an
INTERESTING EVENT, upon which I beg to offer my MOST SINCERE
CONGRATULATIONS. I hope the young lady to whom I hear you are to be
UNITED will in every respect prove worthy of one who is himself all
kindness and goodness.  The poor widow has only her prayers to offer
and her cordial cordial wishes for YOUR PROSPERITY!  Georgy sends his
love to HIS DEAR GODPAPA and hopes that you will not forget him. I tell
him that you are about to form OTHER TIES, with one who I am sure
merits ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although such ties must of course
be the strongest and most sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that I
am sure the widow and the child whom you have ever protected and loved
will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART." The letter, which has been
before alluded to, went on in this strain, protesting throughout as to
the extreme satisfaction of the writer.

This letter, which arrived by the very same ship which brought out
Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London (and which you may be sure
Dobbin opened before any one of the other packets which the mail
brought him), put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina,
and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became perfectly
odious to him.  The Major cursed the talk of women, and the sex in
general.  Everything annoyed him that day--the parade was insufferably
hot and wearisome.  Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste his
life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting fools through
their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter of the young men at mess was
more than ever jarring. What cared he, a man on the high road to forty,
to know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or what were the
performances of Ensign Brown's mare? The jokes about the table filled
him with shame.  He was too old to listen to the banter of the
assistant surgeon and the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd,
with his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily.  The old man had
listened to those jokes any time these thirty years--Dobbin himself had
been fifteen years hearing them.  And after the boisterous dulness of
the mess-table, the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!
It was unbearable, shameful.  "O Amelia, Amelia," he thought, "you to
whom I have been so faithful--you reproach me!  It is because you
cannot feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life.  And you reward
me after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage,
forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!" Sick and sorry felt poor
William; more than ever wretched and lonely.  He would like to have
done with life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and
unsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
seemed to him.  He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to go
home.  Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him.  No fidelity, no
constant truth and passion, could move her into warmth.  She would not
see that he loved her.  Tossing in his bed, he spoke out to her. "Good
God, Amelia!" he said, "don't you know that I only love you in the
world--you, who are a stone to me--you, whom I tended through months
and months of illness and grief, and who bade me farewell with a smile
on your face, and forgot me before the door shut between us!" The
native servants lying outside his verandas beheld with wonder the
Major, so cold and quiet ordinarily, at present so passionately moved
and cast down.  Would she have pitied him had she seen him? He read
over and over all the letters which he ever had from her--letters of
business relative to the little property which he had made her believe
her husband had left to her--brief notes of invitation--every scrap of
writing that she had ever sent to him--how cold, how kind, how
hopeless, how selfish they were!

Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read and
appreciate this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign of
Amelia might have been over, and that friend William's love might have
flowed into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jetty
ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this dashing young
woman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather on making the
Major admire HER--a most vain and hopeless task, too, at least
considering the means that the poor girl possessed to carry it out.
She curled her hair and showed her shoulders at him, as much as to say,
did ye ever see such jet ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned at
him so that he might see that every tooth in her head was sound--and he
never heeded all these charms.  Very soon after the arrival of the box
of millinery, and perhaps indeed in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the
ladies of the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's Regiments
and the civilians at the station.  Glorvina sported the killing pink
frock, and the Major, who attended the party and walked very ruefully
up and down the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment.
Glorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young subalterns of the
station, and the Major was not in the least jealous of her performance,
or angry because Captain Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper.
It was not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, and
Glorvina had nothing more.

So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this life, and each
longing for what he or she could not get. Glorvina cried with rage at
the failure.  She had set her mind on the Major "more than on any of
the others," she owned, sobbing.  "He'll break my heart, he will,
Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when they were good
friends; "sure every one of me frocks must be taken in--it's such a
skeleton I'm growing." Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, on
horseback or the music-stool, it was all the same to the Major.  And
the Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints, would
suggest that Glory should have some black frocks out in the next box
from London, and told a mysterious story of a lady in Ireland who died
of grief for the loss of her husband before she got ere a one.

While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing,
and declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europe
bringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the heartless
man.  These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that of
the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized among his the
handwriting of his sister, who always crossed and recrossed her letters
to her brother--gathered together all the possible bad news which she
could collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly
frankness, and always left him miserable for the day after "dearest
William" had achieved the perusal of one of her epistles--the truth
must be told that dearest William did not hurry himself to break the
seal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited for a particularly favourable
day and mood for doing so.  A fortnight before, moreover, he had
written to scold her for telling those absurd stories to Mrs. Osborne,
and had despatched a letter in reply to that lady, undeceiving her with
respect to the reports concerning him and assuring her that "he had no
sort of present intention of altering his condition."

Two or three nights after the arrival of the second package of letters,
the Major had passed the evening pretty cheerfully at Lady O'Dowd's
house, where Glorvina thought that he listened with rather more
attention than usual to the Meeting of the Wathers, the Minsthrel Boy,
and one or two other specimens of song with which she favoured him (the
truth is, he was no more listening to Glorvina than to the howling of
the jackals in the moonlight outside, and the delusion was hers as
usual), and having played his game at chess with her (cribbage with the
surgeon was Lady O'Dowd's favourite evening pastime), Major Dobbin took
leave of the Colonel's family at his usual hour and retired to his own
house.

There on his table, his sister's letter lay reproaching him.  He took
it up, ashamed rather of his negligence regarding it, and prepared
himself for a disagreeable hour's communing with that crabbed-handed
absent relative. . . . It may have been an hour after the Major's
departure from the Colonel's house--Sir Michael was sleeping the sleep
of the just; Glorvina had arranged her black ringlets in the
innumerable little bits of paper, in which it was her habit to confine
them; Lady O'Dowd, too, had gone to her bed in the nuptial chamber, on
the ground-floor, and had tucked her musquito curtains round her fair
form, when the guard at the gates of the Commanding-Officer's compound
beheld Major Dobbin, in the moonlight, rushing towards the house with a
swift step and a very agitated countenance, and he passed the sentinel
and went up to the windows of the Colonel's bedchamber.

"O'Dowd--Colonel!" said Dobbin and kept up a great shouting.

"Heavens, Meejor!" said Glorvina of the curl-papers, putting out her
head too, from her window.

"What is it, Dob, me boy?" said the Colonel, expecting there was a fire
in the station, or that the route had come from headquarters.

"I--I must have leave of absence.  I must go to England--on the most
urgent private affairs," Dobbin said.

"Good heavens, what has happened!" thought Glorvina, trembling with all
the papillotes.

"I want to be off--now--to-night," Dobbin continued; and the Colonel
getting up, came out to parley with him.

In the postscript of Miss Dobbin's cross-letter, the Major had just
come upon a paragraph, to the following effect:--"I drove yesterday to
see your old ACQUAINTANCE, Mrs. Osborne.  The wretched place they live
at, since they were bankrupts, you know--Mr. S., to judge from a BRASS
PLATE on the door of his hut (it is little better) is a coal-merchant.
The little boy, your godson, is certainly a fine child, though forward,
and inclined to be saucy and self-willed. But we have taken notice of
him as you wish it, and have introduced him to his aunt, Miss O., who
was rather pleased with him.  Perhaps his grandpapa, not the bankrupt
one, who is almost doting, but Mr. Osborne, of Russell Square, may be
induced to relent towards the child of your friend, HIS ERRING AND
SELF-WILLED SON.  And Amelia will not be ill-disposed to give him up.
The widow is CONSOLED, and is about to marry a reverend gentleman, the
Rev. Mr. Binny, one of the curates of Brompton.  A poor match.  But
Mrs. O. is getting old, and I saw a great deal of grey in her hair--she
was in very good spirits:  and your little godson overate himself at
our house. Mamma sends her love with that of your affectionate, Ann
Dobbin."

