Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to encounter

on this her first presentation to the grand world, it does not become

the present historian to say much. There was his Excellency the Prince

of Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly girthed, with a

large military chest, on which the plaque of his order shone

magnificently, and wearing the red collar of the Golden Fleece round

his neck. He was the owner of countless flocks. "Look at his face. I

think he must be descended from a sheep," Becky whispered to Lord

Steyne. Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long, solemn, and white,

with the ornament round his neck, bore some resemblance to that of a

venerable bell-wether.

There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to the

American Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who, by

way of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,

during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear friend,

George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most intimate

at Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones wrote a full

and particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in the

Demagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, giving

biographical sketches of the principal people. He described the

persons of the ladies with great eloquence; the service of the table;

the size and costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and wines

served; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable value of the

plate. Such a dinner he calculated could not be dished up under

fifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, until

very lately, of sending over proteges, with letters of recommendation

to the present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimate

terms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late lord. He

was most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earl

of Southdown, should have taken the pas of him in their procession to

the dining-room. "Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to a

very pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs.

Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote--"the young patrician interposed between me

and the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology. I was

fain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's husband, a stout

red-faced warrior who distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he had

better luck than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans."

The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore as

many blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he is

confronted with his sister's schoolfellows. It has been told before

that honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life to

ladies' company. With the men at the Club or the mess room, he was

well enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards with the

boldest of them. He had had his time for female friendships too, but

that was twenty years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of those

with whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as having been

familiar before he became abashed in the presence of Miss Hardcastle.

The times are such that one scarcely dares to allude to that kind of

company which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are frequenting

every day, which nightly fills casinos and dancing-rooms, which is

known to exist as well as the Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation at

St. James's--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral of

societies is determined to ignore. In a word, although Colonel Crawley

was now five-and-forty years of age, it had not been his lot in life to

meet with a half dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife. All

except her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamed

and won him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his first

dinner at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark except

to state that the weather was very hot. Indeed Becky would have left

him at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by her

side to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her first

appearance in polite society.




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