"I thought that you were aware of the progress of my attachment,"

Rebecca continued: "I knew that Mrs. Bute Crawley confirmed and

encouraged it. But I make no reproaches. I married a poor woman, and

am content to abide by what I have done. Leave your property, dear

Aunt, as you will. I shall never complain of the way in which you

dispose of it. I would have you believe that I love you for yourself,

and not for money's sake. I want to be reconciled to you ere I leave

England. Let me, let me see you before I go. A few weeks or months

hence it may be too late, and I cannot bear the notion of quitting the

country without a kind word of farewell from you."

"She won't recognise my style in that," said Becky. "I made the

sentences short and brisk on purpose." And this authentic missive was

despatched under cover to Miss Briggs.

Old Miss Crawley laughed when Briggs, with great mystery, handed her

over this candid and simple statement. "We may read it now Mrs. Bute

is away," she said. "Read it to me, Briggs."

When Briggs had read the epistle out, her patroness laughed more.

"Don't you see, you goose," she said to Briggs, who professed to be

much touched by the honest affection which pervaded the composition,

"don't you see that Rawdon never wrote a word of it. He never wrote to

me without asking for money in his life, and all his letters are full

of bad spelling, and dashes, and bad grammar. It is that little

serpent of a governess who rules him." They are all alike, Miss Crawley

thought in her heart. They all want me dead, and are hankering for my

money.

"I don't mind seeing Rawdon," she added, after a pause, and in a tone

of perfect indifference. "I had just as soon shake hands with him as

not. Provided there is no scene, why shouldn't we meet? I don't mind.

But human patience has its limits; and mind, my dear, I respectfully

decline to receive Mrs. Rawdon--I can't support that quite"--and Miss

Briggs was fain to be content with this half-message of conciliation;

and thought that the best method of bringing the old lady and her

nephew together, was to warn Rawdon to be in waiting on the Cliff, when

Miss Crawley went out for her air in her chair. There they met. I

don't know whether Miss Crawley had any private feeling of regard or

emotion upon seeing her old favourite; but she held out a couple of

fingers to him with as smiling and good-humoured an air, as if they had

met only the day before. And as for Rawdon, he turned as red as

scarlet, and wrung off Briggs's hand, so great was his rapture and his

confusion at the meeting. Perhaps it was interest that moved him: or

perhaps affection: perhaps he was touched by the change which the

illness of the last weeks had wrought in his aunt.




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