A Round-about Chapter between London and Hampshire

Our old friends the Crawleys' family house, in Great Gaunt Street,
still bore over its front the hatchment which had been placed there as
a token of mourning for Sir Pitt Crawley's demise, yet this heraldic
emblem was in itself a very splendid and gaudy piece of furniture, and
all the rest of the mansion became more brilliant than it had ever been
during the late baronet's reign.  The black outer-coating of the bricks
was removed, and they appeared with a cheerful, blushing face streaked
with white: the old bronze lions of the knocker were gilt handsomely,
the railings painted, and the dismallest house in Great Gaunt Street
became the smartest in the whole quarter, before the green leaves in
Hampshire had replaced those yellowing ones which were on the trees in
Queen's Crawley Avenue when old Sir Pitt Crawley passed under them for
the last time.

A little woman, with a carriage to correspond, was perpetually seen
about this mansion; an elderly spinster, accompanied by a little boy,
also might be remarked coming thither daily.  It was Miss Briggs and
little Rawdon, whose business it was to see to the inward renovation of
Sir Pitt's house, to superintend the female band engaged in stitching
the blinds and hangings, to poke and rummage in the drawers and
cupboards crammed with the dirty relics and congregated trumperies of a
couple of generations of Lady Crawleys, and to take inventories of the
china, the glass, and other properties in the closets and store-rooms.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley was general-in-chief over these arrangements, with
full orders from Sir Pitt to sell, barter, confiscate, or purchase
furniture, and she enjoyed herself not a little in an occupation which
gave full scope to her taste and ingenuity.  The renovation of the
house was determined upon when Sir Pitt came to town in November to see
his lawyers, and when he passed nearly a week in Curzon Street, under
the roof of his affectionate brother and sister.

He had put up at an hotel at first, but, Becky, as soon as she heard of
the Baronet's arrival, went off alone to greet him, and returned in an
hour to Curzon Street with Sir Pitt in the carriage by her side.  It
was impossible sometimes to resist this artless little creature's
hospitalities, so kindly were they pressed, so frankly and amiably
offered.  Becky seized Pitt's hand in a transport of gratitude when he
agreed to come.  "Thank you," she said, squeezing it and looking into
the Baronet's eyes, who blushed a good deal; "how happy this will make
Rawdon!" She bustled up to Pitt's bedroom, leading on the servants, who
were carrying his trunks thither.  She came in herself laughing, with a
coal-scuttle out of her own room.

A fire was blazing already in Sir Pitt's apartment (it was Miss
Briggs's room, by the way, who was sent upstairs to sleep with the
maid).  "I knew I should bring you," she said with pleasure beaming in
her glance.  Indeed, she was really sincerely happy at having him for a
guest.

Becky made Rawdon dine out once or twice on business, while Pitt stayed
with them, and the Baronet passed the happy evening alone with her and
Briggs.  She went downstairs to the kitchen and actually cooked little
dishes for him.  "Isn't it a good salmi?" she said; "I made it for you.
I can make you better dishes than that, and will when you come to see
me."

"Everything you do, you do well," said the Baronet gallantly.  "The
salmi is excellent indeed."

"A poor man's wife," Rebecca replied gaily, "must make herself useful,
you know"; on which her brother-in-law vowed that "she was fit to be
the wife of an Emperor, and that to be skilful in domestic duties was
surely one of the most charming of woman's qualities." And Sir Pitt
thought, with something like mortification, of Lady Jane at home, and
of a certain pie which she had insisted on making, and serving to him
at dinner--a most abominable pie.

Besides the salmi, which was made of Lord Steyne's pheasants from his
lordship's cottage of Stillbrook, Becky gave her brother-in-law a
bottle of white wine, some that Rawdon had brought with him from
France, and had picked up for nothing, the little story-teller said;
whereas the liquor was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the Marquis
of Steyne's famous cellars, which brought fire into the Baronet's
pallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame.

Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc, she gave him
her hand, and took him up to the drawing-room, and made him snug on the
sofa by the fire, and let him talk as she listened with the tenderest
kindly interest, sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for her dear
little boy.  Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly humble and
virtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-box.  It had
got to be too small for Rawdon long before it was finished.

Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she sang to him, she
coaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he found himself more and more
glad every day to get back from the lawyer's at Gray's Inn, to the
blazing fire in Curzon Street--a gladness in which the men of law
likewise participated, for Pitt's harangues were of the longest--and so
that when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing. How pretty
she looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage and waving her
handkerchief when he had taken his place in the mail! She put the
handkerchief to her eyes once.  He pulled his sealskin cap over his, as
the coach drove away, and, sinking back, he thought to himself how she
respected him and how he deserved it, and how Rawdon was a foolish dull
fellow who didn't half appreciate his wife; and how mum and stupid his
own wife was compared to that brilliant little Becky.  Becky had hinted
every one of these things herself, perhaps, but so delicately and
gently that you hardly knew when or where.  And, before they parted, it
was agreed that the house in London should be redecorated for the next
season, and that the brothers' families should meet again in the
country at Christmas.

"I wish you could have got a little money out of him," Rawdon said to
his wife moodily when the Baronet was gone.  "I should like to give
something to old Raggles, hanged if I shouldn't.  It ain't right, you
know, that the old fellow should be kept out of all his money.  It may
be inconvenient, and he might let to somebody else besides us, you
know."

"Tell him," said Becky, "that as soon as Sir Pitt's affairs are
settled, everybody will be paid, and give him a little something on
account.  Here's a cheque that Pitt left for the boy," and she took
from her bag and gave her husband a paper which his brother had handed
over to her, on behalf of the little son and heir of the younger branch
of the Crawleys.

The truth is, she had tried personally the ground on which her husband
expressed a wish that she should venture--tried it ever so delicately,
and found it unsafe. Even at a hint about embarrassments, Sir Pitt
Crawley was off and alarmed.  And he began a long speech, explaining
how straitened he himself was in money matters; how the tenants would
not pay; how his father's affairs, and the expenses attendant upon the
demise of the old gentleman, had involved him; how he wanted to pay off
incumbrances; and how the bankers and agents were overdrawn; and Pitt
Crawley ended by making a compromise with his sister-in-law and giving
her a very small sum for the benefit of her little boy.

Pitt knew how poor his brother and his brother's family must be.  It
could not have escaped the notice of such a cool and experienced old
diplomatist that Rawdon's family had nothing to live upon, and that
houses and carriages are not to be kept for nothing.  He knew very well
that he was the proprietor or appropriator of the money, which,
according to all proper calculation, ought to have fallen to his
younger brother, and he had, we may be sure, some secret pangs of
remorse within him, which warned him that he ought to perform some act
of justice, or, let us say, compensation, towards these disappointed
relations.  A just, decent man, not without brains, who said his
prayers, and knew his catechism, and did his duty outwardly through
life, he could not be otherwise than aware that something was due to
his brother at his hands, and that morally he was Rawdon's debtor.

