Chapter: Sunday After the Battle

The mansion of Sir Pitt Crawley, in Great Gaunt Street, was just
beginning to dress itself for the day, as Rawdon, in his evening
costume, which he had now worn two days, passed by the scared female
who was scouring the steps and entered into his brother's study. Lady
Jane, in her morning-gown, was up and above stairs in the nursery
superintending the toilettes of her children and listening to the
morning prayers which the little creatures performed at her knee.
Every morning she and they performed this duty privately, and before
the public ceremonial at which Sir Pitt presided and at which all the
people of the household were expected to assemble. Rawdon sat down in
the study before the Baronet's table, set out with the orderly blue
books and the letters, the neatly docketed bills and symmetrical
pamphlets, the locked account-books, desks, and dispatch boxes, the
Bible, the Quarterly Review, and the Court Guide, which all stood as if
on parade awaiting the inspection of their chief.

A book of family sermons, one of which Sir Pitt was in the habit of
administering to his family on Sunday mornings, lay ready on the study
table, and awaiting his judicious selection.  And by the sermon-book
was the Observer newspaper, damp and neatly folded, and for Sir Pitt's
own private use.  His gentleman alone took the opportunity of perusing
the newspaper before he laid it by his master's desk.  Before he had
brought it into the study that morning, he had read in the journal a
flaming account of "Festivities at Gaunt House," with the names of all
the distinguished personages invited by the Marquis of Steyne to meet
his Royal Highness.  Having made comments upon this entertainment to
the housekeeper and her niece as they were taking early tea and hot
buttered toast in the former lady's apartment, and wondered how the
Rawding Crawleys could git on, the valet had damped and folded the
paper once more, so that it looked quite fresh and innocent against the
arrival of the master of the house.

Poor Rawdon took up the paper and began to try and read it until his
brother should arrive.  But the print fell blank upon his eyes, and he
did not know in the least what he was reading.  The Government news and
appointments (which Sir Pitt as a public man was bound to peruse,
otherwise he would by no means permit the introduction of Sunday papers
into his household), the theatrical criticisms, the fight for a hundred
pounds a side between the Barking Butcher and the Tutbury Pet, the
Gaunt House chronicle itself, which contained a most complimentary
though guarded account of the famous charades of which Mrs. Becky had
been the heroine--all these passed as in a haze before Rawdon, as he
sat waiting the arrival of the chief of the family.

Punctually, as the shrill-toned bell of the black marble study clock
began to chime nine, Sir Pitt made his appearance, fresh, neat, smugly
shaved, with a waxy clean face, and stiff shirt collar, his scanty hair
combed and oiled, trimming his nails as he descended the stairs
majestically, in a starched cravat and a grey flannel dressing-gown--a
real old English gentleman, in a word--a model of neatness and every
propriety.  He started when he saw poor Rawdon in his study in tumbled
clothes, with blood-shot eyes, and his hair over his face.  He thought
his brother was not sober, and had been out all night on some orgy.
"Good gracious, Rawdon," he said, with a blank face, "what brings you
here at this time of the morning? Why ain't you at home?"

"Home," said Rawdon with a wild laugh.  "Don't be frightened, Pitt. I'm
not drunk.  Shut the door; I want to speak to you."

Pitt closed the door and came up to the table, where he sat down in the
other arm-chair--that one placed for the reception of the steward,
agent, or confidential visitor who came to transact business with the
Baronet--and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever.

"Pitt, it's all over with me," the Colonel said after a pause.  "I'm
done."

"I always said it would come to this," the Baronet cried peevishly, and
beating a tune with his clean-trimmed nails.  "I warned you a thousand
times.  I can't help you any more.  Every shilling of my money is tied
up.  Even the hundred pounds that Jane took you last night were
promised to my lawyer to-morrow morning, and the want of it will put me
to great inconvenience. I don't mean to say that I won't assist you
ultimately. But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as well
hope to pay the National Debt.  It is madness, sheer madness, to think
of such a thing.  You must come to a compromise.  It's a painful thing
for the family, but everybody does it.  There was George Kitely, Lord
Ragland's son, went through the Court last week, and was what they call
whitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay a shilling for him,
and--"

"It's not money I want," Rawdon broke in.  "I'm not come to you about
myself.  Never mind what happens to me."

"What is the matter, then?" said Pitt, somewhat relieved.

"It's the boy," said Rawdon in a husky voice.  "I want you to promise
me that you will take charge of him when I'm gone.  That dear good wife
of yours has always been good to him; and he's fonder of her than he is
of his . . .--Damn it.  Look here, Pitt--you know that I was to have
had Miss Crawley's money.  I wasn't brought up like a younger brother,
but was always encouraged to be extravagant and kep idle.  But for this
I might have been quite a different man.  I didn't do my duty with the
regiment so bad.  You know how I was thrown over about the money, and
who got it."

"After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in which I have stood
by you, I think this sort of reproach is useless," Sir Pitt said.
"Your marriage was your own doing, not mine."

"That's over now," said Rawdon.  "That's over now." And the words were
wrenched from him with a groan, which made his brother start.

"Good God!  is she dead?" Sir Pitt said with a voice of genuine alarm
and commiseration.

"I wish I was," Rawdon replied.  "If it wasn't for little Rawdon I'd
have cut my throat this morning--and that damned villain's too."

Sir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that Lord Steyne was
the person whose life Rawdon wished to take.  The Colonel told his
senior briefly, and in broken accents, the circumstances of the case.
"It was a regular plan between that scoundrel and her," he said.  "The
bailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going out of his house;
when I wrote to her for money, she said she was ill in bed and put me
off to another day. And when I got home I found her in diamonds and
sitting with that villain alone." He then went on to describe hurriedly
the personal conflict with Lord Steyne.  To an affair of that nature,
of course, he said, there was but one issue, and after his conference
with his brother, he was going away to make the necessary arrangements
for the meeting which must ensue.  "And as it may end fatally with me,"
Rawdon said with a broken voice, "and as the boy has no mother, I must
leave him to you and Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if you
will promise me to be his friend."

The elder brother was much affected, and shook Rawdon's hand with a
cordiality seldom exhibited by him. Rawdon passed his hand over his
shaggy eyebrows. "Thank you, brother," said he.  "I know I can trust
your word."

"I will, upon my honour," the Baronet said.  And thus, and almost
mutely, this bargain was struck between them.

Then Rawdon took out of his pocket the little pocket-book which he had
discovered in Becky's desk, and from which he drew a bundle of the
notes which it contained. "Here's six hundred," he said--"you didn't
know I was so rich.  I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lent
it to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always felt ashamed of
having taken the poor old woman's money.  And here's some more--I've
only kept back a few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get on
with." As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to give to his
brother, but his hands shook, and he was so agitated that the
pocket-book fell from him, and out of it the thousand-pound note which
had been the last of the unlucky Becky's winnings.

Pitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much wealth.  "Not that,"
Rawdon said.  "I hope to put a bullet into the man whom that belongs
to." He had thought to himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap a
ball in the note and kill Steyne with it.

After this colloquy the brothers once more shook hands and parted. Lady
Jane had heard of the Colonel's arrival, and was waiting for her
husband in the adjoining dining-room, with female instinct, auguring
evil.  The door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and the
lady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers passed out of
the study.  She held out her hand to Rawdon and said she was glad he
was come to breakfast, though she could perceive, by his haggard
unshorn face and the dark looks of her husband, that there was very
little question of breakfast between them.  Rawdon muttered some
excuses about an engagement, squeezing hard the timid little hand which
his sister-in-law reached out to him.  Her imploring eyes could read
nothing but calamity in his face, but he went away without another
word.  Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation. The children
came up to salute him, and he kissed them in his usual frigid manner.
The mother took both of them close to herself, and held a hand of each
of them as they knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, and
to the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged upon chairs
on the other side of the hissing tea-urn. Breakfast was so late that
day, in consequence of the delays which had occurred, that the
church-bells began to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal;
and Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though her
thoughts had been entirely astray during the period of family devotion.

Rawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great Gaunt Street, and
knocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portal
of Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silver
waistcoat who acts as porter of that palace.  The man was scared also
by the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and barred the way as if
afraid that the other was going to force it.  But Colonel Crawley only
took out a card and enjoined him particularly to send it in to Lord
Steyne, and to mark the address written on it, and say that Colonel
Crawley would be all day after one o'clock at the Regent Club in St.
James's Street--not at home.  The fat red-faced man looked after him
with astonishment as he strode away; so did the people in their Sunday
clothes who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining faces,
the greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican shutting his
shutters in the sunshine, against service commenced.  The people joked
at the cab-stand about his appearance, as he took a carriage there, and
told the driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks.

All the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached that place. He
might have seen his old acquaintance Amelia on her way from Brompton to
Russell Square, had he been looking out.  Troops of schools were on
their march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides of coaches in
the suburbs were thronged with people out upon their Sunday pleasure;
but the Colonel was much too busy to take any heed of these phenomena,
and, arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the room of
his old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo, who Crawley found, to his
satisfaction, was in barracks.

