an get horses--" sighed he--

"I have two to sell," the lady said.  Jos could have
flung himself into her arms at the news.  "Get the carriage,
Isidor," he cried; "we've found them--we have found
them."

My horses never were in harness," added the lady.
"Bullfinch would kick the carriage to pieces, if you put
him in the traces."

"But he is quiet to ride?" asked the civilian.

"As quiet as a lamb, and as fast as a hare," answered
Rebecca.

"Do you think he is up to my weight?" Jos said.  He
was already on his back, in imagination, without ever so
much as a thought for poor Amelia.  What person who
loved a horse-speculation could resist such a temptation?

In reply, Rebecca asked him to come into her room,
whither he followed her quite breathless to conclude the
bargain.  Jos seldom spent a half-hour in his life which
cost him so much money.  Rebecca, measuring the value
of the goods which she had for sale by Jos's eagerness to
purchase, as well as by the scarcity of the article, put
upon her horses a price so prodigious as to make even
the civilian draw back.  "She would sell both or neither,"
she said, resolutely.  Rawdon had ordered her not to part
with them for a price less than that which she specified.
Lord Bareacres below would give her the same money--
and with all her love and regard for the Sedley family,
her dear Mr. Joseph must conceive that poor people must
live--nobody, in a word, could be more affectionate, but
more firm about the matter of business.

Jos ended by agreeing, as might be supposed of him.
The sum he had to give her was so large that he was
obliged to ask for time; so large as to be a little fortune
to Rebecca, who rapidly calculated that with this sum,
and the sale of the residue of Rawdon's effects, and her
pension as a widow should he fall, she would now be
absolutely independent of the world, and might look her
weeds steadily in the face.

Once or twice in the day she certainly had herself
thought about flying.  But her reason gave her better
counsel.  "Suppose the French do come," thought Becky,
"what can they do to a poor officer's widow?  Bah!  the
times of sacks and sieges are over.  We shall be let to go
home quietly, or I may live pleasantly abroad with a snug
little income."

Meanwhile Jos and Isidor went off to the stables to
inspect the newly purchased cattle.  Jos bade his man
saddle the horses at once.  He would ride away that very
night, that very hour.  And he left the valet busy in getting
the horses ready, and went homewards himself to
prepare for his departure.  It must be secret.  He would go to
his chamber by the back entrance.  He did not care to face
Mrs. O'Dowd and Amelia, and own to them that he was
about to run.

By the time Jos's bargain with Rebecca was completed,
and his horses had been visited and examined, it was
almost morning once more.  But though midnight was long
passed, there was no rest for the city; the people were
up, the lights in the houses flamed, crowds were still
about the doors, and the streets were busy.  Rumours of
various natures went still from mouth to mouth:  one
report averred that the Prussians had been utterly
defeated; another that it was the English who had been
attacked and conquered:  a third that the latter had held
their ground.  This last rumour gradually got strength.  No
Frenchmen had made their appearance.  Stragglers had
come in from the army bringing reports more and more
favourable:  at last an aide-de-camp actually reached
Brussels with despatches for the Commandant of the
place, who placarded presently through the town an
official announcement of the success of the allies at Quatre
Bras, and the entire repulse of the French under Ney
after a six hours' battle.  The aide-de-camp must have
arrived sometime while Jos and Rebecca were making their
bargain together, or the latter was inspecting his
purchase.  When he reached his own hotel, he found a score
of its numerous inhabitants on the threshold discoursing
of the news; there was no doubt as to its truth.  And he
went up to communicate it to the ladies under his charge.
He did not think it was necessary to tell them how he
had intended to take leave of them, how he had bought
horses, and what a price he had paid for them.

But success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who
had only thought for the safety of those they loved.
Amelia, at the news of the victory, became still more
agitated even than before.  She was for going that
moment to the army.  She besought her brother with tears to
conduct her thither.  Her doubts and terrors reached their
paroxysm; and the poor girl, who for many hours had
been plunged into stupor, raved and ran hither and
thither in hysteric insanity--a piteous sight.  No man
writhing in pain on the hard-fought field fifteen miles
off, where lay, after their struggles, so many of the brave
--no man suffered more keenly than this poor harmless
victim of the war.  Jos could not bear the sight of her
pain.  He left his sister in the charge of her stouter female
companion, and descended once more to the threshold
of the hotel, where everybody still lingered, and talked,
and waited for more news.