But, as one reads in the columns of the Times newspaper every now and
then, queer announcements from the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
acknowledging the receipt of 50 pounds from A. B., or 10 pounds from
W. T., as conscience-money, on account of taxes due by the said A. B.
or W. T., which payments the penitents beg the Right Honourable
gentleman to acknowledge through the medium of the public press--so is
the Chancellor no doubt, and the reader likewise, always perfectly sure
that the above-named A. B.  and W. T. are only paying a very small
instalment of what they really owe, and that the man who sends up a
twenty-pound note has very likely hundreds or thousands more for which
he ought to account.  Such, at least, are my feelings, when I see
A. B. or W. T.'s insufficient acts of repentance.  And I have no doubt
that Pitt Crawley's contrition, or kindness if you will, towards his
younger brother, by whom he had so much profited, was only a very small
dividend upon the capital sum in which he was indebted to Rawdon. Not
everybody is willing to pay even so much.  To part with money is a
sacrifice beyond almost all men endowed with a sense of order.  There
is scarcely any man alive who does not think himself meritorious for
giving his neighbour five pounds.  Thriftless gives, not from a
beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending. He
would not deny himself one enjoyment; not his opera-stall, not his
horse, not his dinner, not even the pleasure of giving Lazarus the five
pounds.  Thrifty, who is good, wise, just, and owes no man a penny,
turns from a beggar, haggles with a hackney-coachman, or denies a poor
relation, and I doubt which is the most selfish of the two.  Money has
only a different value in the eyes of each.

So, in a word, Pitt Crawley thought he would do something for his
brother, and then thought that he would think about it some other time.

And with regard to Becky, she was not a woman who expected too much
from the generosity of her neighbours, and so was quite content with
all that Pitt Crawley had done for her.  She was acknowledged by the
head of the family.  If Pitt would not give her anything, he would get
something for her some day.  If she got no money from her
brother-in-law, she got what was as good as money--credit.  Raggles was
made rather easy in his mind by the spectacle of the union between the
brothers, by a small payment on the spot, and by the promise of a much
larger sum speedily to be assigned to him.  And Rebecca told Miss
Briggs, whose Christmas dividend upon the little sum lent by her Becky
paid with an air of candid joy, and as if her exchequer was brimming
over with gold--Rebecca, we say, told Miss Briggs, in strict confidence
that she had conferred with Sir Pitt, who was famous as a financier, on
Briggs's special behalf, as to the most profitable investment of Miss
B.'s remaining capital; that Sir Pitt, after much consideration, had
thought of a most safe and advantageous way in which Briggs could lay
out her money; that, being especially interested in her as an attached
friend of the late Miss Crawley, and of the whole family, and that long
before he left town, he had recommended that she should be ready with
the money at a moment's notice, so as to purchase at the most
favourable opportunity the shares which Sir Pitt had in his eye.  Poor
Miss Briggs was very grateful for this mark of Sir Pitt's attention--it
came so unsolicited, she said, for she never should have thought of
removing the money from the funds--and the delicacy enhanced the
kindness of the office; and she promised to see her man of business
immediately and be ready with her little cash at the proper hour.

And this worthy woman was so grateful for the kindness of Rebecca in
the matter, and for that of her generous benefactor, the Colonel, that
she went out and spent a great part of her half-year's dividend in the
purchase of a black velvet coat for little Rawdon, who, by the way, was
grown almost too big for black velvet now, and was of a size and age
befitting him for the assumption of the virile jacket and pantaloons.

He was a fine open-faced boy, with blue eyes and waving flaxen hair,
sturdy in limb, but generous and soft in heart, fondly attaching
himself to all who were good to him--to the pony--to Lord Southdown,
who gave him the horse (he used to blush and glow all over when he saw
that kind young nobleman)--to the groom who had charge of the pony--to
Molly, the cook, who crammed him with ghost stories at night, and with
good things from the dinner--to Briggs, whom he plagued and laughed
at--and to his father especially, whose attachment towards the lad was
curious too to witness.  Here, as he grew to be about eight years old,
his attachments may be said to have ended.  The beautiful mother-vision
had faded away after a while.  During near two years she had scarcely
spoken to the child. She disliked him.  He had the measles and the
hooping-cough.  He bored her.  One day when he was standing at the
landing-place, having crept down from the upper regions, attracted by
the sound of his mother's voice, who was singing to Lord Steyne, the
drawing room door opening suddenly, discovered the little spy, who but
a moment before had been rapt in delight, and listening to the music.

His mother came out and struck him violently a couple of boxes on the
ear.  He heard a laugh from the Marquis in the inner room (who was
amused by this free and artless exhibition of Becky's temper) and fled
down below to his friends of the kitchen, bursting in an agony of grief.

"It is not because it hurts me," little Rawdon gasped
out--"only--only"--sobs and tears wound up the sentence in a storm.  It
was the little boy's heart that was bleeding.  "Why mayn't I hear her
singing?  Why don't she ever sing to me--as she does to that baldheaded
man with the large teeth?" He gasped out at various intervals these
exclamations of rage and grief.  The cook looked at the housemaid, the
housemaid looked knowingly at the footman--the awful kitchen inquisition
which sits in judgement in every house and knows everything--sat on
Rebecca at that moment.

After this incident, the mother's dislike increased to hatred; the
consciousness that the child was in the house was a reproach and a pain
to her.  His very sight annoyed her.  Fear, doubt, and resistance
sprang up, too, in the boy's own bosom.  They were separated from that
day of the boxes on the ear.

Lord Steyne also heartily disliked the boy.  When they met by
mischance, he made sarcastic bows or remarks to the child, or glared at
him with savage-looking eyes. Rawdon used to stare him in the face and
double his little fists in return.  He knew his enemy, and this
gentleman, of all who came to the house, was the one who angered him
most.  One day the footman found him squaring his fists at Lord
Steyne's hat in the hall.  The footman told the circumstance as a good
joke to Lord Steyne's coachman; that officer imparted it to Lord
Steyne's gentleman, and to the servants' hall in general. And very soon
afterwards, when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley made her appearance at Gaunt
House, the porter who unbarred the gates, the servants of all uniforms
in the hall, the functionaries in white waistcoats, who bawled out from
landing to landing the names of Colonel and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, knew
about her, or fancied they did. The man who brought her refreshment and
stood behind her chair, had talked her character over with the large
gentleman in motley-coloured clothes at his side.  Bon Dieu! it is
awful, that servants' inquisition!  You see a woman in a great party in
a splendid saloon, surrounded by faithful admirers, distributing
sparkling glances, dressed to perfection, curled, rouged, smiling and
happy--Discovery walks respectfully up to her, in the shape of a huge
powdered man with large calves and a tray of ices--with Calumny (which
is as fatal as truth) behind him, in the shape of the hulking fellow
carrying the wafer-biscuits.  Madam, your secret will be talked over by
those men at their club at the public-house to-night.  Jeames will tell
Chawles his notions about you over their pipes and pewter beer-pots.
Some people ought to have mutes for servants in Vanity Fair--mutes who
could not write. If you are guilty, tremble.  That fellow behind your
chair may be a Janissary with a bow-string in his plush breeches
pocket.  If you are not guilty, have a care of appearances, which are
as ruinous as guilt.