Captain Macmurdo, a veteran officer and Waterloo man, greatly liked by
his regiment, in which want of money alone prevented him from attaining
the highest ranks, was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed.  He had
been at a fast supper-party, given the night before by Captain the
Honourable George Cinqbars, at his house in Brompton Square, to several
young men of the regiment, and a number of ladies of the corps de
ballet, and old Mac, who was at home with people of all ages and ranks,
and consorted with generals, dog-fanciers, opera-dancers, bruisers, and
every kind of person, in a word, was resting himself after the night's
labours, and, not being on duty, was in bed.

His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and dancing pictures,
presented to him by comrades as they retired from the regiment, and
married and settled into quiet life.  And as he was now nearly fifty
years of age, twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he had a
singular museum.  He was one of the best shots in England, and, for a
heavy man, one of the best riders; indeed, he and Crawley had been
rivals when the latter was in the Army.  To be brief, Mr. Macmurdo was
lying in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that very fight
between the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher, which has been before
mentioned--a venerable bristly warrior, with a little close-shaved grey
head, with a silk nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyed
moustache.

When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the latter knew
perfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act, and
indeed had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintances with the
greatest prudence and skill.  His Royal Highness the late lamented
Commander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for Macmurdo on this
account, and he was the common refuge of gentlemen in trouble.

"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?" said the old warrior.  "No
more gambling business, hay, like that when we shot Captain Marker?"

"It's about--about my wife," Crawley answered, casting down his eyes
and turning very red.

The other gave a whistle.  "I always said she'd throw you over," he
began--indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubs
regarding the probable fate of Colonel Crawley, so lightly was his
wife's character esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing the
savage look with which Rawdon answered the expression of this opinion,
Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge upon it further.

"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain continued in a grave
tone.  "Is it only suspicion, you know, or--or what is it? Any letters?
Can't you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a thing of that
sort if you can help it." "Think of his only finding her out now," the
Captain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred particular
conversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs. Crawley's reputation had
been torn to shreds.

"There's no way but one out of it," Rawdon replied--"and there's only a
way out of it for one of us, Mac--do you understand? I was put out of
the way--arrested--I found 'em alone together.  I told him he was a
liar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him."

"Serve him right," Macmurdo said.  "Who is it?"

Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.

"The deuce!  a Marquis!  they said he--that is, they said you--"

"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon; "do you mean that you
ever heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?"

"The world's very censorious, old boy," the other replied.  "What the
deuce was the good of my telling you what any tom-fools talked about?"

"It was damned unfriendly, Mac," said Rawdon, quite overcome; and,
covering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the sight
of which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince with
sympathy. "Hold up, old boy," he said; "great man or not, we'll put a
bullet in him, damn him.  As for women, they're all so."

"You don't know how fond I was of that one," Rawdon said,
half-inarticulately.  "Damme, I followed her like a footman.  I gave up
everything I had to her.  I'm a beggar because I would marry her. By
Jove, sir, I've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything she
fancied; and she--she's been making a purse for herself all the time,
and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod." He then fiercely
and incoherently, and with an agitation under which his counsellor had
never before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of the
story.  His adviser caught at some stray hints in it. "She may be
innocent, after all," he said.  "She says so. Steyne has been a hundred
times alone with her in the house before."

"It may be so," Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't look very
innocent":  and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which he
had found in Becky's pocket-book.  "This is what he gave her, Mac, and
she kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house, she refused
to stand by me when I was locked up." The Captain could not but own
that the secreting of the money had a very ugly look.

Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon dispatched Captain
Macmurdo's servant to Curzon Street, with an order to the domestic
there to give up a bag of clothes of which the Colonel had great need.
And during the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson's
Dictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon and his second
composed a letter, which the latter was to send to Lord Steyne.
Captain Macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne,
on the part of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that he
was empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements for the meeting
which, he had no doubt, it was his Lordship's intention to demand, and
which the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable.
Captain Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite manner, to
appoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M.M.) might communicate, and
desired that the meeting might take place with as little delay as
possible.

In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his possession a
bank-note for a large amount, which Colonel Crawley had reason to
suppose was the property of the Marquis of Steyne.  And he was anxious,
on the Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.

By the time this note was composed, the Captain's servant returned from
his mission to Colonel Crawley's house in Curzon Street, but without
the carpet-bag and portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with a
very puzzled and odd face.

"They won't give 'em up," said the man; "there's a regular shinty in
the house, and everything at sixes and sevens.  The landlord's come in
and took possession.  The servants was a drinkin' up in the
drawingroom.  They said--they said you had gone off with the plate,
Colonel"--the man added after a pause--"One of the servants is off
already.  And Simpson, the man as was very noisy and drunk indeed, says
nothing shall go out of the house until his wages is paid up."

The account of this little revolution in May Fair astonished and gave a
little gaiety to an otherwise very triste conversation.  The two
officers laughed at Rawdon's discomfiture.

"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home," Rawdon said, biting his nails.
"You remember him, Mac, don't you, in the Riding School? How he sat the
kicker to be sure! didn't he?"

"That he did, old boy," said the good-natured Captain.

Little Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys, in the Chapel
of Whitefriars School, thinking, not about the sermon, but about going
home next Saturday, when his father would certainly tip him and perhaps
would take him to the play.

"He's a regular trump, that boy," the father went on, still musing
about his son.  "I say, Mac, if anything goes wrong--if I drop--I
should like you to--to go and see him, you know, and say that I was
very fond of him, and that.  And--dash it--old chap, give him these
gold sleeve-buttons:  it's all I've got." He covered his face with his
black hands, over which the tears rolled and made furrows of white.
Mr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take off his silk night-cap and rub
it across his eyes.

"Go down and order some breakfast," he said to his man in a loud
cheerful voice.  "What'll you have, Crawley? Some devilled kidneys and
a herring--let's say.  And, Clay, lay out some dressing things for the
Colonel:  we were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my boy, and
neither of us ride so light as we did when we first entered the corps."
With which, and leaving the Colonel to dress himself, Macmurdo turned
round towards the wall, and resumed the perusal of Bell's Life, until
such time as his friend's toilette was complete and he was at liberty
to commence his own.

This, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain Macmurdo performed with
particular care.  He waxed his mustachios into a state of brilliant
polish and put on a tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat, so that all
the young officers in the mess-room, whither Crawley had preceded his
friend, complimented Mac on his appearance at breakfast and asked if he
was going to be married that Sunday.



In Which the Same Subject is Pursued

Becky did not rally from the state of stupor and confusion in which the
events of the previous night had plunged her intrepid spirit until the
bells of the Curzon Street Chapels were ringing for afternoon service,
and rising from her bed she began to ply her own bell, in order to
summon the French maid who had left her some hours before.

Mrs. Rawdon Crawley rang many times in vain; and though, on the last
occasion, she rang with such vehemence as to pull down the bell-rope,
Mademoiselle Fifine did not make her appearance--no, not though her
mistress, in a great pet, and with the bell-rope in her hand, came out
to the landing-place with her hair over her shoulders and screamed out
repeatedly for her attendant.

The truth is, she had quitted the premises for many hours, and upon
that permission which is called French leave among us.  After picking up
the trinkets in the drawing-room, Mademoiselle had ascended to her own
apartments, packed and corded her own boxes there, tripped out and
called a cab for herself, brought down her trunks with her own hand,
and without ever so much as asking the aid of any of the other
servants, who would probably have refused it, as they hated her
cordially, and without wishing any one of them good-bye, had made her
exit from Curzon Street.

The game, in her opinion, was over in that little domestic
establishment.  Fifine went off in a cab, as we have known more exalted
persons of her nation to do under similar circumstances: but, more
provident or lucky than these, she secured not only her own property,
but some of her mistress's (if indeed that lady could be said to have
any property at all)--and not only carried off the trinkets before
alluded to, and some favourite dresses on which she had long kept her
eye, but four richly gilt Louis Quatorze candlesticks, six gilt albums,
keepsakes, and Books of Beauty, a gold enamelled snuff-box which had
once belonged to Madame du Barri, and the sweetest little inkstand and
mother-of-pearl blotting book, which Becky used when she composed her
charming little pink notes, had vanished from the premises in Curzon
Street together with Mademoiselle Fifine, and all the silver laid on
the table for the little festin which Rawdon interrupted.  The plated
ware Mademoiselle left behind her was too cumbrous, probably for which
reason, no doubt, she also left the fire irons, the chimney-glasses,
and the rosewood cottage piano.

A lady very like her subsequently kept a milliner's shop in the Rue du
Helder at Paris, where she lived with great credit and enjoyed the
patronage of my Lord Steyne.  This person always spoke of England as of
the most treacherous country in the world, and stated to her young
pupils that she had been affreusement vole by natives of that island.
It was no doubt compassion for her misfortunes which induced the
Marquis of Steyne to be so very kind to Madame de Saint-Amaranthe.  May
she flourish as she deserves--she appears no more in our quarter of
Vanity Fair.

Hearing a buzz and a stir below, and indignant at the impudence of
those servants who would not answer her summons, Mrs. Crawley flung her
morning robe round her and descended majestically to the drawing-room,
whence the noise proceeded.

The cook was there with blackened face, seated on the beautiful chintz
sofa by the side of Mrs. Raggles, to whom she was administering
Maraschino.  The page with the sugar-loaf buttons, who carried about
Becky's pink notes, and jumped about her little carriage with such
alacrity, was now engaged putting his fingers into a cream dish; the
footman was talking to Raggles, who had a face full of perplexity and
woe--and yet, though the door was open, and Becky had been screaming a
half-dozen of times a few feet off, not one of her attendants had
obeyed her call.  "Have a little drop, do'ee now, Mrs. Raggles," the
cook was saying as Becky entered, the white cashmere dressing-gown
flouncing around her.

