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Women were playing; they were masked, some of them; this license was allowed in these wild times of carnival.

we have said, and going up to him, asked how he dared to bring Mr. George to such a place.

“Laissez-moi tranquille,” said Mr. Kirsch, very much excited by play and wine. "IL faut s'amuser, parbleu. Je ne suis pas au service de Monsieur."

A woman with light hair, in a low dress, by no means so fresh as it had been, and with a black mask on, through the eyelets of which her eyes twinkled strangely, was seated at one of the roulette-tables with a Seeing his condition the major did not card and a pin, and a couple of florins before choose to argue with the man; but contenther. As the croupier called out the colored himself with drawing away George, and and number, she pricked on the card with great care and regularity, and only ventured her money on the colors after the red or black had come up a certain number of times. It was strange to look at her.

But in spite of her care and assiduity she guessed wrong, and the last two florins followed each other under the croupier's rake, as he cried out with his inexorable voice, the winning color and number. She gave a sigh, a shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much out of her gown, and dashing the pin through the card on to the table, sat thrumming it for a while. Then she looked round her, and saw Georgy's honest face staring at the scene. The little scamp! what business had he to be there?

When she saw the boy, at whose face she looked hard through her shining eyes and mask, she said, "Monsieur n'est pas joueur."

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Non, Madame," said the boy: but she must have known, from his accent of what country he was, for she answered him with a slight foreign tone. You have nevare played-will you do me a littl' favor?" "What is it?" said Georgy, blushing again. Mr. Kirsch was at work for his part at the rouge et noir, and did not see his young master..

"Play this for me, if you please, put it on any number, any number." And she took from her bosom a purse, and out of it a gold piece, the only coin there, and she put it into George's hand. The boy laughed, and did as he was bid.

It came up the number, sure enough. There is a power that arranges that, they say, for young beginners.

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Thank you," said she, pulling the money toward her; "thank you. What is your

name?"

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My name's Osborne," said Georgy, and was fingering in his own pockets for dollars, and just about to make a trial, when the major in his uniform, and Jos, en Marquis, from the court ball, made their appearance. Other people finding the entertainment stupid, and preferring the fun at the Stadthaus, had quitted the palace ball earlier; but it is probable the major and Jos had gone home and found the boy's absence, for the former instantly went up to him, and taking him by the shoulder, pulled him briskly back from the place of temptation. Then, looking round the room, he saw Kirsch employed as

asking Jos if he would come away. He was standing close by the lady in the mask, who was playing with pretty good luck now; and looking on much interested at the game. Hadn't you better come, Jos," the major said, "with George and me?"

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I'll stop and go home with that rascal, Kirsch," Jos said; and for the same reason of modesty, which he thought ought to be preserved before the boy, Dobbin did not care to remonstrate with Jos, but left him and walked home with Georgy.

"Did you play ?" asked the major, when they were out, and on their way home. The boy said "No."

"Give me your word of honor as a gentleman, that you never will."

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Why," said the boy: "It seems very good fun." And, in a very eloquent and impressive manner, the major showed him why he shouldn't, and would have enforced his precepts by the example of Georgy's own father, had he liked to say any thing that should reflect on the other's memory. When he had housed him he went to bed, and saw his light, in the little room outside of Amelia's, presently disappear. Amelia's followed half an hour afterward. I don`t know what made the major note it so accnrately.

Jos, however remained behind over the play table; he was no gambler, but not averse to the little excitement of the sport now and then; and he had some Napoleons chinking in the embroidered pockets of his court waistcoat. He put down one over the fair shoulder of the little gambler before him, and they won.

She made a little movement to make room for him by her side, and just took the skirt of her gown from a vacant chair there.

"Come and give me good luck," she said, still in a foreign accent, quite different from that frank and perfectly English 66 Thank you," with which she had saluted Georgy's coup in her favor. The portly gentleman, looking round to see that nobody of rank observed him, sat down; he muttered—“ Ah, really, well now, God bless my soul. I'm very fortunate; I'm sure to give you good fortune," and other words of compliment and confusion.

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"Yes; ay, nap after dinner," said the mask archly. But Jos looking frightened, she continued, in her pretty French accent, "You do not play to win. No more do I. I play to forget, but I can not. I can not forget old times, Monsieur. Your little nephew is the image of his father; and you -you are not changed-but yes, you are. Every body changes, every body forgets; nobody has any heart."

"Good God, who is it?" asked Jos in a flutter.

"Can't you guess, Joseph Sedley ?" said the little woman, in a sad voice, and undoing her mask she looked at him. "You have forgotten me."

"Good heavens! Mrs. Crawley!" gasped out Jos.

"Rebecca," said the other, putting her hand on his; but she followed the game still, all the time she was looking at him.