"Was Rebecca guilty or not?" the Vehmgericht of the servants' hall had
pronounced against her.

And, I shame to say, she would not have got credit had they not
believed her to be guilty.  It was the sight of the Marquis of Steyne's
carriage-lamps at her door, contemplated by Raggles, burning in the
blackness of midnight, "that kep him up," as he afterwards said, that
even more than Rebecca's arts and coaxings.

And so--guiltless very likely--she was writhing and pushing onward
towards what they call "a position in society," and the servants were
pointing at her as lost and ruined.  So you see Molly, the housemaid,
of a morning, watching a spider in the doorpost lay his thread and
laboriously crawl up it, until, tired of the sport, she raises her
broom and sweeps away the thread and the artificer.

A day or two before Christmas, Becky, her husband and her son made
ready and went to pass the holidays at the seat of their ancestors at
Queen's Crawley.  Becky would have liked to leave the little brat
behind, and would have done so but for Lady Jane's urgent invitations
to the youngster, and the symptoms of revolt and discontent which
Rawdon manifested at her neglect of her son.  "He's the finest boy in
England," the father said in a tone of reproach to her, "and you don't
seem to care for him, Becky, as much as you do for your spaniel.  He
shan't bother you much; at home he will be away from you in the
nursery, and he shall go outside on the coach with me."

"Where you go yourself because you want to smoke those filthy cigars,"
replied Mrs. Rawdon.

"I remember when you liked 'em though," answered the husband.

Becky laughed; she was almost always good-humoured. "That was when I
was on my promotion, Goosey," she said.  "Take Rawdon outside with you
and give him a cigar too if you like."

Rawdon did not warm his little son for the winter's journey in this
way, but he and Briggs wrapped up the child in shawls and comforters,
and he was hoisted respectfully onto the roof of the coach in the dark
morning, under the lamps of the White Horse Cellar; and with no small
delight he watched the dawn rise and made his first journey to the
place which his father still called home. It was a journey of infinite
pleasure to the boy, to whom the incidents of the road afforded endless
interest, his father answering to him all questions connected with it
and telling him who lived in the great white house to the right, and
whom the park belonged to.  His mother, inside the vehicle, with her
maid and her furs, her wrappers, and her scent bottles, made such a
to-do that you would have thought she never had been in a stage-coach
before--much less, that she had been turned out of this very one to
make room for a paying passenger on a certain journey performed some
half-score years ago.

It was dark again when little Rawdon was wakened up to enter his
uncle's carriage at Mudbury, and he sat and looked out of it wondering
as the great iron gates flew open, and at the white trunks of the limes
as they swept by, until they stopped, at length, before the light
windows of the Hall, which were blazing and comfortable with Christmas
welcome.  The hall-door was flung open--a big fire was burning in the
great old fire-place--a carpet was down over the chequered black
flags--"It's the old Turkey one that used to be in the Ladies'
Gallery," thought Rebecca, and the next instant was kissing Lady Jane.

She and Sir Pitt performed the same salute with great gravity; but
Rawdon, having been smoking, hung back rather from his sister-in-law,
whose two children came up to their cousin; and, while Matilda held out
her hand and kissed him, Pitt Binkie Southdown, the son and heir, stood
aloof rather and examined him as a little dog does a big dog.

Then the kind hostess conducted her guests to the snug apartments
blazing with cheerful fires.  Then the young ladies came and knocked at
Mrs. Rawdon's door, under the pretence that they were desirous to be
useful, but in reality to have the pleasure of inspecting the contents
of her band and bonnet-boxes, and her dresses which, though black, were
of the newest London fashion.  And they told her how much the Hall was
changed for the better, and how old Lady Southdown was gone, and how
Pitt was taking his station in the county, as became a Crawley in fact.
Then the great dinner-bell having rung, the family assembled at dinner,
at which meal Rawdon Junior was placed by his aunt, the good-natured
lady of the house, Sir Pitt being uncommonly attentive to his
sister-in-law at his own right hand.

Little Rawdon exhibited a fine appetite and showed a gentlemanlike
behaviour.

"I like to dine here," he said to his aunt when he had completed his
meal, at the conclusion of which, and after a decent grace by Sir Pitt,
the younger son and heir was introduced, and was perched on a high
chair by the Baronet's side, while the daughter took possession of the
place and the little wine-glass prepared for her near her mother.  "I
like to dine here," said Rawdon Minor, looking up at his relation's
kind face.

"Why?" said the good Lady Jane.

"I dine in the kitchen when I am at home," replied Rawdon Minor, "or
else with Briggs." But Becky was so engaged with the Baronet, her host,
pouring out a flood of compliments and delights and raptures, and
admiring young Pitt Binkie, whom she declared to be the most beautiful,
intelligent, noble-looking little creature, and so like his father,
that she did not hear the remarks of her own flesh and blood at the
other end of the broad shining table.

As a guest, and it being the first night of his arrival, Rawdon the
Second was allowed to sit up until the hour when tea being over, and a
great gilt book being laid on the table before Sir Pitt, all the
domestics of the family streamed in, and Sir Pitt read prayers.  It was
the first time the poor little boy had ever witnessed or heard of such
a ceremonial.

The house had been much improved even since the Baronet's brief reign,
and was pronounced by Becky to be perfect, charming, delightful, when
she surveyed it in his company.  As for little Rawdon, who examined it
with the children for his guides, it seemed to him a perfect palace of
enchantment and wonder.  There were long galleries, and ancient state
bedrooms, there were pictures and old China, and armour.  There were
the rooms in which Grandpapa died, and by which the children walked
with terrified looks.  "Who was Grandpapa?" he asked; and they told him
how he used to be very old, and used to be wheeled about in a
garden-chair, and they showed him the garden-chair one day rotting in
the out-house in which it had lain since the old gentleman had been
wheeled away yonder to the church, of which the spire was glittering
over the park elms.

The brothers had good occupation for several mornings in examining the
improvements which had been effected by Sir Pitt's genius and economy.
And as they walked or rode, and looked at them, they could talk without
too much boring each other.  And Pitt took care to tell Rawdon what a
heavy outlay of money these improvements had occasioned, and that a man
of landed and funded property was often very hard pressed for twenty
pounds. "There is that new lodge-gate," said Pitt, pointing to it
humbly with the bamboo cane, "I can no more pay for it before the
dividends in January than I can fly."

"I can lend you, Pitt, till then," Rawdon answered rather ruefully; and
they went in and looked at the restored lodge, where the family arms
were just new scraped in stone, and where old Mrs. Lock, for the first
time these many long years, had tight doors, sound roofs, and whole
windows.