"Simpson!  Trotter!" the mistress of the house cried in great wrath.
"How dare you stay here when you heard me call? How dare you sit down
in my presence? Where's my maid?" The page withdrew his fingers from
his mouth with a momentary terror, but the cook took off a glass of
Maraschino, of which Mrs. Raggles had had enough, staring at Becky over
the little gilt glass as she drained its contents. The liquor appeared
to give the odious rebel courage.

"YOUR sofy, indeed!" Mrs. Cook said.  "I'm a settin' on Mrs. Raggles's
sofy.  Don't you stir, Mrs. Raggles, Mum. I'm a settin' on Mr. and Mrs.
Raggles's sofy, which they bought with honest money, and very dear it
cost 'em, too.  And I'm thinkin' if I set here until I'm paid my wages,
I shall set a precious long time, Mrs. Raggles; and set I will,
too--ha!  ha!" and with this she filled herself another glass of the
liquor and drank it with a more hideously satirical air.

"Trotter!  Simpson!  turn that drunken wretch out," screamed Mrs.
Crawley.

"I shawn't," said Trotter the footman; "turn out yourself.  Pay our
selleries, and turn me out too.  WE'LL go fast enough."

"Are you all here to insult me?" cried Becky in a fury; "when Colonel
Crawley comes home I'll--"

At this the servants burst into a horse haw-haw, in which, however,
Raggles, who still kept a most melancholy countenance, did not join.
"He ain't a coming back," Mr. Trotter resumed.  "He sent for his
things, and I wouldn't let 'em go, although Mr. Raggles would; and I
don't b'lieve he's no more a Colonel than I am.  He's hoff, and I
suppose you're a goin' after him.  You're no better than swindlers,
both on you.  Don't be a bullyin' ME.  I won't stand it.  Pay us our
selleries, I say.  Pay us our selleries." It was evident, from Mr.
Trotter's flushed countenance and defective intonation, that he, too,
had had recourse to vinous stimulus.

"Mr. Raggles," said Becky in a passion of vexation, "you will not
surely let me be insulted by that drunken man?" "Hold your noise,
Trotter; do now," said Simpson the page.  He was affected by his
mistress's deplorable situation, and succeeded in preventing an
outrageous denial of the epithet "drunken" on the footman's part.

"Oh, M'am," said Raggles, "I never thought to live to see this year
day:  I've known the Crawley family ever since I was born.  I lived
butler with Miss Crawley for thirty years; and I little thought one of
that family was a goin' to ruing me--yes, ruing me"--said the poor
fellow with tears in his eyes.  "Har you a goin' to pay me? You've
lived in this 'ouse four year.  You've 'ad my substance: my plate and
linning.  You ho me a milk and butter bill of two 'undred pound, you
must 'ave noo laid heggs for your homlets, and cream for your spanil
dog."

"She didn't care what her own flesh and blood had," interposed the
cook.  "Many's the time, he'd have starved but for me."

"He's a charaty-boy now, Cooky," said Mr. Trotter, with a drunken "ha!
ha!"--and honest Raggles continued, in a lamentable tone, an
enumeration of his griefs.  All he said was true.  Becky and her
husband had ruined him. He had bills coming due next week and no means
to meet them.  He would be sold up and turned out of his shop and his
house, because he had trusted to the Crawley family.  His tears and
lamentations made Becky more peevish than ever.

"You all seem to be against me," she said bitterly. "What do you want?
I can't pay you on Sunday.  Come back to-morrow and I'll pay you
everything.  I thought Colonel Crawley had settled with you.  He will
to-morrow. I declare to you upon my honour that he left home this
morning with fifteen hundred pounds in his pocket-book. He has left me
nothing.  Apply to him.  Give me a bonnet and shawl and let me go out
and find him.  There was a difference between us this morning.  You all
seem to know it.  I promise you upon my word that you shall all be
paid.  He has got a good appointment.  Let me go out and find him."

This audacious statement caused Raggles and the other personages
present to look at one another with a wild surprise, and with it
Rebecca left them.  She went upstairs and dressed herself this time
without the aid of her French maid.  She went into Rawdon's room, and
there saw that a trunk and bag were packed ready for removal, with a
pencil direction that they should be given when called for; then she
went into the Frenchwoman's garret; everything was clean, and all the
drawers emptied there. She bethought herself of the trinkets which had
been left on the ground and felt certain that the woman had fled. "Good
Heavens!  was ever such ill luck as mine?" she said; "to be so near,
and to lose all.  Is it all too late?" No; there was one chance more.

She dressed herself and went away unmolested this time, but alone. It
was four o'clock.  She went swiftly down the streets (she had no money
to pay for a carriage), and never stopped until she came to Sir Pitt
Crawley's door, in Great Gaunt Street.  Where was Lady Jane Crawley?
She was at church.  Becky was not sorry. Sir Pitt was in his study, and
had given orders not to be disturbed--she must see him--she slipped by
the sentinel in livery at once, and was in Sir Pitt's room before the
astonished Baronet had even laid down the paper.

He turned red and started back from her with a look of great alarm and
horror.

"Do not look so," she said.  "I am not guilty, Pitt, dear Pitt; you
were my friend once.  Before God, I am not guilty.  I seem so.
Everything is against me.  And oh!  at such a moment!  just when all my
hopes were about to be realized:  just when happiness was in store for
us."

"Is this true, what I see in the paper then?" Sir Pitt said--a
paragraph in which had greatly surprised him.

"It is true.  Lord Steyne told me on Friday night, the night of that
fatal ball.  He has been promised an appointment any time these six
months.  Mr. Martyr, the Colonial Secretary, told him yesterday that it
was made out. That unlucky arrest ensued; that horrible meeting. I was
only guilty of too much devotedness to Rawdon's service.  I have
received Lord Steyne alone a hundred times before. I confess I had
money of which Rawdon knew nothing. Don't you know how careless he is
of it, and could I dare to confide it to him?" And so she went on with
a perfectly connected story, which she poured into the ears of her
perplexed kinsman.

It was to the following effect.  Becky owned, and with perfect
frankness, but deep contrition, that having remarked Lord Steyne's
partiality for her (at the mention of which Pitt blushed), and being
secure of her own virtue, she had determined to turn the great peer's
attachment to the advantage of herself and her family.  "I looked for a
peerage for you, Pitt," she said (the brother-in-law again turned red).
"We have talked about it.  Your genius and Lord Steyne's interest made
it more than probable, had not this dreadful calamity come to put an
end to all our hopes.  But, first, I own that it was my object to
rescue my dear husband--him whom I love in spite of all his ill usage
and suspicions of me--to remove him from the poverty and ruin which was
impending over us.  I saw Lord Steyne's partiality for me," she said,
casting down her eyes.  "I own that I did everything in my power to
make myself pleasing to him, and as far as an honest woman may, to
secure his--his esteem. It was only on Friday morning that the news
arrived of the death of the Governor of Coventry Island, and my Lord
instantly secured the appointment for my dear husband. It was intended
as a surprise for him--he was to see it in the papers to-day.  Even
after that horrid arrest took place (the expenses of which Lord Steyne
generously said he would settle, so that I was in a manner prevented
from coming to my husband's assistance), my Lord was laughing with me,
and saying that my dearest Rawdon would be consoled when he read of his
appointment in the paper, in that shocking spun--bailiff's house. And
then--then he came home.  His suspicions were excited,--the dreadful
scene took place between my Lord and my cruel, cruel Rawdon--and, O my
God, what will happen next? Pitt, dear Pitt!  pity me, and reconcile
us!" And as she spoke she flung herself down on her knees, and bursting
into tears, seized hold of Pitt's hand, which she kissed passionately.

It was in this very attitude that Lady Jane, who, returning from
church, ran to her husband's room directly she heard Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley was closeted there, found the Baronet and his sister-in-law.

"I am surprised that woman has the audacity to enter this house," Lady
Jane said, trembling in every limb and turning quite pale. (Her
Ladyship had sent out her maid directly after breakfast, who had
communicated with Raggles and Rawdon Crawley's household, who had told
her all, and a great deal more than they knew, of that story, and many
others besides).  "How dare Mrs. Crawley to enter the house of--of an
honest family?"

Sir Pitt started back, amazed at his wife's display of vigour. Becky
still kept her kneeling posture and clung to Sir Pitt's hand.

"Tell her that she does not know all:  Tell her that I am innocent,
dear Pitt," she whimpered out.

"Upon my word, my love, I think you do Mrs. Crawley injustice," Sir
Pitt said; at which speech Rebecca was vastly relieved.  "Indeed I
believe her to be--"

"To be what?" cried out Lady Jane, her clear voice thrilling and, her
heart beating violently as she spoke. "To be a wicked woman--a
heartless mother, a false wife? She never loved her dear little boy,
who used to fly here and tell me of her cruelty to him.  She never came
into a family but she strove to bring misery with her and to weaken the
most sacred affections with her wicked flattery and falsehoods.  She
has deceived her husband, as she has deceived everybody; her soul is
black with vanity, worldliness, and all sorts of crime.  I tremble when
I touch her.  I keep my children out of her sight."