It grew to be broad daylight as they stood here, and
fresh news began to arrive from the war, brought by
men who had been actors in the scene.  Wagons and long
country carts laden with wounded came rolling into the
town; ghastly groans came from within them, and
haggard faces looked up sadly from out of the straw.  Jos
Sedley was looking at one of these carriages with a
painful curiosity--the moans of the people within were
frightful--the wearied horses could hardly pull the cart.
"Stop!  stop!" a feeble voice cried from the straw, and the
carriage stopped opposite Mr. Sedley's hotel.

"It is George, I know it is!" cried Amelia, rushing in a
moment to the balcony, with a pallid face and loose
flowing hair.  It was not George, however, but it was the
next best thing:  it was news of him.

It was poor Tom Stubble, who had marched out of
Brussels so gallantly twenty-four hours before, bearing
the colours of the regiment, which he had defended very
gallantly upon the field.  A French lancer had speared the
young ensign in the leg, who fell, still bravely holding to
his flag.  At the conclusion of the engagement, a place
had been found for the poor boy in a cart, and he had
been brought back to Brussels.

"Mr. Sedley, Mr. Sedley!" cried the boy, faintly, and
Jos came up almost frightened at the appeal.  He had not
at first distinguished who it was that called him.

Little Tom Stubble held out his hot and feeble hand.
"I'm to be taken in here," he said.  "Osborne--and--and
Dobbin said I was; and you are to give the man two
napoleons: my mother will pay you." This young fellow's
thoughts, during the long feverish hours passed in the
cart, had been wandering to his father's parsonage which
he had quitted only a few months before, and he had
sometimes forgotten his pain in that delirium.

The hotel was large, and the people kind, and all the
inmates of the cart were taken in and placed on various
couches.  The young ensign was conveyed upstairs to
Osborne's quarters.  Amelia and the Major's wife had
rushed down to him, when the latter had recognised him
from the balcony.  You may fancy the feelings of these
women when they were told that the day was over, and
both their husbands were safe; in what mute rapture
Amelia fell on her good friend's neck, and embraced
her; in what a grateful passion of prayer she fell on her
knees, and thanked the Power which had saved her
husband.

Our young lady, in her fevered and nervous condition,
could have had no more salutary medicine prescribed for
her by any physician than that which chance put in her
way.  She and Mrs. O'Dowd watched incessantly by the
wounded lad, whose pains were very severe, and in the
duty thus forced upon her, Amelia had not time to brood
over her personal anxieties, or to give herself up to her
own fears and forebodings after her wont.  The young
patient told in his simple fashion the events of the day, and
the actions of our friends of the gallant --th.  They had
suffered severely.  They had lost very many officers and
men.  The Major's horse had been shot under him as the
regiment charged, and they all thought that O'Dowd was
gone, and that Dobbin had got his majority, until on their
return from the charge to their old ground, the Major was
discovered seated on Pyramus's carcase, refreshing him-
self from a case-bottle.  It was Captain Osborne that cut
down the French lancer who had speared the ensign.
Amelia turned so pale at the notion, that Mrs. O'Dowd
stopped the young ensign in this story.  And it was
Captain Dobbin who at the end of the day, though wounded
himself, took up the lad in his arms and carried him to
the surgeon, and thence to the cart which was to bring
him back to Brussels.  And it was he who promised the
driver two louis if he would make his way to Mr. Sedley's
hotel in the city; and tell Mrs. Captain Osborne that the
action was over, and that her husband was unhurt and
well.

"Indeed, but he has a good heart that William
Dobbin," Mrs. O'Dowd said, "though he is always laughing
at me."

Young Stubble vowed there was not such another
officer in the army, and never ceased his praises of the
senior captain, his modesty, his kindness, and his admirable
coolness in the field.  To these parts of the conversation,
Amelia lent a very distracted attention:  it was only when
George was spoken of that she listened, and when he
was not mentioned, she thought about him.

In tending her patient, and in thinking of the wonderful
escapes of the day before, her second day passed
away not too slowly with Amelia.  There was only one
man in the army for her:  and as long as he was well, it
must be owned that its movements interested her little.
All the reports which Jos brought from the streets fell
very vaguely on her ears; though they were sufficient to
give that timorous gentleman, and many other people
then in Brussels, every disquiet.  The French had been
repulsed certainly, but it was after a severe and doubtful
struggle, and with only a division of the French army.
The Emperor, with the main body, was away at Ligny,
where he had utterly annihilated the Prussians, and was
now free to bring his whole force to bear upon the allies.
The Duke of Wellington was retreating upon the capital,
and a great battle must be fought under its walls
probably, of which the chances were more than doubtful.
The Duke of Wellington had but twenty thousand British
troops on whom he could rely, for the Germans were
raw militia, the Belgians disaffected, and with this handful
his Grace had to resist a hundred and fifty thousand men
that had broken into Belgium under Napoleon.  Under
Napoleon!  What warrior was there, however famous and
skilful, that could fight at odds with him?