Between Hampshire and London

Sir Pitt Crawley had done more than repair fences and restore
dilapidated lodges on the Queen's Crawley estate. Like a wise man he
had set to work to rebuild the injured popularity of his house and stop
up the gaps and ruins in which his name had been left by his
disreputable and thriftless old predecessor.  He was elected for the
borough speedily after his father's demise; a magistrate, a member of
parliament, a county magnate and representative of an ancient family,
he made it his duty to show himself before the Hampshire public,
subscribed handsomely to the county charities, called assiduously upon
all the county folk, and laid himself out in a word to take that
position in Hampshire, and in the Empire afterwards, to which he
thought his prodigious talents justly entitled him.  Lady Jane was
instructed to be friendly with the Fuddlestones, and the Wapshots, and
the other famous baronets, their neighbours.  Their carriages might
frequently be seen in the Queen's Crawley avenue now; they dined pretty
frequently at the Hall (where the cookery was so good that it was clear
Lady Jane very seldom had a hand in it), and in return Pitt and his
wife most energetically dined out in all sorts of weather and at all
sorts of distances.  For though Pitt did not care for joviality, being
a frigid man of poor hearth and appetite, yet he considered that to be
hospitable and condescending was quite incumbent on his station, and
every time that he got a headache from too long an after-dinner
sitting, he felt that he was a martyr to duty.  He talked about crops,
corn-laws, politics, with the best country gentlemen. He (who had been
formerly inclined to be a sad free-thinker on these points) entered
into poaching and game preserving with ardour.  He didn't hunt; he
wasn't a hunting man; he was a man of books and peaceful habits; but he
thought that the breed of horses must be kept up in the country, and
that the breed of foxes must therefore be looked to, and for his part,
if his friend, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, liked to draw his country
and meet as of old the F.  hounds used to do at Queen's Crawley, he
should be happy to see him there, and the gentlemen of the Fuddlestone
hunt.  And to Lady Southdown's dismay too he became more orthodox in
his tendencies every day; gave up preaching in public and attending
meeting-houses; went stoutly to church; called on the Bishop and all
the Clergy at Winchester; and made no objection when the Venerable
Archdeacon Trumper asked for a game of whist.  What pangs must have
been those of Lady Southdown, and what an utter castaway she must have
thought her son-in-law for permitting such a godless diversion!  And
when, on the return of the family from an oratorio at Winchester, the
Baronet announced to the young ladies that he should next year very
probably take them to the "county balls," they worshipped him for his
kindness.  Lady Jane was only too obedient, and perhaps glad herself to
go.  The Dowager wrote off the direst descriptions of her daughter's
worldly behaviour to the authoress of the Washerwoman of Finchley
Common at the Cape; and her house in Brighton being about this time
unoccupied, returned to that watering-place, her absence being not very
much deplored by her children. We may suppose, too, that Rebecca, on
paying a second visit to Queen's Crawley, did not feel particularly
grieved at the absence of the lady of the medicine chest; though she
wrote a Christmas letter to her Ladyship, in which she respectfully
recalled herself to Lady Southdown's recollection, spoke with gratitude
of the delight which her Ladyship's conversation had given her on the
former visit, dilated on the kindness with which her Ladyship had
treated her in sickness, and declared that everything at Queen's
Crawley reminded her of her absent friend.

A great part of the altered demeanour and popularity of Sir Pitt
Crawley might have been traced to the counsels of that astute little
lady of Curzon Street.  "You remain a Baronet--you consent to be a mere
country gentleman," she said to him, while he had been her guest in
London. "No, Sir Pitt Crawley, I know you better.  I know your talents
and your ambition.  You fancy you hide them both, but you can conceal
neither from me.  I showed Lord Steyne your pamphlet on malt.  He was
familiar with it, and said it was in the opinion of the whole Cabinet
the most masterly thing that had appeared on the subject. The Ministry
has its eye upon you, and I know what you want.  You want to
distinguish yourself in Parliament; every one says you are the finest
speaker in England (for your speeches at Oxford are still remembered).
You want to be Member for the County, where, with your own vote and
your borough at your back, you can command anything.  And you want to
be Baron Crawley of Queen's Crawley, and will be before you die.  I saw
it all.  I could read your heart, Sir Pitt.  If I had a husband who
possessed your intellect as he does your name, I sometimes think I
should not be unworthy of him--but--but I am your kinswoman now," she
added with a laugh.  "Poor little penniless, I have got a little
interest--and who knows, perhaps the mouse may be able to aid the
lion." Pitt Crawley was amazed and enraptured with her speech.  "How
that woman comprehends me!" he said. "I never could get Jane to read
three pages of the malt pamphlet.  She has no idea that I have
commanding talents or secret ambition.  So they remember my speaking at
Oxford, do they? The rascals!  Now that I represent my borough and may
sit for the county, they begin to recollect me!  Why, Lord Steyne cut
me at the levee last year; they are beginning to find out that Pitt
Crawley is some one at last.  Yes, the man was always the same whom
these people neglected:  it was only the opportunity that was wanting,
and I will show them now that I can speak and act as well as write.
Achilles did not declare himself until they gave him the sword.  I hold
it now, and the world shall yet hear of Pitt Crawley."

Therefore it was that this roguish diplomatist has grown so hospitable;
that he was so civil to oratorios and hospitals; so kind to Deans and
Chapters; so generous in giving and accepting dinners; so uncommonly
gracious to farmers on market-days; and so much interested about county
business; and that the Christmas at the Hall was the gayest which had
been known there for many a long day.

On Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the Crawleys
from the Rectory came to dine.  Rebecca was as frank and fond of Mrs.
Bute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was affectionately
interested in the dear girls, and surprised at the progress which they
had made in music since her time, and insisted upon encoring one of the
duets out of the great song-books which Jim, grumbling, had been forced
to bring under his arm from the Rectory.  Mrs. Bute, perforce, was
obliged to adopt a decent demeanour towards the little adventuress--of
course being free to discourse with her daughters afterwards about the
absurd respect with which Sir Pitt treated his sister-in-law.  But Jim,
who had sat next to her at dinner, declared she was a trump, and one
and all of the Rector's family agreed that the little Rawdon was a fine
boy. They respected a possible baronet in the boy, between whom and the
title there was only the little sickly pale Pitt Binkie.

The children were very good friends.  Pitt Binkie was too little a dog
for such a big dog as Rawdon to play with; and Matilda being only a
girl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who was near
eight years old, and going into jackets very soon.  He took the command
of this small party at once--the little girl and the little boy
following him about with great reverence at such times as he
condescended to sport with them.  His happiness and pleasure in the
country were extreme.  The kitchen garden pleased him hugely, the
flowers moderately, but the pigeons and the poultry, and the stables
when he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects to him.  He
resisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley, but he allowed Lady Jane
sometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side that he liked to sit
when, the signal to retire to the drawing-room being given, the ladies
left the gentlemen to their claret--by her side rather than by his
mother.  For Rebecca, seeing that tenderness was the fashion, called
Rawdon to her one evening and stooped down and kissed him in the
presence of all the ladies.

He looked her full in the face after the operation, trembling and
turning very red, as his wont was when moved.  "You never kiss me at
home, Mamma," he said, at which there was a general silence and
consternation and a by no means pleasant look in Becky's eyes.

Rawdon was fond of his sister-in-law, for her regard for his son. Lady
Jane and Becky did not get on quite so well at this visit as on
occasion of the former one, when the Colonel's wife was bent upon
pleasing.  Those two speeches of the child struck rather a chill.
Perhaps Sir Pitt was rather too attentive to her.