"Lady Jane!" cried Sir Pitt, starting up, "this is really language--"
"I have been a true and faithful wife to you, Sir Pitt," Lady Jane
continued, intrepidly; "I have kept my marriage vow as I made it to God
and have been obedient and gentle as a wife should.  But righteous
obedience has its limits, and I declare that I will not bear that--that
woman again under my roof; if she enters it, I and my children will
leave it.  She is not worthy to sit down with Christian people.
You--you must choose, sir, between her and me"; and with this my Lady
swept out of the room, fluttering with her own audacity, and leaving
Rebecca and Sir Pitt not a little astonished at it.

As for Becky, she was not hurt; nay, she was pleased. "It was the
diamond-clasp you gave me," she said to Sir Pitt, reaching him out her
hand; and before she left him (for which event you may be sure my Lady
Jane was looking out from her dressing-room window in the upper story)
the Baronet had promised to go and seek out his brother, and endeavour
to bring about a reconciliation.

Rawdon found some of the young fellows of the regiment seated in the
mess-room at breakfast, and was induced without much difficulty to
partake of that meal, and of the devilled legs of fowls and soda-water
with which these young gentlemen fortified themselves.  Then they had a
conversation befitting the day and their time of life: about the next
pigeon-match at Battersea, with relative bets upon Ross and
Osbaldiston; about Mademoiselle Ariane of the French Opera, and who had
left her, and how she was consoled by Panther Carr; and about the fight
between the Butcher and the Pet, and the probabilities that it was a
cross.  Young Tandyman, a hero of seventeen, laboriously endeavouring
to get up a pair of mustachios, had seen the fight, and spoke in the
most scientific manner about the battle and the condition of the men.
It was he who had driven the Butcher on to the ground in his drag and
passed the whole of the previous night with him.  Had there not been
foul play he must have won it.  All the old files of the Ring were in
it; and Tandyman wouldn't pay; no, dammy, he wouldn't pay.  It was but
a year since the young Cornet, now so knowing a hand in Cribb's
parlour, had a still lingering liking for toffy, and used to be birched
at Eton.

So they went on talking about dancers, fights, drinking, demireps,
until Macmurdo came down and joined the boys and the conversation. He
did not appear to think that any especial reverence was due to their
boyhood; the old fellow cut in with stories, to the full as choice as
any the youngest rake present had to tell--nor did his own grey hairs
nor their smooth faces detain him.  Old Mac was famous for his good
stories.  He was not exactly a lady's man; that is, men asked him to
dine rather at the houses of their mistresses than of their mothers.
There can scarcely be a life lower, perhaps, than his, but he was quite
contented with it, such as it was, and led it in perfect good nature,
simplicity, and modesty of demeanour.

By the time Mac had finished a copious breakfast, most of the others
had concluded their meal.  Young Lord Varinas was smoking an immense
Meerschaum pipe, while Captain Hugues was employed with a cigar: that
violent little devil Tandyman, with his little bull-terrier between his
legs, was tossing for shillings with all his might (that fellow was
always at some game or other) against Captain Deuceace; and Mac and
Rawdon walked off to the Club, neither, of course, having given any
hint of the business which was occupying their minds.  Both, on the
other hand, had joined pretty gaily in the conversation, for why should
they interrupt it? Feasting, drinking, ribaldry, laughter, go on
alongside of all sorts of other occupations in Vanity Fair--the crowds
were pouring out of church as Rawdon and his friend passed down St.
James's Street and entered into their Club.

The old bucks and habitues, who ordinarily stand gaping and grinning
out of the great front window of the Club, had not arrived at their
posts as yet--the newspaper-room was almost empty.  One man was present
whom Rawdon did not know; another to whom he owed a little score for
whist, and whom, in consequence, he did not care to meet; a third was
reading the Royalist (a periodical famous for its scandal and its
attachment to Church and King) Sunday paper at the table, and looking
up at Crawley with some interest, said, "Crawley, I congratulate you."

"What do you mean?" said the Colonel.

"It's in the Observer and the Royalist too," said Mr. Smith.

"What?" Rawdon cried, turning very red.  He thought that the affair
with Lord Steyne was already in the public prints.  Smith looked up
wondering and smiling at the agitation which the Colonel exhibited as
he took up the paper and, trembling, began to read.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown (the gentleman with whom Rawdon had the
outstanding whist account) had been talking about the Colonel just
before he came in.

"It is come just in the nick of time," said Smith.  "I suppose Crawley
had not a shilling in the world."

"It's a wind that blows everybody good," Mr. Brown said.  "He can't go
away without paying me a pony he owes me."

"What's the salary?" asked Smith.

"Two or three thousand," answered the other.  "But the climate's so
infernal, they don't enjoy it long. Liverseege died after eighteen
months of it, and the man before went off in six weeks, I hear."

"Some people say his brother is a very clever man.  I always found him
a d------ bore," Smith ejaculated.  "He must have good interest, though.
He must have got the Colonel the place."

"He!" said Brown, with a sneer.  "Pooh.  It was Lord Steyne got it."

"How do you mean?"

"A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband," answered the other
enigmatically, and went to read his papers.

Rawdon, for his part, read in the Royalist the following astonishing
paragraph:

GOVERNORSHIP OF COVENTRY ISLAND.--H.M.S. Yellowjack, Commander
Jaunders, has brought letters and papers from Coventry Island.  H. E.
Sir Thomas Liverseege had fallen a victim to the prevailing fever at
Swampton.  His loss is deeply felt in the flourishing colony.  We hear
that the Governorship has been offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B.,
a distinguished Waterloo officer.  We need not only men of acknowledged
bravery, but men of administrative talents to superintend the affairs
of our colonies, and we have no doubt that the gentleman selected by
the Colonial Office to fill the lamented vacancy which has occurred at
Coventry Island is admirably calculated for the post which he is about
to occupy.


"Coventry Island!  Where was it? Who had appointed him to the
government? You must take me out as your secretary, old boy," Captain
Macmurdo said laughing; and as Crawley and his friend sat wondering and
perplexed over the announcement, the Club waiter brought in to the
Colonel a card on which the name of Mr. Wenham was engraved, who begged
to see Colonel Crawley.

The Colonel and his aide-de-camp went out to meet the gentleman,
rightly conjecturing that he was an emissary of Lord Steyne.  "How d'ye
do, Crawley? I am glad to see you," said Mr. Wenham with a bland smile,
and grasping Crawley's hand with great cordiality.

"You come, I suppose, from--"

"Exactly," said Mr. Wenham.

"Then this is my friend Captain Macmurdo, of the Life Guards Green."

"Delighted to know Captain Macmurdo, I'm sure," Mr. Wenham said and
tendered another smile and shake of the hand to the second, as he had
done to the principal. Mac put out one finger, armed with a buckskin
glove, and made a very frigid bow to Mr. Wenham over his tight cravat.
He was, perhaps, discontented at being put in communication with a
pekin, and thought that Lord Steyne should have sent him a Colonel at
the very least.

"As Macmurdo acts for me, and knows what I mean," Crawley said, "I had
better retire and leave you together."

"Of course," said Macmurdo.

"By no means, my dear Colonel," Mr. Wenham said; "the interview which I
had the honour of requesting was with you personally, though the
company of Captain Macmurdo cannot fail to be also most pleasing.  In
fact, Captain, I hope that our conversation will lead to none but the
most agreeable results, very different from those which my friend
Colonel Crawley appears to anticipate."

"Humph!" said Captain Macmurdo.  Be hanged to these civilians, he
thought to himself, they are always for arranging and speechifying. Mr.
Wenham took a chair which was not offered to him--took a paper from his
pocket, and resumed--

"You have seen this gratifying announcement in the papers this morning,
Colonel? Government has secured a most valuable servant, and you, if
you accept office, as I presume you will, an excellent appointment.
Three thousand a year, delightful climate, excellent government-house,
all your own way in the Colony, and a certain promotion.  I
congratulate you with all my heart.  I presume you know, gentlemen, to
whom my friend is indebted for this piece of patronage?"

"Hanged if I know," the Captain said; his principal turned very red.

"To one of the most generous and kindest men in the world, as he is one
of the greatest--to my excellent friend, the Marquis of Steyne."

"I'll see him d---- before I take his place," growled out Rawdon.

"You are irritated against my noble friend," Mr. Wenham calmly resumed;
"and now, in the name of common sense and justice, tell me why?"

"WHY?" cried Rawdon in surprise.

"Why? Dammy!" said the Captain, ringing his stick on the ground.

"Dammy, indeed," said Mr. Wenham with the most agreeable smile; "still,
look at the matter as a man of the world--as an honest man--and see if
you have not been in the wrong.  You come home from a journey, and
find--what?--my Lord Steyne supping at your house in Curzon Street with
Mrs. Crawley.  Is the circumstance strange or novel? Has he not been a
hundred times before in the same position? Upon my honour and word as a
gentleman"--Mr. Wenham here put his hand on his waistcoat with a
parliamentary air--"I declare I think that your suspicions are
monstrous and utterly unfounded, and that they injure an honourable
gentleman who has proved his good-will towards you by a thousand
benefactions--and a most spotless and innocent lady."

"You don't mean to say that--that Crawley's mistaken?" said Mr.
Macmurdo.