Jos thought of all these things, and trembled.  So did
all the rest of Brussels--where people felt that the fight
of the day before was but the prelude to the greater
combat which was imminent.  One of the armies opposed to
the Emperor was scattered to the winds already.  The
few English that could be brought to resist him would
perish at their posts, and the conqueror would pass over
their bodies into the city.  Woe be to those whom he
found there!  Addresses were prepared, public functionaries assembled and debated secretly, apartments were
got ready, and tricoloured banners and triumphal
emblems manufactured, to welcome the arrival of His
Majesty the Emperor and King.

The emigration still continued, and wherever families
could find means of departure, they fled.  When Jos, on
the afternoon of the 17th of June, went to Rebecca's
hotel, he found that the great Bareacres' carriage had at
length rolled away from the porte-cochere.  The Earl
had procured a pair of horses somehow, in spite of Mrs.
Crawley, and was rolling on the road to Ghent.  Louis the
Desired was getting ready his portmanteau in that city,
too.  It seemed as if Misfortune was never tired of
worrying into motion that unwieldy exile.

Jos felt that the delay of yesterday had been only a
respite, and that his dearly bought horses must of a
surety be put into requisition.  His agonies were very
severe all this day.  As long as there was an English army
between Brussels and Napoleon, there was no need of
immediate flight; but he had his horses brought from
their distant stables, to the stables in the court-yard of
the hotel where he lived; so that they might be under his
own eyes, and beyond the risk of violent abduction.
Isidor watched the stable-door constantly, and had the
horses saddled, to be ready for the start.  He longed
intensely for that event.

After the reception of the previous day, Rebecca did
not care to come near her dear Amelia.  She clipped the
bouquet which George had brought her, and gave fresh
water to the flowers, and read over the letter which he
had sent her.  "Poor wretch," she said, twirling round the
little bit of paper in her fingers, "how I could crush her
with this!--and it is for a thing like this that she must
break her heart, forsooth--for a man who is stupid--a
coxcomb--and who does not care for her.  My poor good
Rawdon is worth ten of this creature." And then she fell
to thinking what she should do if--if anything happened
to poor good Rawdon, and what a great piece of luck it
was that he had left his horses behind.

In the course of this day too, Mrs. Crawley, who saw
not without anger the Bareacres party drive off,
bethought her of the precaution which the Countess had
taken, and did a little needlework for her own advantage;
she stitched away the major part of her trinkets, bills,
and bank-notes about her person, and so prepared, was
ready for any event--to fly if she thought fit, or to stay
and welcome the conqueror, were he Englishman or
Frenchman.  And I am not sure that she did not dream
that night of becoming a duchess and Madame la
Marechale, while Rawdon wrapped in his cloak, and making
his bivouac under the rain at Mount Saint John, was
thinking, with all the force of his heart, about the little
wife whom he had left behind him.

The next day was a Sunday.  And Mrs. Major O'Dowd
had the satisfaction of seeing both her patients refreshed
in health and spirits by some rest which they had taken
during the night.  She herself had slept on a great chair in
Amelia's room, ready to wait upon her poor friend or the
ensign, should either need her nursing.  When morning
came, this robust woman went back to the house where
she and her Major had their billet; and here performed
an elaborate and splendid toilette, befitting the day.  And
it is very possible that whilst alone in that chamber, which
her husband had inhabited, and where his cap still lay on
the pillow, and his cane stood in the corner, one prayer at
least was sent up to Heaven for the welfare of the brave
soldier, Michael O'Dowd.

When she returned she brought her prayer-book with
her, and her uncle the Dean's famous book of sermons,
out of which she never failed to read every Sabbath; not
understanding all, haply, not pronouncing many of the
words aright, which were long and abstruse--for the
Dean was a learned man, and loved long Latin words--
but with great gravity, vast emphasis, and with tolerable
correctness in the main.  How often has my Mick listened
to these sermons, she thought, and me reading in the
cabin of a calm!  She proposed to resume this exercise on
the present day, with Amelia and the wounded ensign
for a congregation.  The same service was read on that
day in twenty thousand churches at the same hour; and
millions of British men and women, on their knees,
implored protection of the Father of all.