But Rawdon, as became his age and size, was fonder of the society of
the men than of the women, and never wearied of accompanying his sire
to the stables, whither the Colonel retired to smoke his cigar--Jim,
the Rector's son, sometimes joining his cousin in that and other
amusements. He and the Baronet's keeper were very close friends, their
mutual taste for "dawgs" bringing them much together. On one day, Mr.
James, the Colonel, and Horn, the keeper, went and shot pheasants,
taking little Rawdon with them.  On another most blissful morning,
these four gentlemen partook of the amusement of rat-hunting in a barn,
than which sport Rawdon as yet had never seen anything more noble.
They stopped up the ends of certain drains in the barn, into the other
openings of which ferrets were inserted, and then stood silently aloof,
with uplifted stakes in their hands, and an anxious little terrier (Mr.
James's celebrated "dawg" Forceps, indeed) scarcely breathing from
excitement, listening motionless on three legs, to the faint squeaking
of the rats below. Desperately bold at last, the persecuted animals
bolted above-ground--the terrier accounted for one, the keeper for
another; Rawdon, from flurry and excitement, missed his rat, but on the
other hand he half-murdered a ferret.

But the greatest day of all was that on which Sir Huddlestone
Fuddlestone's hounds met upon the lawn at Queen's Crawley.

That was a famous sight for little Rawdon.  At half-past ten, Tom
Moody, Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's huntsman, was seen trotting up the
avenue, followed by the noble pack of hounds in a compact body--the
rear being brought up by the two whips clad in stained scarlet
frocks--light hard-featured lads on well-bred lean horses, possessing
marvellous dexterity in casting the points of their long heavy whips at
the thinnest part of any dog's skin who dares to straggle from the main
body, or to take the slightest notice, or even so much as wink, at the
hares and rabbits starting under their noses.

Next comes boy Jack, Tom Moody's son, who weighs five stone, measures
eight-and-forty inches, and will never be any bigger.  He is perched on
a large raw-boned hunter, half-covered by a capacious saddle.  This
animal is Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone's favourite horse the Nob. Other
horses, ridden by other small boys, arrive from time to time, awaiting
their masters, who will come cantering on anon.

Tom Moody rides up to the door of the Hall, where he is welcomed by the
butler, who offers him drink, which he declines.  He and his pack then
draw off into a sheltered corner of the lawn, where the dogs roll on
the grass, and play or growl angrily at one another, ever and anon
breaking out into furious fight speedily to be quelled by Tom's voice,
unmatched at rating, or the snaky thongs of the whips.

Many young gentlemen canter up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed to
the knee, and enter the house to drink cherry-brandy and pay their
respects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike, divest
themselves of their mud-boots, exchange their hacks for their hunters,
and warm their blood by a preliminary gallop round the lawn.  Then they
collect round the pack in the corner and talk with Tom Moody of past
sport, and the merits of Sniveller and Diamond, and of the state of the
country and of the wretched breed of foxes.

Sir Huddlestone presently appears mounted on a clever cob and rides up
to the Hall, where he enters and does the civil thing by the ladies,
after which, being a man of few words, he proceeds to business.  The
hounds are drawn up to the hall-door, and little Rawdon descends
amongst them, excited yet half-alarmed by the caresses which they
bestow upon him, at the thumps he receives from their waving tails, and
at their canine bickerings, scarcely restrained by Tom Moody's tongue
and lash.

Meanwhile, Sir Huddlestone has hoisted himself unwieldily on the Nob:
"Let's try Sowster's Spinney, Tom," says the Baronet, "Farmer Mangle
tells me there are two foxes in it." Tom blows his horn and trots off,
followed by the pack, by the whips, by the young gents from Winchester,
by the farmers of the neighbourhood, by the labourers of the parish on
foot, with whom the day is a great holiday, Sir Huddlestone bringing up
the rear with Colonel Crawley, and the whole cortege disappears down
the avenue.

The Reverend Bute Crawley (who has been too modest to appear at the
public meet before his nephew's windows), whom Tom Moody remembers
forty years back a slender divine riding the wildest horses, jumping
the widest brooks, and larking over the newest gates in the country--his
Reverence, we say, happens to trot out from the Rectory Lane on his
powerful black horse just as Sir Huddlestone passes; he joins the
worthy Baronet.  Hounds and horsemen disappear, and little Rawdon
remains on the doorsteps, wondering and happy.

During the progress of this memorable holiday, little Rawdon, if he had
got no special liking for his uncle, always awful and cold and locked
up in his study, plunged in justice-business and surrounded by bailiffs
and farmers--has gained the good graces of his married and maiden
aunts, of the two little folks of the Hall, and of Jim of the Rectory,
whom Sir Pitt is encouraging to pay his addresses to one of the young
ladies, with an understanding doubtless that he shall be presented to
the living when it shall be vacated by his fox-hunting old sire.  Jim
has given up that sport himself and confines himself to a little
harmless duck- or snipe-shooting, or a little quiet trifling with the
rats during the Christmas holidays, after which he will return to the
University and try and not be plucked, once more.  He has already
eschewed green coats, red neckcloths, and other worldly ornaments, and
is preparing himself for a change in his condition.  In this cheap and
thrifty way Sir Pitt tries to pay off his debt to his family.

Also before this merry Christmas was over, the Baronet had screwed up
courage enough to give his brother another draft on his bankers, and
for no less a sum than a hundred pounds, an act which caused Sir Pitt
cruel pangs at first, but which made him glow afterwards to think
himself one of the most generous of men.  Rawdon and his son went away
with the utmost heaviness of heart.  Becky and the ladies parted with
some alacrity, however, and our friend returned to London to commence
those avocations with which we find her occupied when this chapter
begins. Under her care the Crawley House in Great Gaunt Street was
quite rejuvenescent and ready for the reception of Sir Pitt and his
family, when the Baronet came to London to attend his duties in
Parliament and to assume that position in the country for which his
vast genius fitted him.

For the first session, this profound dissembler hid his projects and
never opened his lips but to present a petition from Mudbury.  But he
attended assiduously in his place and learned thoroughly the routine
and business of the House.  At home he gave himself up to the perusal
of Blue Books, to the alarm and wonder of Lady Jane, who thought he was
killing himself by late hours and intense application.  And he made
acquaintance with the ministers, and the chiefs of his party,
determining to rank as one of them before many years were over.

Lady Jane's sweetness and kindness had inspired Rebecca with such a
contempt for her ladyship as the little woman found no small difficulty
in concealing.  That sort of goodness and simplicity which Lady Jane
possessed annoyed our friend Becky, and it was impossible for her at
times not to show, or to let the other divine, her scorn. Her presence,
too, rendered Lady Jane uneasy.  Her husband talked constantly with
Becky.  Signs of intelligence seemed to pass between them, and Pitt
spoke with her on subjects on which he never thought of discoursing
with Lady Jane.  The latter did not understand them, to be sure, but it
was mortifying to remain silent; still more mortifying to know that you
had nothing to say, and hear that little audacious Mrs. Rawdon dashing
on from subject to subject, with a word for every man, and a joke
always pat; and to sit in one's own house alone, by the fireside, and
watching all the men round your rival.