"I believe that Mrs. Crawley is as innocent as my wife, Mrs. Wenham,"
Mr. Wenham said with great energy.  "I believe that, misled by an
infernal jealousy, my friend here strikes a blow against not only an
infirm and old man of high station, his constant friend and benefactor,
but against his wife, his own dearest honour, his son's future
reputation, and his own prospects in life."

"I will tell you what happened," Mr. Wenham continued with great
solemnity; "I was sent for this morning by my Lord Steyne, and found
him in a pitiable state, as, I need hardly inform Colonel Crawley, any
man of age and infirmity would be after a personal conflict with a man
of your strength.  I say to your face; it was a cruel advantage you
took of that strength, Colonel Crawley.  It was not only the body of my
noble and excellent friend which was wounded--his heart, sir, was
bleeding.  A man whom he had loaded with benefits and regarded with
affection had subjected him to the foulest indignity.  What was this
very appointment, which appears in the journals of to-day, but a proof
of his kindness to you? When I saw his Lordship this morning I found
him in a state pitiable indeed to see, and as anxious as you are to
revenge the outrage committed upon him, by blood.  You know he has
given his proofs, I presume, Colonel Crawley?"

"He has plenty of pluck," said the Colonel.  "Nobody ever said he
hadn't."

"His first order to me was to write a letter of challenge, and to carry
it to Colonel Crawley.  One or other of us," he said, "must not survive
the outrage of last night."

Crawley nodded.  "You're coming to the point, Wenham," he said.

"I tried my utmost to calm Lord Steyne. 'Good God! sir,' I said, 'how I
regret that Mrs. Wenham and myself had not accepted Mrs. Crawley's
invitation to sup with her!'"

"She asked you to sup with her?" Captain Macmurdo said.

"After the opera.  Here's the note of invitation--stop--no, this is
another paper--I thought I had it, but it's of no consequence, and I
pledge you my word to the fact.  If we had come--and it was only one of
Mrs. Wenham's headaches which prevented us--she suffers under them a
good deal, especially in the spring--if we had come, and you had
returned home, there would have been no quarrel, no insult, no
suspicion--and so it is positively because my poor wife has a headache
that you are to bring death down upon two men of honour and plunge two
of the most excellent and ancient families in the kingdom into disgrace
and sorrow."

Mr. Macmurdo looked at his principal with the air of a man profoundly
puzzled, and Rawdon felt with a kind of rage that his prey was escaping
him.  He did not believe a word of the story, and yet, how discredit or
disprove it?

Mr. Wenham continued with the same fluent oratory, which in his place
in Parliament he had so often practised--"I sat for an hour or more by
Lord Steyne's bedside, beseeching, imploring Lord Steyne to forego his
intention of demanding a meeting.  I pointed out to him that the
circumstances were after all suspicious--they were suspicious.  I
acknowledge it--any man in your position might have been taken in--I
said that a man furious with jealousy is to all intents and purposes a
madman, and should be as such regarded--that a duel between you must
lead to the disgrace of all parties concerned--that a man of his
Lordship's exalted station had no right in these days, when the most
atrocious revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling
doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a public scandal;
and that, however innocent, the common people would insist that he was
guilty.  In fine, I implored him not to send the challenge."

"I don't believe one word of the whole story," said Rawdon, grinding
his teeth.  "I believe it a d------ lie, and that you're in it, Mr.
Wenham.  If the challenge don't come from him, by Jove it shall come
from me."

Mr. Wenham turned deadly pale at this savage interruption of the
Colonel and looked towards the door.

But he found a champion in Captain Macmurdo.  That gentleman rose up
with an oath and rebuked Rawdon for his language.  "You put the affair
into my hands, and you shall act as I think fit, by Jove, and not as
you do. You have no right to insult Mr. Wenham with this sort of
language; and dammy, Mr. Wenham, you deserve an apology.  And as for a
challenge to Lord Steyne, you may get somebody else to carry it, I
won't.  If my lord, after being thrashed, chooses to sit still, dammy
let him. And as for the affair with--with Mrs. Crawley, my belief is,
there's nothing proved at all:  that your wife's innocent, as innocent
as Mr. Wenham says she is; and at any rate that you would be a d--fool
not to take the place and hold your tongue."

"Captain Macmurdo, you speak like a man of sense," Mr. Wenham cried
out, immensely relieved--"I forget any words that Colonel Crawley has
used in the irritation of the moment."

"I thought you would," Rawdon said with a sneer.

"Shut your mouth, you old stoopid," the Captain said good-naturedly.
"Mr. Wenham ain't a fighting man; and quite right, too."

"This matter, in my belief," the Steyne emissary cried, "ought to be
buried in the most profound oblivion.  A word concerning it should
never pass these doors.  I speak in the interest of my friend, as well
as of Colonel Crawley, who persists in considering me his enemy."

"I suppose Lord Steyne won't talk about it very much," said Captain
Macmurdo; "and I don't see why our side should.  The affair ain't a
very pretty one, any way you take it, and the less said about it the
better. It's you are thrashed, and not us; and if you are satisfied,
why, I think, we should be."

Mr. Wenham took his hat, upon this, and Captain Macmurdo following him
to the door, shut it upon himself and Lord Steyne's agent, leaving
Rawdon chafing within.  When the two were on the other side, Macmurdo
looked hard at the other ambassador and with an expression of anything
but respect on his round jolly face.

"You don't stick at a trifle, Mr. Wenham," he said.

"You flatter me, Captain Macmurdo," answered the other with a smile.
"Upon my honour and conscience now, Mrs. Crawley did ask us to sup
after the opera."

"Of course; and Mrs. Wenham had one of her head-aches.  I say, I've got
a thousand-pound note here, which I will give you if you will give me a
receipt, please; and I will put the note up in an envelope for Lord
Steyne. My man shan't fight him.  But we had rather not take his money."

"It was all a mistake--all a mistake, my dear sir," the other said with
the utmost innocence of manner; and was bowed down the Club steps by
Captain Macmurdo, just as Sir Pitt Crawley ascended them. There was a
slight acquaintance between these two gentlemen, and the Captain, going
back with the Baronet to the room where the latter's brother was, told
Sir Pitt, in confidence, that he had made the affair all right between
Lord Steyne and the Colonel.

Sir Pitt was well pleased, of course, at this intelligence, and
congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful issue of the affair,
making appropriate moral remarks upon the evils of duelling and the
unsatisfactory nature of that sort of settlement of disputes.

And after this preface, he tried with all his eloquence to effect a
reconciliation between Rawdon and his wife. He recapitulated the
statements which Becky had made, pointed out the probabilities of their
truth, and asserted his own firm belief in her innocence.

But Rawdon would not hear of it.  "She has kep money concealed from me
these ten years," he said "She swore, last night only, she had none
from Steyne.  She knew it was all up, directly I found it.  If she's
not guilty, Pitt, she's as bad as guilty, and I'll never see her
again--never." His head sank down on his chest as he spoke the words,
and he looked quite broken and sad.

"Poor old boy," Macmurdo said, shaking his head.

Rawdon Crawley resisted for some time the idea of taking the place
which had been procured for him by so odious a patron, and was also for
removing the boy from the school where Lord Steyne's interest had
placed him.  He was induced, however, to acquiesce in these benefits by
the entreaties of his brother and Macmurdo, but mainly by the latter,
pointing out to him what a fury Steyne would be in to think that his
enemy's fortune was made through his means.

When the Marquis of Steyne came abroad after his accident, the Colonial
Secretary bowed up to him and congratulated himself and the Service
upon having made so excellent an appointment.  These congratulations
were received with a degree of gratitude which may be imagined on the
part of Lord Steyne.

The secret of the rencontre between him and Colonel Crawley was buried
in the profoundest oblivion, as Wenham said; that is, by the seconds
and the principals. But before that evening was over it was talked of
at fifty dinner-tables in Vanity Fair.  Little Cackleby himself went to
seven evening parties and told the story with comments and emendations
at each place.  How Mrs. Washington White revelled in it!  The
Bishopess of Ealing was shocked beyond expression; the Bishop went and
wrote his name down in the visiting-book at Gaunt House that very day.
Little Southdown was sorry; so you may be sure was his sister Lady
Jane, very sorry.  Lady Southdown wrote it off to her other daughter at
the Cape of Good Hope.  It was town-talk for at least three days, and
was only kept out of the newspapers by the exertions of Mr. Wagg,
acting upon a hint from Mr. Wenham.

The bailiffs and brokers seized upon poor Raggles in Curzon Street, and
the late fair tenant of that poor little mansion was in the
meanwhile--where? Who cared!  Who asked after a day or two? Was she
guilty or not? We all know how charitable the world is, and how the
verdict of Vanity Fair goes when there is a doubt.  Some people said
she had gone to Naples in pursuit of Lord Steyne, whilst others averred
that his Lordship quitted that city and fled to Palermo on hearing of
Becky's arrival; some said she was living in Bierstadt, and had become
a dame d'honneur to the Queen of Bulgaria; some that she was at
Boulogne; and others, at a boarding-house at Cheltenham.