They did not hear the noise which disturbed our little
congregation at Brussels.  Much louder than that which
had interrupted them two days previously, as Mrs.
O'Dowd was reading the service in her best voice, the
cannon of Waterloo began to roar.

When Jos heard that dreadful sound, he made up his
mind that he would bear this perpetual recurrence of
terrors no longer, and would fly at once.  He rushed into the
sick man's room, where our three friends had paused in
their prayers, and further interrupted them by a
passionate appeal to Amelia

"I can't stand it any more, Emmy," he said; 'I won't
stand it; and you must come with me.  I have bought a
horse for you--never mind at what price--and you must
dress and come with me, and ride behind Isidor."

"God forgive me, Mr. Sedley, but you are no better
than a coward," Mrs. O'Dowd said, laying down the
book.

"I say come, Amelia," the civilian went on; "never
mind what she says; why are we to stop here and be
butchered by the Frenchmen?"

"You forget the --th, my boy," said the little Stubble,
the wounded hero, from his bed--"and and you
won't leave me, will you, Mrs. O'Dowd?"

"No, my dear fellow," said she, going up and kissing
the boy.  "No harm shall come to you while I stand by.
I don't budge till I get the word from Mick.  A pretty
figure I'd be, wouldn't I, stuck behind that chap on a
pillion?"

This image caused the young patient to burst out
laughing in his bed, and even made Amelia smile.  "I
don't ask her," Jos shouted out--"I don't ask that--that
Irishwoman, but you Amelia; once for all, will you
come?"

"Without my husband, Joseph?" Amelia said, with a
look of wonder, and gave her hand to the Major's wife.
Jos's patience was exhausted.

"Good-bye, then," he said, shaking his fist in a rage,
and slamming the door by which he retreated.  And this
time he really gave his order for march:  and mounted in
the court-yard.  Mrs. O'Dowd heard the clattering hoofs
of the horses as they issued from the gate; and looking
on, made many scornful remarks on poor Joseph as he
rode down the street with Isidor after him in the laced
cap.  The horses, which had not been exercised for some
days, were lively, and sprang about the street.  Jos, a
clumsy and timid horseman, did not look to advantage in
the saddle.  "Look at him, Amelia dear, driving into the
parlour window.  Such a bull in a china-shop I never
saw." And presently the pair of riders disappeared at a
canter down the street leading in the direction of the
Ghent road, Mrs. O'Dowd pursuing them with a fire of
sarcasm so long as they were in sight.

All that day from morning until past sunset, the
cannon never ceased to roar.  It was dark when the
cannonading stopped all of a sudden.

All of us have read of what occurred during that
interval.  The tale is in every Englishman's mouth; and
you and I, who were children when the great battle was
won and lost, are never tired of hearing and recounting
the history of that famous action.  Its remembrance
rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of
those brave men who lost the day.  They pant for an
opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest,
ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating
them in their turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred
and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called
glory and shame, and to the alternations of successful
and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited
nations might engage.  Centuries hence, we Frenchmen and
Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still,
carrying out bravely the Devil's code of honour.

All our friends took their share and fought like men in
the great field.  All day long, whilst the women were
praying ten miles away, the lines of the dauntless English
infantry were receiving and repelling the furious charges of
the French horsemen.  Guns which were heard at Brussels
were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades falling, and
the resolute survivors closing in.  Towards evening, the
attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely,
slackened in its fury.  They had other foes besides the
British to engage, or were preparing for a final onset.  It
came at last:  the columns of the Imperial Guard marched
up the hill of Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep
the English from the height which they had maintained
all day, and spite of all:  unscared by the thunder of the
artillery, which hurled death from the English line--the
dark rolling column pressed on and up the hill.  It seemed
almost to crest the eminence, when it began to wave and
falter.  Then it stopped, still facing the shot.  Then at last
the English troops rushed from the post from which no
enemy had been able to dislodge them, and the Guard
turned and fled.

No more firing was heard at Brussels--the pursuit
rolled miles away.  Darkness came down on the field and
city:  and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying
on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.