In the country, when Lady Jane was telling stories to the children, who
clustered about her knees (little Rawdon into the bargain, who was very
fond of her), and Becky came into the room, sneering with green
scornful eyes, poor Lady Jane grew silent under those baleful glances.
Her simple little fancies shrank away tremulously, as fairies in the
story-books, before a superior bad angel.  She could not go on,
although Rebecca, with the smallest inflection of sarcasm in her voice,
besought her to continue that charming story.  And on her side gentle
thoughts and simple pleasures were odious to Mrs. Becky; they discorded
with her; she hated people for liking them; she spurned children and
children-lovers.  "I have no taste for bread and butter," she would
say, when caricaturing Lady Jane and her ways to my Lord Steyne.

"No more has a certain person for holy water," his lordship replied
with a bow and a grin and a great jarring laugh afterwards.

So these two ladies did not see much of each other except upon those
occasions when the younger brother's wife, having an object to gain
from the other, frequented her.  They my-loved and my-deared each other
assiduously, but kept apart generally, whereas Sir Pitt, in the midst
of his multiplied avocations, found daily time to see his sister-in-law.

On the occasion of his first Speaker's dinner, Sir Pitt took the
opportunity of appearing before his sister-in-law in his uniform--that
old diplomatic suit which he had worn when attache to the Pumpernickel
legation.

Becky complimented him upon that dress and admired him almost as much
as his own wife and children, to whom he displayed himself before he
set out.  She said that it was only the thoroughbred gentleman who
could wear the Court suit with advantage:  it was only your men of
ancient race whom the culotte courte became.  Pitt looked down with
complacency at his legs, which had not, in truth, much more symmetry or
swell than the lean Court sword which dangled by his side--looked down
at his legs, and thought in his heart that he was killing.

When he was gone, Mrs. Becky made a caricature of his figure, which she
showed to Lord Steyne when he arrived.  His lordship carried off the
sketch, delighted with the accuracy of the resemblance.  He had done
Sir Pitt Crawley the honour to meet him at Mrs. Becky's house and had
been most gracious to the new Baronet and member.  Pitt was struck too
by the deference with which the great Peer treated his sister-in-law,
by her ease and sprightliness in the conversation, and by the delight
with which the other men of the party listened to her talk. Lord Steyne
made no doubt but that the Baronet had only commenced his career in
public life, and expected rather anxiously to hear him as an orator; as
they were neighbours (for Great Gaunt Street leads into Gaunt Square,
whereof Gaunt House, as everybody knows, forms one side) my lord hoped
that as soon as Lady Steyne arrived in London she would have the honour
of making the acquaintance of Lady Crawley.  He left a card upon his
neighbour in the course of a day or two, having never thought fit to
notice his predecessor, though they had lived near each other for near
a century past.

In the midst of these intrigues and fine parties and wise and brilliant
personages Rawdon felt himself more and more isolated every day.  He
was allowed to go to the club more; to dine abroad with bachelor
friends; to come and go when he liked, without any questions being
asked.  And he and Rawdon the younger many a time would walk to Gaunt
Street and sit with the lady and the children there while Sir Pitt was
closeted with Rebecca, on his way to the House, or on  his return from
it.

The ex-Colonel would sit for hours in his brother's house very silent,
and thinking and doing as little as possible.  He was glad to be
employed of an errand; to go and make inquiries about a horse or a
servant, or to carve the roast mutton for the dinner of the children.
He was beat and cowed into laziness and submission. Delilah had
imprisoned him and cut his hair off, too.  The bold and reckless young
blood of ten-years back was subjugated and was turned into a torpid,
submissive, middle-aged, stout gentleman.

And poor Lady Jane was aware that Rebecca had captivated her husband,
although she and Mrs. Rawdon my-deared and my-loved each other every
day they met.

Struggles and Trials

Our friends at Brompton were meanwhile passing their Christmas after
their fashion and in a manner by no means too cheerful.

Out of the hundred pounds a year, which was about the amount of her
income, the Widow Osborne had been in the habit of giving up nearly
three-fourths to her father and mother, for the expenses of herself and
her little boy.  With 120_l_. more, supplied by Jos, this family of four
people, attended by a single Irish servant who also did for Clapp and
his wife, might manage to live in decent comfort through the year, and
hold up their heads yet, and be able to give a friend a dish of tea
still, after the storms and disappointments of their early life. Sedley
still maintained his ascendency over the family of Mr. Clapp, his
ex-clerk.  Clapp remembered the time when, sitting on the edge of the
chair, he tossed off a bumper to the health of "Mrs. S--, Miss Emmy,
and Mr. Joseph in India," at the merchant's rich table in Russell
Square.  Time magnified the splendour of those recollections in the
honest clerk's bosom.  Whenever he came up from the kitchen-parlour to
the drawing-room and partook of tea or gin-and-water with Mr. Sedley,
he would say, "This was not what you was accustomed to once, sir," and
as gravely and reverentially drink the health of the ladies as he had
done in the days of their utmost prosperity.  He thought Miss 'Melia's
playing the divinest music ever performed, and her the finest lady. He
never would sit down before Sedley at the club even, nor would he have
that gentleman's character abused by any member of the society.  He had
seen the first men in London shaking hands with Mr. S--; he said, "He'd
known him in times when Rothschild might be seen on 'Change with him
any day, and he owed him personally everythink."

Clapp, with the best of characters and handwritings, had been able very
soon after his master's disaster to find other employment for himself.
"Such a little fish as me can swim in any bucket," he used to remark,
and a member of the house from which old Sedley had seceded was very
glad to make use of Mr. Clapp's services and to reward them with a
comfortable salary.  In fine, all Sedley's wealthy friends had dropped
off one by one, and this poor ex-dependent still remained faithfully
attached to him.

Out of the small residue of her income which Amelia kept back for
herself, the widow had need of all the thrift and care possible in
order to enable her to keep her darling boy dressed in such a manner as
became George Osborne's son, and to defray the expenses of the little
school to which, after much misgiving and reluctance and many secret
pangs and fears on her own part, she had been induced to send the lad.
She had sat up of nights conning lessons and spelling over crabbed
grammars and geography books in order to teach them to Georgy.  She had
worked even at the Latin accidence, fondly hoping that she might be
capable of instructing him in that language.  To part with him all day,
to send him out to the mercy of a schoolmaster's cane and his
schoolfellows' roughness, was almost like weaning him over again to
that weak mother, so tremulous and full of sensibility.  He, for his
part, rushed off to the school with the utmost happiness.  He was
longing for the change. That childish gladness wounded his mother, who
was herself so grieved to part with him.  She would rather have had him
more sorry, she thought, and then was deeply repentant within herself
for daring to be so selfish as to wish her own son to be unhappy.

Georgy made great progress in the school, which was kept by a friend of
his mother's constant admirer, the Rev. Mr. Binny.  He brought home
numberless prizes and testimonials of ability.  He told his mother
countless stories every night about his school-companions: and what a
fine fellow Lyons was, and what a sneak Sniffin was, and how Steel's
father actually supplied the meat for the establishment, whereas
Golding's mother came in a carriage to fetch him every Saturday, and
how Neat had straps to his trowsers--might he have straps?--and how
Bull Major was so strong (though only in Eutropius) that it was
believed he could lick the Usher, Mr. Ward, himself.  So Amelia learned
to know every one of the boys in that school as well as Georgy himself,
and of nights she used to help him in his exercises and puzzle her
little head over his lessons as eagerly as if she was herself going in
the morning into the presence of the master. Once, after a certain
combat with Master Smith, George came home to his mother with a black
eye, and bragged prodigiously to his parent and his delighted old
grandfather about his valour in the fight, in which, if the truth was
known he did not behave with particular heroism, and in which he
decidedly had the worst.  But Amelia has never forgiven that Smith to
this day, though he is now a peaceful apothecary near Leicester Square.