Rawdon made her a tolerable annuity, and we may be sure that she was a
woman who could make a little money go a great way, as the saying is.
He would have paid his debts on leaving England, could he have got any
Insurance Office to take his life, but the climate of Coventry Island
was so bad that he could borrow no money on the strength of his salary.
He remitted, however, to his brother punctually, and wrote to his
little boy regularly every mail.  He kept Macmurdo in cigars and sent
over quantities of shells, cayenne pepper, hot pickles, guava jelly,
and colonial produce to Lady Jane. He sent his brother home the Swamp
Town Gazette, in which the new Governor was praised with immense
enthusiasm; whereas the Swamp Town Sentinel, whose wife was not asked
to Government House, declared that his Excellency was a tyrant,
compared to whom Nero was an enlightened philanthropist.  Little Rawdon
used to like to get the papers and read about his Excellency.

His mother never made any movement to see the child. He went home to
his aunt for Sundays and holidays; he soon knew every bird's nest about
Queen's Crawley, and rode out with Sir Huddlestone's hounds, which he
admired so on his first well-remembered visit to Hampshire.



Georgy is Made a Gentleman

Georgy Osborne was now fairly established in his grandfather's mansion
in Russell Square, occupant of his father's room in the house and heir
apparent of all the splendours there.  The good looks, gallant bearing,
and gentlemanlike appearance of the boy won the grandsire's heart for
him.  Mr. Osborne was as proud of him as ever he had been of the elder
George.

The child had many more luxuries and indulgences than had been awarded
his father.  Osborne's commerce had prospered greatly of late years.
His wealth and importance in the City had very much increased.  He had
been glad enough in former days to put the elder George to a good
private school; and a commission in the army for his son had been a
source of no small pride to him; for little George and his future
prospects the old man looked much higher.  He would make a gentleman of
the little chap, was Mr. Osborne's constant saying regarding little
Georgy.  He saw him in his mind's eye, a collegian, a Parliament man, a
Baronet, perhaps.  The old man thought he would die contented if he
could see his grandson in a fair way to such honours.  He would have
none but a tip-top college man to educate him--none of your quacks and
pretenders--no, no.  A few years before, he used to be savage, and
inveigh against all parsons, scholars, and the like declaring that they
were a pack of humbugs, and quacks that weren't fit to get their living
but by grinding Latin and Greek, and a set of supercilious dogs that
pretended to look down upon British merchants and gentlemen, who could
buy up half a hundred of 'em.  He would mourn now, in a very solemn
manner, that his own education had been neglected, and repeatedly point
out, in pompous orations to Georgy, the necessity and excellence of
classical acquirements.

When they met at dinner the grandsire used to ask the lad what he had
been reading during the day, and was greatly interested at the report
the boy gave of his own studies, pretending to understand little George
when he spoke regarding them.  He made a hundred blunders and showed
his ignorance many a time.  It did not increase the respect which the
child had for his senior. A quick brain and a better education
elsewhere showed the boy very soon that his grandsire was a dullard,
and he began accordingly to command him and to look down upon him; for
his previous education, humble and contracted as it had been, had made
a much better gentleman of Georgy than any plans of his grandfather
could make him.  He had been brought up by a kind, weak, and tender
woman, who had no pride about anything but about him, and whose heart
was so pure and whose bearing was so meek and humble that she could not
but needs be a true lady.  She busied herself in gentle offices and
quiet duties; if she never said brilliant things, she never spoke or
thought unkind ones; guileless and artless, loving and pure, indeed how
could our poor little Amelia be other than a real gentlewoman!

Young Georgy lorded over this soft and yielding nature; and the
contrast of its simplicity and delicacy with the coarse pomposity of
the dull old man with whom he next came in contact made him lord over
the latter too.  If he had been a Prince Royal he could not have been
better brought up to think well of himself.

Whilst his mother was yearning after him at home, and I do believe
every hour of the day, and during most hours of the sad lonely nights,
thinking of him, this young gentleman had a number of pleasures and
consolations administered to him, which made him for his part bear the
separation from Amelia very easily.  Little boys who cry when they are
going to school cry because they are going to a very uncomfortable
place.  It is only a few who weep from sheer affection.  When you think
that the eyes of your childhood dried at the sight of a piece of
gingerbread, and that a plum cake was a compensation for the agony of
parting with your mamma and sisters, oh my friend and brother, you need
not be too confident of your own fine feelings.

Well, then, Master George Osborne had every comfort and luxury that a
wealthy and lavish old grandfather thought fit to provide.  The
coachman was instructed to purchase for him the handsomest pony which
could be bought for money, and on this George was taught to ride, first
at a riding-school, whence, after having performed satisfactorily
without stirrups, and over the leaping-bar, he was conducted through
the New Road to Regent's Park, and then to Hyde Park, where he rode in
state with Martin the coachman behind him. Old Osborne, who took
matters more easily in the City now, where he left his affairs to his
junior partners, would often ride out with Miss O.  in the same
fashionable direction. As little Georgy came cantering up with his
dandified air and his heels down, his grandfather would nudge the lad's
aunt and say, "Look, Miss O." And he would laugh, and his face would
grow red with pleasure, as he nodded out of the window to the boy, as
the groom saluted the carriage, and the footman saluted Master George.
Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock (whose chariot might daily be
seen in the Ring, with bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and
harness, and three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades
and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick Bullock, I say,
flung glances of the bitterest hatred at the little upstart as he rode
by with his hand on his side and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.

Though he was scarcely eleven years of age, Master George wore straps
and the most beautiful little boots like a man.  He had gilt spurs, and
a gold-headed whip, and a fine pin in his handkerchief, and the neatest
little kid gloves which Lamb's Conduit Street could furnish. His mother
had given him a couple of neckcloths, and carefully hemmed and made
some little shirts for him; but when her Eli came to see the widow,
they were replaced by much finer linen. He had little jewelled buttons
in the lawn shirt fronts.  Her humble presents had been put aside--I
believe Miss Osborne had given them to the coachman's boy.  Amelia
tried to think she was pleased at the change.  Indeed, she was happy
and charmed to see the boy looking so beautiful.

She had had a little black profile of him done for a shilling, and this
was hung up by the side of another portrait over her bed.  One day the
boy came on his accustomed visit, galloping down the little street at
Brompton, and bringing, as usual, all the inhabitants to the windows to
admire his splendour, and with great eagerness and a look of triumph in
his face, he pulled a case out of his great-coat--it was a natty white
great-coat, with a cape and a velvet collar--pulled out a red morocco
case, which he gave her.

"I bought it with my own money, Mamma," he said. "I thought you'd like
it."

Amelia opened the case, and giving a little cry of delighted affection,
seized the boy and embraced him a hundred times.  It was a miniature of
himself, very prettily done (though not half handsome enough, we may be
sure, the widow thought).  His grandfather had wished to have a picture
of him by an artist whose works, exhibited in a shop-window, in
Southampton Row, had caught the old gentleman's eye; and George, who
had plenty of money, bethought him of asking the painter how much a
copy of the little portrait would cost, saying that he would pay for it
out of his own money and that he wanted to give it to his mother.  The
pleased painter executed it for a small price, and old Osborne himself,
when he heard of the incident, growled out his satisfaction and gave
the boy twice as many sovereigns as he paid for the miniature.

But what was the grandfather's pleasure compared to Amelia's ecstacy?
That proof of the boy's affection charmed her so that she thought no
child in the world was like hers for goodness.  For long weeks after,
the thought of his love made her happy.  She slept better with the
picture under her pillow, and how many many times did she kiss it and
weep and pray over it!  A small kindness from those she loved made that
timid heart grateful.  Since her parting with George she had had no
such joy and consolation.

At his new home Master George ruled like a lord; at dinner he invited
the ladies to drink wine with the utmost coolness, and took off his
champagne in a way which charmed his old grandfather.  "Look at him,"
the old man would say, nudging his neighbour with a delighted purple
face, "did you ever see such a chap? Lord, Lord! he'll be ordering a
dressing-case next, and razors to shave with; I'm blessed if he won't."

The antics of the lad did not, however, delight Mr. Osborne's friends
so much as they pleased the old gentleman.  It gave Mr. Justice Coffin
no pleasure to hear Georgy cut into the conversation and spoil his
stories. Colonel Fogey was not interested in seeing the little boy half
tipsy.  Mr. Sergeant Toffy's lady felt no particular gratitude, when,
with a twist of his elbow, he tilted a glass of port-wine over her
yellow satin and laughed at the disaster; nor was she better pleased,
although old Osborne was highly delighted, when Georgy "whopped" her
third boy (a young gentleman a year older than Georgy, and by chance
home for the holidays from Dr. Tickleus's at Ealing School) in Russell
Square. George's grandfather gave the boy a couple of sovereigns for
that feat and promised to reward him further for every boy above his
own size and age whom he whopped in a similar manner.  It is difficult
to say what good the old man saw in these combats; he had a vague
notion that quarrelling made boys hardy, and that tyranny was a useful
accomplishment for them to learn.  English youth have been so educated
time out of mind, and we have hundreds of thousands of apologists and
admirers of injustice, misery, and brutality, as perpetrated among
children.  Flushed with praise and victory over Master Toffy, George
wished naturally to pursue his conquests further, and one day as he was
strutting about in prodigiously dandified new clothes, near St.
Pancras, and a young baker's boy made sarcastic comments upon his
appearance, the youthful patrician pulled off his dandy jacket with
great spirit, and giving it in charge to the friend who accompanied him
(Master Todd, of Great Coram Street, Russell Square, son of the junior
partner of the house of Osborne and Co.), George tried to whop the
little baker.  But the chances of war were unfavourable this time, and
the little baker whopped Georgy, who came home with a rueful black eye
and all his fine shirt frill dabbled with the claret drawn from his own
little nose.  He told his grandfather that he had been in combat with a
giant, and frightened his poor mother at Brompton with long, and by no
means authentic, accounts of the battle.