CHAPTER XXXIII


In Which Miss Crawley's Relations Are Very Anxious About Her

The kind reader must please to remember--while the
army is marching from Flanders, and, after its heroic
actions there, is advancing to take the fortifications on the
frontiers of France, previous to an occupation of that
country--that there are a number of persons living
peaceably in England who have to do with the history at
present in hand, and must come in for their share of the
chronicle.  During the time of these battles and dangers,
old Miss Crawley was living at Brighton, very moderately
moved by the great events that were going on.  The great
events rendered the newspapers rather interesting, to be
sure, and Briggs read out the Gazette, in which Rawdon
Crawley's gallantry was mentioned with honour, and his
promotion was presently recorded.

"What a pity that young man has taken such an
irretrievable step in the world!" his aunt said; "with his rank
and distinction he might have married a brewer's
daughter with a quarter of a million--like Miss Grains; or have
looked to ally himself with the best families in England.
He would have had my money some day or other; or his
children would--for I'm not in a hurry to go, Miss Briggs,
although you may be in a hurry to be rid of me; and
instead of that, he is a doomed pauper, with a dancing-girl
for a wife."

"Will my dear Miss Crawley not cast an eye of
compassion upon the heroic soldier, whose name is inscribed
in the annals of his country's glory?" said Miss Briggs,
who was greatly excited by the Waterloo proceedings,
and loved speaking romantically when there was an
occasion.  "Has not the Captain--or the Colonel as I may
now style him--done deeds which make the name of
Crawley illustrious?"

"Briggs, you are a fool," said Miss Crawley: "Colonel
Crawley has dragged the name of Crawley through the
mud, Miss Briggs.  Marry a drawing-master's daughter,
indeed!--marry a dame de compagnie--for she was no
better, Briggs; no, she was just what you are--only younger,
and a great deal prettier and cleverer.  Were you an
accomplice of that abandoned wretch, I wonder, of whose
vile arts he became a victim, and of whom you used to
be such an admirer?  Yes, I daresay you were an accomplice.
But you will find yourself disappointed in my will,
I can tell you:  and you will have the goodness to write to
Mr. Waxy, and say that I desire to see him immediately."
Miss Crawley was now in the habit of writing to Mr.
Waxy her solicitor almost every day in the week, for her
arrangements respecting her property were all revoked,
and her perplexity was great as to the future disposition
of her money.

The spinster had, however, rallied considerably; as
was proved by the increased vigour and frequency of her
sarcasms upon Miss Briggs, all which attacks the poor
companion bore with meekness, with cowardice, with a
resignation that was half generous and half hypocritical
--with the slavish submission, in a word, that women of
her disposition and station are compelled to show.  Who
has not seen how women bully women?  What tortures
have men to endure, comparable to those daily repeated
shafts of scorn and cruelty with which poor women are
riddled by the tyrants of their sex?  Poor victims!  But we
are starting from our proposition, which is, that Miss
Crawley was always particularly annoying and savage
when she was rallying from illness--as they say wounds
tingle most when they are about to heal.

While thus approaching, as all hoped, to convalescence,
Miss Briggs was the only victim admitted into the
presence of the invalid; yet Miss Crawley's relatives afar
off did not forget their beloved kinswoman, and by a
number of tokens, presents, and kind affectionate
messages, strove to keep themselves alive in her
recollection.

In the first place, let us mention her nephew, Rawdon
Crawley.  A few weeks after the famous fight of Waterloo,
and after the Gazette had made known to her the promotion
and gallantry of that distinguished officer, the Dieppe
packet brought over to Miss Crawley at Brighton, a box
containing presents, and a dutiful letter, from the
Colonel her nephew.  In the box were a pair of French
epaulets, a Cross of the Legion of Honour, and the hilt of a
sword--relics from the field of battle:  and the letter
described with a good deal of humour how the latter
belonged to a commanding officer of the Guard, who having
sworn that "the Guard died, but never surrendered,"
was taken prisoner the next minute by a private soldier,
who broke the Frenchman's sword with the butt of his
musket, when Rawdon made himself master of the
shattered weapon.  As for the cross and epaulets, they came
from a Colonel of French cavalry, who had fallen under
the aide-de-camp's arm in the battle:  and Rawdon Crawley
did not know what better to do with the spoils than
to send them to his kindest and most affectionate old
friend.  Should he continue to write to her from Paris,
whither the army was marching?  He might be able to
give her interesting news from that capital, and of some
of Miss Crawley's old friends of the emigration, to whom
she had shown so much kindness during their distress.

