The amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's kind reception of

her, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who was enabled to speak a good word

for the latter, after the cards of the Southdown family had been

presented to Miss Crawley. A Countess's card left personally too for

her, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the poor friendless

companion. "What could Lady Southdown mean by leaving a card upon you,

I wonder, Miss Briggs?" said the republican Miss Crawley; upon which

the companion meekly said "that she hoped there could be no harm in a

lady of rank taking notice of a poor gentlewoman," and she put away

this card in her work-box amongst her most cherished personal

treasures. Furthermore, Miss Briggs explained how she had met Mr.

Crawley walking with his cousin and long affianced bride the day

before: and she told how kind and gentle-looking the lady was, and

what a plain, not to say common, dress she had, all the articles of

which, from the bonnet down to the boots, she described and estimated

with female accuracy.

Miss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without interrupting her too

much. As she got well, she was pining for society. Mr. Creamer, her

medical man, would not hear of her returning to her old haunts and

dissipation in London. The old spinster was too glad to find any

companionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards acknowledged the

very next day, but Pitt Crawley was graciously invited to come and see

his aunt. He came, bringing with him Lady Southdown and her daughter.

The dowager did not say a word about the state of Miss Crawley's soul;

but talked with much discretion about the weather: about the war and

the downfall of the monster Bonaparte: and above all, about doctors,

quacks, and the particular merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she then

patronised.

During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great stroke, and one which

showed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by early

neglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession. When the

Countess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart, as the

fashion was in those days, and showed that he was a monster stained

with every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant not fit to live,

one whose fall was predicted, &c., Pitt Crawley suddenly took up the

cudgels in favour of the man of Destiny. He described the First Consul

as he saw him at Paris at the peace of Amiens; when he, Pitt Crawley,

had the gratification of making the acquaintance of the great and good

Mr. Fox, a statesman whom, however much he might differ with him, it

was impossible not to admire fervently--a statesman who had always had

the highest opinion of the Emperor Napoleon. And he spoke in terms of

the strongest indignation of the faithless conduct of the allies

towards this dethroned monarch, who, after giving himself generously up

to their mercy, was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while

a bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in his stead.




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