This young Todd, of Coram Street, Russell Square, was Master George's
great friend and admirer.  They both had a taste for painting
theatrical characters; for hardbake and raspberry tarts; for sliding
and skating in the Regent's Park and the Serpentine, when the weather
permitted; for going to the play, whither they were often conducted, by
Mr. Osborne's orders, by Rowson, Master George's appointed
body-servant, with whom they sat in great comfort in the pit.

In the company of this gentleman they visited all the principal
theatres of the metropolis; knew the names of all the actors from Drury
Lane to Sadler's Wells; and performed, indeed, many of the plays to the
Todd family and their youthful friends, with West's famous characters,
on their pasteboard theatre.  Rowson, the footman, who was of a
generous disposition, would not unfrequently, when in cash, treat his
young master to oysters after the play, and to a glass of rum-shrub for
a night-cap. We may be pretty certain that Mr. Rowson profited in his
turn by his young master's liberality and gratitude for the pleasures
to which the footman inducted him.

A famous tailor from the West End of the town--Mr. Osborne would have
none of your City or Holborn bunglers, he said, for the boy (though a
City tailor was good enough for HIM)--was summoned to ornament little
George's person, and was told to spare no expense in so doing.  So, Mr.
Woolsey, of Conduit Street, gave a loose to his imagination and sent
the child home fancy trousers, fancy waistcoats, and fancy jackets
enough to furnish a school of little dandies.  Georgy had little white
waistcoats for evening parties, and little cut velvet waistcoats for
dinners, and a dear little darling shawl dressing-gown, for all the
world like a little man. He dressed for dinner every day, "like a
regular West End swell," as his grandfather remarked; one of the
domestics was affected to his special service, attended him at his
toilette, answered his bell, and brought him his letters always on a
silver tray.

Georgy, after breakfast, would sit in the arm-chair in the dining-room
and read the Morning Post, just like a grown-up man.  "How he DU dam
and swear," the servants would cry, delighted at his precocity.  Those
who remembered the Captain his father, declared Master George was his
Pa, every inch of him.  He made the house lively by his activity, his
imperiousness, his scolding, and his good-nature.

George's education was confided to a neighbouring scholar and private
pedagogue who "prepared young noblemen and gentlemen for the
Universities, the senate, and the learned professions:  whose system
did not embrace the degrading corporal severities still practised at
the ancient places of education, and in whose family the pupils would
find the elegances of refined society and the confidence and affection
of a home." It was in this way that the Reverend Lawrence Veal of Hart
Street, Bloomsbury, and domestic Chaplain to the Earl of Bareacres,
strove with Mrs. Veal his wife to entice pupils.

By thus advertising and pushing sedulously, the domestic Chaplain and
his Lady generally succeeded in having one or two scholars by them--who
paid a high figure and were thought to be in uncommonly comfortable
quarters.  There was a large West Indian, whom nobody came to see, with
a mahogany complexion, a woolly head, and an exceedingly dandyfied
appearance; there was another hulking boy of three-and-twenty whose
education had been neglected and whom Mr. and Mrs. Veal were to
introduce into the polite world; there were two sons of Colonel Bangles
of the East India Company's Service:  these four sat down to dinner at
Mrs. Veal's genteel board, when Georgy was introduced to her
establishment.

Georgy was, like some dozen other pupils, only a day boy; he arrived in
the morning under the guardianship of his friend Mr. Rowson, and if it
was fine, would ride away in the afternoon on his pony, followed by the
groom.  The wealth of his grandfather was reported in the school to be
prodigious.  The Rev. Mr. Veal used to compliment Georgy upon it
personally, warning him that he was destined for a high station; that
it became him to prepare, by sedulity and docility in youth, for the
lofty duties to which he would be called in mature age; that obedience
in the child was the best preparation for command in the man; and that
he therefore begged George would not bring toffee into the school and
ruin the health of the Masters Bangles, who had everything they wanted
at the elegant and abundant table of Mrs. Veal.

With respect to learning, "the Curriculum," as Mr. Veal loved to call
it, was of prodigious extent, and the young gentlemen in Hart Street
might learn a something of every known science.  The Rev. Mr. Veal had
an orrery, an electrifying machine, a turning lathe, a theatre (in the
wash-house), a chemical apparatus, and what he called a select library
of all the works of the best authors of ancient and modern times and
languages. He took the boys to the British Museum and descanted upon
the antiquities and the specimens of natural history there, so that
audiences would gather round him as he spoke, and all Bloomsbury highly
admired him as a prodigiously well-informed man.  And whenever he spoke
(which he did almost always), he took care to produce the very finest
and longest words of which the vocabulary gave him the use, rightly
judging that it was as cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorous
epithet, as to use a little stingy one.

Thus he would say to George in school, "I observed on my return home
from taking the indulgence of an evening's scientific conversation with
my excellent friend Doctor Bulders--a true archaeologian, gentlemen, a
true archaeologian--that the windows of your venerated grandfather's
almost princely mansion in Russell Square were illuminated as if for
the purposes of festivity.  Am I right in my conjecture that Mr.
Osborne entertained a society of chosen spirits round his sumptuous
board last night?"

Little Georgy, who had considerable humour, and used to mimic Mr. Veal
to his face with great spirit and dexterity, would reply that Mr. V.
was quite correct in his surmise.

"Then those friends who had the honour of partaking of Mr. Osborne's
hospitality, gentlemen, had no reason, I will lay any wager, to
complain of their repast.  I myself have been more than once so
favoured.  (By the way, Master Osborne, you came a little late this
morning, and have been a defaulter in this respect more than once.) I
myself, I say, gentlemen, humble as I am, have been found not unworthy
to share Mr. Osborne's elegant hospitality.  And though I have feasted
with the great and noble of the world--for I presume that I may call my
excellent friend and patron, the Right Honourable George Earl of
Bareacres, one of the number--yet I assure you that the board of the
British merchant was to the full as richly served, and his reception as
gratifying and noble.  Mr. Bluck, sir, we will resume, if you please,
that passage of Eutropis, which was interrupted by the late arrival of
Master Osborne."

To this great man George's education was for some time entrusted.
Amelia was bewildered by his phrases, but thought him a prodigy of
learning.  That poor widow made friends of Mrs. Veal, for reasons of
her own.  She liked to be in the house and see Georgy coming to school
there.  She liked to be asked to Mrs. Veal's conversazioni, which took
place once a month (as you were informed on pink cards, with AOHNH
[_Transcriber's Note: The name of the Greek goddess Athene; the "O"
represents a capital theta._] engraved on them), and where the professor
welcomed his pupils and their friends to weak tea and scientific
conversation. Poor little Amelia never missed one of these
entertainments and thought them delicious so long as she might have
Georgy sitting by her. And she would walk from Brompton in any weather,
and embrace Mrs. Veal with tearful gratitude for the delightful evening
she had passed, when, the company having retired and Georgy gone off
with Mr. Rowson, his attendant, poor Mrs. Osborne put on her cloaks and
her shawls preparatory to walking home.

As for the learning which Georgy imbibed under this valuable master of
a hundred sciences, to judge from the weekly reports which the lad took
home to his grandfather, his progress was remarkable.  The names of a
score or more of desirable branches of knowledge were printed in a
table, and the pupil's progress in each was marked by the professor.
In Greek Georgy was pronounced aristos, in Latin optimus, in French
tres bien, and so forth; and everybody had prizes for everything at the
end of the year.  Even Mr. Swartz, the wooly-headed young gentleman,
and half-brother to the Honourable Mrs. Mac Mull, and Mr. Bluck, the
neglected young pupil of three-and-twenty from the agricultural
district, and that idle young scapegrace of a Master Todd before
mentioned, received little eighteen-penny books, with "Athene" engraved
on them, and a pompous Latin inscription from the professor to his
young friends.

The family of this Master Todd were hangers-on of the house of Osborne.
The old gentleman had advanced Todd from being a clerk to be a junior
partner in his establishment.

Mr. Osborne was the godfather of young Master Todd (who in subsequent
life wrote Mr. Osborne Todd on his cards and became a man of decided
fashion), while Miss Osborne had accompanied Miss Maria Todd to the
font, and gave her protegee a prayer-book, a collection of tracts, a
volume of very low church poetry, or some such memento of her goodness
every year.  Miss O.  drove the Todds out in her carriage now and then;
when they were ill, her footman, in large plush smalls and waistcoat,
brought jellies and delicacies from Russell Square to Coram Street.
Coram Street trembled and looked up to Russell Square indeed, and Mrs.
Todd, who had a pretty hand at cutting out paper trimmings for haunches
of mutton, and could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips and
carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the Square," as it
was called, and assist in the preparations incident to a great dinner,
without even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet.  If
any guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine.  Mrs.
Todd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled
knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and the
ladies under her convoy reached that apartment--and ready to fire off
duets and sing until the gentlemen came up.  Poor Maria Todd; poor
young lady!  How she had to work and thrum at these duets and sonatas
in the Street, before they appeared in public in the Square!