The spinster caused Briggs to write back to the Colonel
a gracious and complimentary letter, encouraging
him to continue his correspondence.  His first letter was
so excessively lively and amusing that she should look
with pleasure for its successors.--"Of course, I know,"
she explained to,Miss Briggs, "that Rawdon could not
write such a good letter any more than you could, my
poor Briggs, and that it is that clever little wretch of a
Rebecca, who dictates every word to him; but that is no
reason why my nephew should not amuse me; and so I
wish to let him understand that I am in high good
humour."

I wonder whether she knew that it was not only Becky
who wrote the letters, but that Mrs. Rawdon actually
took and sent home the trophies which she bought for a
few francs, from one of the innumerable pedlars who
immediately began to deal in relics of the war.  The
novelist, who knows everything, knows this also.  Be this,
however, as it may, Miss Crawley's gracious reply greatly
encouraged our young friends, Rawdon and his lady, who
hoped for the best from their aunt's evidently pacified
humour:  and they took care to entertain her with many
delightful letters from Paris, whither, as Rawdon said,
they had the good luck to go in the track of the
conquering army.

To the rector's lady, who went off to tend her
husband's broken collar-bone at the Rectory at Queen's
Crawley, the spinster's communications were by no
means so gracious.  Mrs. Bute, that brisk, managing,
lively, imperious woman, had committed the most fatal of
all errors with regard to her sister-in-law.  She had not
merely oppressed her and her household--she had bored
Miss Crawley; and if poor Miss Briggs had been a
woman of any spirit, she might have been made happy
by the commission which her principal gave her to write
a letter to Mrs. Bute Crawley, saying that Miss Crawley's
health was greatly improved since Mrs. Bute had left her,
and begging the latter on no account to put herself to
trouble, or quit her family for Miss Crawley's sake.  This
triumph over a lady who had been very haughty and
cruel in her behaviour to Miss Briggs, would have rejoiced
most women; but the truth is, Briggs was a woman of no
spirit at all, and the moment her enemy was discomfited,
she began to feel compassion in her favour.

"How silly I was," Mrs. Bute thought, and with
reason, "ever to hint that I was coming, as I did, in that
foolish letter when we sent Miss Crawley the guinea-
fowls. I ought to have gone without a word to the poor
dear doting old creature, and taken her out of the hands
of that ninny Briggs, and that harpy of a femme de
chambre.  Oh!  Bute, Bute, why did you break your collar-
bone?"

Why, indeed?  We have seen how Mrs. Bute, having the
game in her hands, had really played her cards too well.
She had ruled over Miss Crawley's household utterly and
completely, to be utterly and completely routed when a
favourable opportunity for rebellion came.  She and her
household, however, considered that she had been the
victim of horrible selfishness and treason, and that her
sacrifices in Miss Crawley's behalf had met with the most
savage ingratitude.  Rawdon's promotion, and the
honourable mention made of his name in the Gazette, filled
this good Christian lady also with alarm.  Would his aunt
relent towards him now that he was a Lieutenant-Colonel
and a C.B.? and would that odious Rebecca once more
get into favour?  The Rector's wife wrote a sermon for her
husband about the vanity of military glory and the
prosperity of the wicked, which the worthy parson read in
his best voice and without understanding one syllable of
it.  He had Pitt Crawley for one of his auditors--Pitt, who
had come with his two half-sisters to church, which.the
old Baronet could now by no means be brought to
frequent.

Since the departure of Becky Sharp, that old wretch
had given himself up entirely to his bad courses, to the
great scandal of the county and the mute horror of his
son.  The ribbons in Miss Horrocks's cap became more
splendid than ever.  The polite families fled the hall and
its owner in terror.  Sir Pitt went about tippling at his
tenants' houses; and drank rum-and-water with the
farmers at Mudbury and the neighbouring places on
market-days.  He drove the family coach-and-four to
Southampton with Miss Horrocks inside:  and the county people
expected, every week, as his son did in speechless agony,
that his marriage with her would be announced in the
provincial paper.  It was indeed a rude burthen for Mr.
Crawley to bear.  His eloquence was palsied at the
missionary meetings, and other religious assemblies in the
neighbourhood, where he had been in the habit of
presiding, and of speaking for hours; for he felt, when he rose,
that the audience said, "That is the son of the old
reprobate Sir Pitt, who is very likely drinking at the public
house at this very moment." And once when he was
speaking of the benighted condition of the king of
Timbuctoo, and the number of his wives who were likewise in
darkness, some gipsy miscreant from the crowd asked,
"How many is there at Queen's Crawley, Young
Squaretoes?" to the surprise of the platform, and the ruin
of Mr. Pitt's speech.  And the two daughters of the house of
Queen's Crawley would have been allowed to run utterly
wild (for Sir Pitt swore that no governess should ever
enter into his doors again), had not Mr. Crawley, by
threatening the old gentleman, forced the latter to send
them to school.

