Becky first accepted the tracts and began to examine them with great

interest, engaging the Dowager in a conversation concerning them and

the welfare of her soul, by which means she hoped that her body might

escape medication. But after the religious topics were exhausted, Lady

Macbeth would not quit Becky's chamber until her cup of night-drink was

emptied too; and poor Mrs. Rawdon was compelled actually to assume a

look of gratitude, and to swallow the medicine under the unyielding old

Dowager's nose, who left her victim finally with a benediction.

It did not much comfort Mrs. Rawdon; her countenance was very queer

when Rawdon came in and heard what had happened; and his explosions

of laughter were as loud as usual, when Becky, with a fun which she

could not disguise, even though it was at her own expense, described

the occurrence and how she had been victimized by Lady Southdown. Lord

Steyne, and her son in London, had many a laugh over the story when

Rawdon and his wife returned to their quarters in May Fair. Becky

acted the whole scene for them. She put on a night-cap and gown. She

preached a great sermon in the true serious manner; she lectured on the

virtue of the medicine which she pretended to administer, with a

gravity of imitation so perfect that you would have thought it was the

Countess's own Roman nose through which she snuffled. "Give us Lady

Southdown and the black dose," was a constant cry amongst the folks in

Becky's little drawing-room in May Fair. And for the first time in her

life the Dowager Countess of Southdown was made amusing.

Sir Pitt remembered the testimonies of respect and veneration which

Rebecca had paid personally to himself in early days, and was tolerably

well disposed towards her. The marriage, ill-advised as it was, had

improved Rawdon very much--that was clear from the Colonel's altered

habits and demeanour--and had it not been a lucky union as regarded

Pitt himself? The cunning diplomatist smiled inwardly as he owned that

he owed his fortune to it, and acknowledged that he at least ought not

to cry out against it. His satisfaction was not removed by Rebecca's

own statements, behaviour, and conversation.

She doubled the deference which before had charmed him, calling out his

conversational powers in such a manner as quite to surprise Pitt

himself, who, always inclined to respect his own talents, admired them

the more when Rebecca pointed them out to him. With her sister-in-law,

Rebecca was satisfactorily able to prove that it was Mrs. Bute Crawley

who brought about the marriage which she afterwards so calumniated;

that it was Mrs. Bute's avarice--who hoped to gain all Miss Crawley's

fortune and deprive Rawdon of his aunt's favour--which caused and

invented all the wicked reports against Rebecca. "She succeeded in

making us poor," Rebecca said with an air of angelical patience; "but

how can I be angry with a woman who has given me one of the best

husbands in the world? And has not her own avarice been sufficiently

punished by the ruin of her own hopes and the loss of the property by

which she set so much store? Poor!" she cried. "Dear Lady Jane, what

care we for poverty? I am used to it from childhood, and I am often

thankful that Miss Crawley's money has gone to restore the splendour of

the noble old family of which I am so proud to be a member. I am sure

Sir Pitt will make a much better use of it than Rawdon would."




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