Thus it seemed to be decreed by fate that Georgy was to domineer over
everybody with whom he came in contact, and that friends, relatives,
and domestics were all to bow the knee before the little fellow.  It
must be owned that he accommodated himself very willingly to this
arrangement.  Most people do so.  And Georgy liked to play the part of
master and perhaps had a natural aptitude for it.

In Russell Square everybody was afraid of Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Osborne
was afraid of Georgy.  The boy's dashing manners, and offhand rattle
about books and learning, his likeness to his father (dead unreconciled
in Brussels yonder) awed the old gentleman and gave the young boy the
mastery.  The old man would start at some hereditary feature or tone
unconsciously used by the little lad, and fancy that George's father
was again before him.  He tried by indulgence to the grandson to make
up for harshness to the elder George.  People were surprised at his
gentleness to the boy.  He growled and swore at Miss Osborne as usual,
and would smile when George came down late for breakfast.

Miss Osborne, George's aunt, was a faded old spinster, broken down by
more than forty years of dulness and coarse usage.  It was easy for a
lad of spirit to master her. And whenever George wanted anything from
her, from the jam-pots in her cupboards to the cracked and dry old
colours in her paint-box (the old paint-box which she had had when she
was a pupil of Mr. Smee and was still almost young and blooming),
Georgy took possession of the object of his desire, which obtained, he
took no further notice of his aunt.

For his friends and cronies, he had a pompous old schoolmaster, who
flattered him, and a toady, his senior, whom he could thrash.  It was
dear Mrs. Todd's delight to leave him with her youngest daughter, Rosa
Jemima, a darling child of eight years old.  The little pair looked so
well together, she would say (but not to the folks in "the Square," we
may be sure) "who knows what might happen? Don't they make a pretty
little couple?" the fond mother thought.

The broken-spirited, old, maternal grandfather was likewise subject to
the little tyrant.  He could not help respecting a lad who had such
fine clothes and rode with a groom behind him.  Georgy, on his side,
was in the constant habit of hearing coarse abuse and vulgar satire
levelled at John Sedley by his pitiless old enemy, Mr. Osborne.
Osborne used to call the other the old pauper, the old coal-man, the
old bankrupt, and by many other such names of brutal contumely.  How
was little George to respect a man so prostrate? A few months after he
was with his paternal grandfather, Mrs. Sedley died. There had been
little love between her and the child. He did not care to show much
grief.  He came down to visit his mother in a fine new suit of
mourning, and was very angry that he could not go to a play upon which
he had set his heart.

The illness of that old lady had been the occupation and perhaps the
safeguard of Amelia.  What do men know about women's martyrdoms? We
should go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains
which are meekly borne by many women.  Ceaseless slavery meeting with
no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant;
love, labour, patience, watchfulness, without even so much as the
acknowledgement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bear
in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they felt
nothing.  Tender slaves that they are, they must needs be hypocrites
and weak.

From her chair Amelia's mother had taken to her bed, which she had
never left, and from which Mrs. Osborne herself was never absent except
when she ran to see George.  The old lady grudged her even those rare
visits; she, who had been a kind, smiling, good-natured mother once, in
the days of her prosperity, but whom poverty and infirmities had broken
down.  Her illness or estrangement did not affect Amelia.  They rather
enabled her to support the other calamity under which she was
suffering, and from the thoughts of which she was kept by the ceaseless
calls of the invalid.  Amelia bore her harshness quite gently; smoothed
the uneasy pillow; was always ready with a soft answer to the watchful,
querulous voice; soothed the sufferer with words of hope, such as her
pious simple heart could best feel and utter, and closed the eyes that
had once looked so tenderly upon her.

Then all her time and tenderness were devoted to the consolation and
comfort of the bereaved old father, who was stunned by the blow which
had befallen him, and stood utterly alone in the world.  His wife, his
honour, his fortune, everything he loved best had fallen away from him.
There was only Amelia to stand by and support with her gentle arms the
tottering, heart-broken old man. We are not going to write the history:
it would be too dreary and stupid.  I can see Vanity Fair yawning over
it d'avance.

One day as the young gentlemen were assembled in the study at the Rev.
Mr. Veal's, and the domestic chaplain to the Right Honourable the Earl
of Bareacres was spouting away as usual, a smart carriage drove up to
the door decorated with the statue of Athene, and two gentlemen stepped
out.  The young Masters Bangles rushed to the window with a vague
notion that their father might have arrived from Bombay.  The great
hulking scholar of three-and-twenty, who was crying secretly over a
passage of Eutropius, flattened his neglected nose against the panes
and looked at the drag, as the laquais de place sprang from the box and
let out the persons in the carriage.

"It's a fat one and a thin one," Mr. Bluck said as a thundering knock
came to the door.

Everybody was interested, from the domestic chaplain himself, who hoped
he saw the fathers of some future pupils, down to Master Georgy, glad
of any pretext for laying his book down.

The boy in the shabby livery with the faded copper buttons, who always
thrust himself into the tight coat to open the door, came into the
study and said, "Two gentlemen want to see Master Osborne." The
professor had had a trifling altercation in the morning with that young
gentleman, owing to a difference about the introduction of crackers in
school-time; but his face resumed its habitual expression of bland
courtesy as he said, "Master Osborne, I give you full permission to go
and see your carriage friends--to whom I beg you to convey the
respectful compliments of myself and Mrs. Veal."

Georgy went into the reception-room and saw two strangers, whom he
looked at with his head up, in his usual haughty manner.  One was fat,
with mustachios, and the other was lean and long, in a blue frock-coat,
with a brown face and a grizzled head.

"My God, how like he is!" said the long gentleman with a start. "Can
you guess who we are, George?"

The boy's face flushed up, as it did usually when he was moved, and his
eyes brightened.  "I don't know the other," he said, "but I should
think you must be Major Dobbin."

Indeed it was our old friend.  His voice trembled with pleasure as he
greeted the boy, and taking both the other's hands in his own, drew the
lad to him.

"Your mother has talked to you about me--has she?" he said.

"That she has," Georgy answered, "hundreds and hundreds of times."

 When Rawdon goes to see his older brother, Pitt thinks him drunk, then believes Rawdon wants money and offers many excuses. When Rawdon says he does not want money, Pitt sighs with relief. Rawdon tells all that has happened and says he may be killed in a duel with Steyne. Rawdon asks only that little Rawdon be cared for and Pitt promises. Rawdon secures an old soldier friend, Macmurdo, as second. Macmurdo tries to convince Rawdon that there is a reasonable doubt of Becky's guilt, but his words are wasted. Meanwhile Becky sleeps until afternoon. When she rings for her servants, no one answers. She goes downstairs to find the servants sitting around drinking. Insolent, they refuse to obey her. Only Raggles is courteous; he laments because of his financial ruin. Becky leaves the house and tries to get Sir Pitt to promise a reconciliation with Rawdon. Becky is kneeling before Pitt, kissing his hand when Lady Jane comes in. Irate at last, Jane tells Sir Pitt he can choose between them and sweeps out of the room. Sir Pitt promises to try to mediate peace between Rebecca and Rawdon. She has told Sir Pitt of Rawdon's appointment and how it was to be a surprise and how she knew Lord Steyne favored her; but she accepted and encouraged his attention only for Rawdon's sake. She says she couldn't trust Rawdon with money, as he is a spendthrift. The scene shifts to Rawdon breakfasting with Macmurdo and other officers. When the two go the club, men start congratulating Rawdon. They have been talking about him and his wife's influence. Rawdon discovers he has been appointed governor of Coventry Island. Lord Steyne's man, Wenham, comes to talk to Rawdon, avoiding the subject of the duel as long as possible and regretting that he and his wife were unable to accept an invitation to the Crawleys that fatal night because Mrs. Wenham had a headache and couldn't go. He says Lord Steyne wants to forget the whole thing. Rawdon doesn't believe the story, but Macmurdo urges him to accept it. Rawdon takes the position provided by Lord Steyne because he thinks it will infuriate Steyne to have Rawdon living off his influence. Once established, Rawdon sends gifts to his friends, makes an annuity to Becky, and writes his son regularly, meanwhile sending money to his brother for Rawdon's keep. Little Rawdon spends his holidays with Lady Jane and rides to the hounds at Queen's Crawley. His mother makes no attempt to see him. Little Georgy, established in his grandfather's home, merits all the pride his father had won. Old Osborne plans to make little Georgy an educated gentleman. While both his grandfather and Aunt Jane adore him, his aunt, Mrs. Bullock, hates him for having taken the inheritance she has coveted for her own children. Georgy's mother makes friends with the schoolmaster in order to see Georgy, who, quick of mind, well dressed, and flush with money, domineers everyone. In Russell Square everyone fears old Osborne, but he fears Georgy. He tries by over-indulgence to make amends to his grandson, trying to forget the harshness to his son. Mrs. Sedley, who has been under Amelia's constant care, dies. Now Amelia devotes all her time to her father. One day two gentlemen come to school to see Georgy. They are Major Dobbin and a stout gentleman. Georgy recognizes Dobbin who asks him if his mother has mentioned Dobbin. Georgy assures him that his mother has talked of Dobbin hundreds of times.