Meanwhile, as we have said, whatever individual
differences there might be between them all, Miss Crawley's
dear nephews and nieces were unanimous in loving her
and sending her tokens of affection.  Thus Mrs. Bute sent
guinea-fowls, and some remarkably fine cauliflowers, and
a pretty purse or pincushion worked by her darling girls,
who begged to keep a LITTLE place in the recollection of
their dear aunt, while Mr. Pitt sent peaches and grapes
and venison from the Hall.  The Southampton coach used
to carry these tokens of affection to Miss Crawley at
Brighton:  it used sometimes to convey Mr. Pitt thither
too:  for his differences with Sir Pitt caused Mr. Crawley
to absent himself a good deal from home now:  and
besides, he had an attraction at Brighton in the person of
the Lady Jane Sheepshanks, whose engagement to Mr.
Crawley has been formerly mentioned in this history.
Her Ladyship and her sisters lived at Brighton with their
mamma, the Countess Southdown, that strong-minded
woman so favourably known in the serious world.

A few words ought to be said regarding her Ladyship
and her noble family, who are bound by ties of present
and future relationship to the house of Crawley.
Respecting the chief of the Southdown family, Clement
William, fourth Earl of Southdown, little need be told,
except that his Lordship came into Parliament (as Lord
Wolsey) under the auspices of Mr. Wilberforce, and for
a time was a credit to his political sponsor, and decidedly
a serious young man.  But words cannot describe the
feelings of his admirable mother, when she learned, very
shortly after her noble husband's demise, that her son
was a member of several worldly clubs, had lost largely
at play at Wattier's and the Cocoa Tree; that he had
raised money on post-obits, and encumbered the family
estate; that he drove four-in-hand, and patronised the
ring; and that he actually had an opera-box, where he
entertained the most dangerous bachelor company.  His
name was only mentioned with groans in the dowager's
circle.

The Lady Emily was her brother's senior by many
years; and took considerable rank in the serious world as
author of some of the delightful tracts before mentioned,
and of many hymns and spiritual pieces.  A mature
spinster, and having but faint ideas of marriage, her love for
the blacks occupied almost all her feelings.  It is to her, I
believe, we owe that beautiful poem

Lead us to some sunny isle,
Yonder in the western deep;
Where the skies for ever smile,
And the blacks for ever weep, &c.

She had correspondences with clerical gentlemen in
most of our East and West India possessions; and was
secretly attached to the Reverend Silas Hornblower, who
was tattooed in the South Sea Islands.

As for the Lady Jane, on whom, as it has been said, Mr.
Pitt Crawley's affection had been placed, she was gentle,
blushing, silent, and timid.  In spite of his falling away,
she wept for her brother, and was quite ashamed of
loving him still.  Even yet she used to send him little hurried
smuggled notes, and pop them into the post in private.
The one dreadful secret which weighed upon her life was,
that she and the old housekeeper had been to pay
Southdown a furtive visit at his chambers in the Albany; and
found him--O the naughty dear abandoned wretch!--
smoking a cigar with a bottle of Curacao before him.  She
admired her sister, she adored her mother, she thought
Mr. Crawley the most delightful and accomplished of
men, after Southdown, that fallen angel:  and her mamma
and sister, who were ladies of the most superior sort,
managed everything for her, and regarded her with that
amiable pity, of which your really superior woman always
has such a share to give away.  Her mamma ordered her
dresses, her books, her bonnets, and her ideas for her.
She was made to take pony-riding, or piano-exercise, or
any other sort of bodily medicament, according as my
Lady Southdown saw meet; and her ladyship would have
kept her daughter in pinafores up to her present age of
six-and-twenty, but that they were thrown off when Lady
Jane was presented to Queen Charlotte.

