"Thank you, my boy," said Crawley, with a look of peculiar gratitude.

"You're wide awake, I see." And George went off, thinking Crawley was

quite right.

He told Amelia of what he had done, and how he had counselled Rawdon

Crawley--a devilish good, straightforward fellow--to be on his guard

against that little sly, scheming Rebecca.

"Against whom?" Amelia cried.

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

"O George, what have you done?" Amelia said. For her woman's eyes,

which Love had made sharp-sighted, had in one instant discovered a

secret which was invisible to Miss Crawley, to poor virgin Briggs, and

above all, to the stupid peepers of that young whiskered prig,

Lieutenant Osborne.

For as Rebecca was shawling her in an upper apartment, where these two

friends had an opportunity for a little of that secret talking and

conspiring which form the delight of female life, Amelia, coming up to

Rebecca, and taking her two little hands in hers, said, "Rebecca, I see

it all."

Rebecca kissed her.

And regarding this delightful secret, not one syllable more was said by

either of the young women. But it was destined to come out before long.

Some short period after the above events, and Miss Rebecca Sharp still

remaining at her patroness's house in Park Lane, one more hatchment

might have been seen in Great Gaunt Street, figuring amongst the many

which usually ornament that dismal quarter. It was over Sir Pitt

Crawley's house; but it did not indicate the worthy baronet's demise.

It was a feminine hatchment, and indeed a few years back had served as

a funeral compliment to Sir Pitt's old mother, the late dowager Lady

Crawley. Its period of service over, the hatchment had come down from

the front of the house, and lived in retirement somewhere in the back

premises of Sir Pitt's mansion. It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson.

Sir Pitt was a widower again. The arms quartered on the shield along

with his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's. She had no arms. But

the cherubs painted on the scutcheon answered as well for her as for

Sir Pitt's mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat, flanked by

the Crawley Dove and Serpent. Arms and Hatchments, Resurgam.--Here is

an opportunity for moralising!

Mr. Crawley had tended that otherwise friendless bedside. She went out

of the world strengthened by such words and comfort as he could give

her. For many years his was the only kindness she ever knew; the only

friendship that solaced in any way that feeble, lonely soul. Her heart

was dead long before her body. She had sold it to become Sir Pitt

Crawley's wife. Mothers and daughters are making the same bargain

every day in Vanity Fair.

When the demise took place, her husband was in London attending to some

of his innumerable schemes, and busy with his endless lawyers. He had

found time, nevertheless, to call often in Park Lane, and to despatch

many notes to Rebecca, entreating her, enjoining her, commanding her to

return to her young pupils in the country, who were now utterly without

companionship during their mother's illness. But Miss Crawley would

not hear of her departure; for though there was no lady of fashion in

London who would desert her friends more complacently as soon as she

was tired of their society, and though few tired of them sooner, yet as

long as her engoument lasted her attachment was prodigious, and she

clung still with the greatest energy to Rebecca.




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