In these quiet labours and harmless cares the gentle widow's life was
passing away, a silver hair or two marking the progress of time on her
head and a line deepening ever so little on her fair forehead.  She
used to smile at these marks of time.  "What matters it," she asked,
"For an old woman like me?" All she hoped for was to live to see her
son great, famous, and glorious, as he deserved to be.  She kept his
copy-books, his drawings, and compositions, and showed them about in
her little circle as if they were miracles of genius.  She confided
some of these specimens to Miss Dobbin, to show them to Miss Osborne,
George's aunt, to show them to Mr. Osborne himself--to make that old
man repent of his cruelty and ill feeling towards him who was gone.
All her husband's faults and foibles she had buried in the grave with
him: she only remembered the lover, who had married her at all
sacrifices, the noble husband, so brave and beautiful, in whose arms
she had hung on the morning when he had gone away to fight, and die
gloriously for his king. From heaven the hero must be smiling down upon
that paragon of a boy whom he had left to comfort and console her. We
have seen how one of George's grandfathers (Mr. Osborne), in his easy
chair in Russell Square, daily grew more violent and moody, and how his
daughter, with her fine carriage, and her fine horses, and her name on
half the public charity-lists of the town, was a lonely, miserable,
persecuted old maid.  She thought again and again of the beautiful
little boy, her brother's son, whom she had seen.  She longed to be
allowed to drive in the fine carriage to the house in which he lived,
and she used to look out day after day as she took her solitary drive
in the park, in hopes that she might see him.  Her sister, the banker's
lady, occasionally condescended to pay her old home and companion a
visit in Russell Square.  She brought a couple of sickly children
attended by a prim nurse, and in a faint genteel giggling tone cackled
to her sister about her fine acquaintance, and how her little Frederick
was the image of Lord Claud Lollypop and her sweet Maria had been
noticed by the Baroness as they were driving in their donkey-chaise at
Roehampton.  She urged her to make her papa do something for the
darlings. Frederick she had determined should go into the Guards; and
if they made an elder son of him (and Mr. Bullock was positively
ruining and pinching himself to death to buy land), how was the darling
girl to be provided for? "I expect YOU, dear," Mrs. Bullock would say,
"for of course my share of our Papa's property must go to the head of
the house, you know.  Dear Rhoda McMull will disengage the whole of the
Castletoddy property as soon as poor dear Lord Castletoddy dies, who is
quite epileptic; and little Macduff McMull will be Viscount
Castletoddy.  Both the Mr. Bludyers of Mincing Lane have settled 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!

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 Eaves
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.

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
themselves 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 copper 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Dobbin and his regiment are doing well in India, and Glorvina flirts with him constantly. But Dobbin cannot get Amelia out of his head. He receives a letter from her, in which she writes that she is happy for him that he is getting married, which makes him extremely upset. Then he receives a letter from his sister. It says that Amelia is to marry an old reverend, and that Mr. Osborne is going to have custody of Georgy. Dobbin, instigated by these developments, prepares to go back to London. Rebecca decides to renovate her house on Great Gaunt Street. She believes that this will help her rise in society. Sir Pitt visits the home and comes to like Becky more as he sees her doing fine work with the renovations. At one point, she hints that she and Rawdon are in need of money. Rebecca often entertains noblemen at her home, and the servants are actually starting to become suspicious of her behavior. While she is singing to the marquis one day, her son walks in on them, and she hits him for spying on her. But little Rawdon is quite charming, especially with Lady Jane at Christmas, when he reveals sweetly that his mother makes him eat in the kitchen. Becky offers Sir Pitt a great deal of help, for she counsels him and talks with him about his pamphlets and speeches. He thinks to himself that she understands him much more than his wife does, in that she senses his "commanding talents" and "secret ambition." Indeed, the Lady Jane and Rebecca are beginning a rivalry. Lady Jane has become wary of Rebecca. One evening, Rebecca, in an attempt to show affection for her son in front of everyone, kisses his cheek. In response, Rawdon asks her why she never kisses him when they are at home. This just makes Rebecca hate him even more. Things are not going well for the Sedleys. Jos has stopped sending money and Amelia's pension money is running out. There is hardly any food to eat. Amelia does not notice the extreme poverty of her family; all she sees is George. For a while she tries to homeschool him, but eventually she sends him to Reverend Binney's school, where he does quite well. The Osbornes are not doing well either. John Osborne is still a bitter old man, and Jane is miserable living with him. She wishes Georgy could visit more. However, John Osborne is angry that she gave Georgy a gold watch and chain and he demands that she go out and buy herself a new one. Maria visits the house with her new child. The Osborne daughters are generally jealous of Amelia for her uncomplicated way of life. Georgy eventually meets his grandfather, and John Osborne offers Amelia a deal. He wants Georgy to be the heir his son should have been. He offers her the chance to remarry, and he encourages her to give the child to him so that Georgy can have a proper childhood. He demands, however, full custody of Georgy and very limited visiting rights for Amelia. Amelia is so upset that she refuses to respond to his correspondence. At Christmas, Amelia spends extravagantly on Georgy, which enrages her mother. Tom Eaves, a man who knows everyone in London, tells the narrator about Lord Steyne and his wife. Lord Steyne comes from hundreds of years of nobility, as does his wife. His wife broke with the Catholic faith in order to marry him, and she feels that this has become a curse upon her. One of the manifestations of this curse was her son, George. He inherited the family's mental illness. Lord Steyne made his own son his enemy. He tried to drown his worries in drinking and socializing, but every night before going to sleep he would fret about why his son had contracted it while he had not. The family tell others that their son went to continental Europe and then to Brazil, but in reality, he just disappeared. Sir Pitt rises to the position of High Sheriff of the County, and he decides that he wants to present Becky at Court. Meeting the king is the climax of social mobility, and so Becky is ecstatic that she has achieved her life's ambition. Lady Jane and Sir Pitt present her. She wears an extravagant dress, for which she has stolen pieces of material from Sir Pitt's house while she was helping him with renovations. Rawdon looks shabby next to her in his old, tight military uniform. Lady Jane inquires about her beautiful jewels; Becky, ashamed, because they were given to her by Lord Steyne and Sir Pitt, lies and claims that she rented them. Becky's presentation makes the papers. All Becky can talk about is her presentation at Court. In response to this great honor, the Marchioness of Steyne and Countess of Gaunt have invited her to dinner. Lord Steyne worries that Becky cannot hold her own against these women without a lot of money, and he is concerned that she will never be able to hold a place in Vanity Fair. He tells her this, and encourages her to get rid of Miss Briggs. But Becky confesses that she owes the woman money and manages to get Lord Styne to give her double what she needs. She puts most of the money away in her secret box.