When these ladies first came to their house at Brighton,
it was to them alone that Mr. Crawley paid his personal
visits, contenting himself by leaving a card at his aunt's
house, and making a modest inquiry of Mr. Bowls or his
assistant footman, with respect to the health of the
invalid.  When he met Miss Briggs coming home from the
library with a cargo of novels under her arm, Mr. Crawley
blushed in a manner quite unusual to him, as he
stepped forward and shook Miss Crawley's companion by
the hand.  He introduced Miss Briggs to the lady with
whom he happened to be walking, the Lady Jane
Sheepshanks, saying, "Lady Jane, permit me to introduce to
you my aunt's kindest friend and most affectionate
companion, Miss Briggs, whom you know under another title,
as authoress of the delightful 'Lyrics of the Heart,' of
which you are so fond."  Lady Jane blushed too as she
held out a kind little hand to Miss Briggs, and said
something very civil and incoherent about mamma, and
proposing to call on Miss Crawley, and being glad to be
made known to the friends and relatives of Mr. Crawley;
and with soft dove-like eyes saluted Miss Briggs as
they separated, while Pitt Crawley treated her to a
profound courtly bow, such as he had used to H.H. the
Duchess of Pumpernickel, when he was attache at that court.

The artful diplomatist and disciple of the Machiavellian
Binkie!  It was he who had given Lady Jane that copy of
poor Briggs's early poems, which he remembered to have
seen at Queen's Crawley, with a dedication from the
poetess to his father's late wife; and he brought the
volume with him to Brighton, reading it in the Southampton
coach and marking it with his own pencil, before he
presented it to the gentle Lady Jane.

It was he, too, who laid before Lady Southdown the
great advantages which might occur from an intimacy
between her family and Miss Crawley--advantages both
worldly and spiritual, he said:  for Miss Crawley was now
quite alone; the monstrous dissipation and alliance of his
brother Rawdon had estranged her affections from that
reprobate young man; the greedy tyranny and avarice of
Mrs. Bute Crawley had caused the old lady to revolt
against the exorbitant pretensions of that part of the
family; and though he himself had held off all his life from
cultivating Miss Crawley's friendship, with perhaps an
improper pride, he thought now that every becoming
means should be taken, both to save her soul from
perdition, and to secure her fortune to himself as the head of
the house of Crawley.

The strong-minded Lady Southdown quite agreed in
both proposals of her son-in-law, and was for converting
Miss Crawley off-hand.  At her own home, both at
Southdown and at Trottermore Castle, this tall and awful
missionary of the truth rode about the country in her
barouche with outriders, launched packets of tracts among
the cottagers and tenants, and would order Gaffer Jones
to be converted, as she would order Goody Hicks to take
a James's powder, without appeal, resistance, or benefit of
clergy.  My Lord Southdown, her late husband, an epileptic
and simple-minded nobleman, was in the habit of
approving of everything which his Matilda did and
thought.  So that whatever changes her own belief might
undergo (and it accommodated itself to a prodigious
variety of opinion, taken from all sorts of doctors among
the Dissenters) she had not the least scruple in ordering
all her tenants and inferiors to follow and believe after
her.  Thus whether she received the Reverend Saunders
McNitre, the Scotch divine; or the Reverend Luke Waters,
the mild Wesleyan; or the Reverend Giles Jowls, the
illuminated Cobbler, who dubbed himself Reverend as
Napoleon crowned himself Emperor--the household,
children, tenantry of my Lady Southdown were expected to
go down on their knees with her Ladyship, and say Amen
to the prayers of either Doctor.  During these exercises old
Southdown, on account of his invalid condition, was
allowed to sit in his own room, and have negus and the
paper read to him.  Lady Jane was the old Earl's favourite
daughter, and tended him and loved him sincerely:  as for
Lady Emily, the authoress of the "Washerwoman of
Finchley Common," her denunciations of future punishment
(at this period, for her opinions modified afterwards)
were so awful that they used to frighten the timid
old gentleman her father, and the physicians declared his
fits always occurred after one of her Ladyship's sermons.

"I will certainly call," said Lady Southdown then, in
reply to the exhortation of her daughter's pretendu, Mr.
Pitt Crawley--"Who is Miss Crawley's medical man?"

Mr. Crawley mentioned the name of Mr. Creamer.

"A most dangerous and ignorant practitioner, my dear
Pitt.  I have providentially been the means of removing
him from several houses:  though in one or two
instances I did not arrive in time.  I could not save poor
dear General Glanders, who was dying under the hands of
that ignorant man--dying.  He rallied a little under the
Podgers' pills which I administered to him; but alas!  it
was too late.  His death was delightful, however; and his
change was only for the better; Creamer, my dear Pitt,
must leave your aunt."

Pitt expressed his perfect acquiescence.  He, too, had
been carried along by the energy of his noble kinswoman,
and future mother-in-law.  He had been made to accept
Saunders McNitre, Luke Waters, Giles Jowls, Podgers'
Pills, Rodgers' Pills, Pokey's Elixir, every one o