"I am stopping at the Elephant," she continued. "Ask for Madame de Raudon. I saw my dear Amelia to-day; how pretty she looked, and how happy! So do you! Every body but me, who am wretched, Joseph Sedley." And she put her money over from the red to the black, as if by a chance movement of her hand, and while she was wiping her eyes with a pockethandkerchief fringed with torn lace.

The red came up again, and she lost the whole of that stake. "Come away," she said. "Come with me a little-we are old friends, are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?"

And Mr. Kirsch having lost all his money by this time, followed his master out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out, and the transparency, over our mission was scarcely visible.

name.

CHAPTER LXIV.

A VAGABOND CHAPTER.

out that your modesty has any occasion to show alarm or sense of outrage, and it has been the wish of the present writer, all through this story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be offended. I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some vices, has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and inoffensive manner. In describing this siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent, and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping among bones, or curling round corpses; but above the water-line, I ask, has not every thing been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labor lost to look into it ever so curiously. They look pretty enough when they sit upon a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and sing, and beckon to you to come and hold the looking-glass; but when they sink into their native element, depend on it those mermaids are about no good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals, reveling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims. And so, when Becky is out of the way, be sure that she is not particularly well employed, and that the less that is said about her doings is in fact the better.

If we were to give a full account of her proceedings during a couple of years that followed after the Curzon-street catastrophe, there might be some reason for peoWe must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebec-ple to say this book was improper. The ca Crawley's biography with that lightness actions of very vain, heartless, pleasureand delicacy which the world demands-the seeking people are very often improper (as moral world, that has, perhaps, no particular are many of yours, my friend with the grave objection to vice, but an insuperable repug- face and spotless reputation; but that is merenance to hearing vice called by its proper ly by the way); and what are those of a womThere are things we do and know perfectly well in Vanity Fair, though we never speak them: as the Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him: and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description of vice than a truly-refined English or American female will permit the word breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet, madam, both are walking the world before our faces every day, without much shocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what complexions you would have! It is only when their naughty names are called

an without faith-or love-or character? And I am inclined to think that there was a period in Mrs. Becky's life, when she was seized, not by remorse, but by a kind of despair, and absolutely neglected her person, and did not even care for her reputation.

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once: it was brought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many struggles to keep up-as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar while any hope is left and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds that struggling is in vain.

She lingered about London while her husband was making preparations for his departure, to his seat of government; and it is believed made more than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and to work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favor. As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons, the latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black vail, and lurking near the palace of the legislature. She sneaked away when her eyes met those of Mr. Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the baronet.

She was probably so much occupied in arranging these affairs of business with her husband's lawyers, that she forgot to take any step whatever about her son, the little Rawdon, and did not even once propose to go and see him. That young gentleman was consigned to the entire guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom had always possessed a great share of the child's affection. His mamma wrote to him a neat letter from Boulogne when she quitted England, in which she requested him to mind his book, and said she was going to take a continental tour, during which she would Probably Lady Jane interposed. I have have the pleasure of writing to him again. heard that she quite astonished her husband by But she never did for a year afterward, and the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, not, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy, always and her determination to disown Mrs. Becky. sickly, died of hooping-cough and measles; Of her own movement, she invited Rawdon then Rawdon's mamma wrote the most afto come and stop in Gaunt-street until his fectionate composition to her darling son, departure for Coventry Island, knowing that who was made heir of Queen's Crawley by with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not this accident, and drawn more closely than try to force her door: and she looked curi-ever to the kind lady, whose tender heart ously at the superscriptions of all the letters had already adopted him. Rawdon Crawwhich arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his ley, then grown a tall, fine lad, blushed when sister-in-law should be corresponding. Not he got the letter. "Oh, aunt Jane, you are but that Rebecca could have written had my mother!" he said; "and not-and not she a mind but she did not try to see or that one." But he wrote back a kind and to write to Pitt at his own house, and after respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca, then living one or two attempts consented to his de- at a boarding-house at Florence. But we mand that the correspondence regarding her are advancing matters. conjugal differences should be carried on by Our darling Becky's first flight was not lawyers only. She perched upon the French The fact was, that Pitt's mind had been coast at Boulogne, that refuge of so much poisoned against her. A short time after exiled English innocence: and there lived Lord Steyne's accident, Wenham had been a rather a genteel, widowed manner, with a with the baronet; and given him such a biog-femme de chambre and a couple of rooms, at raphy of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the an hotel. She dined at the table d'hôte, member for Queen's Crawley. He knew where people thought her very pleasant, every thing regarding her: who her father and where she entertained her neighbors by was; in what year her mother danced at stories of her brother, Sir Pitt, and her the opera; what had been her previous his- great London acquaintance; talking that tory, and what her conduct during her mar- easy, fashionable slip-slop, which has so ried life; as I have no doubt that the great-nuch effect upon certain folks of small er part of the story was false and dictated breeding. She passed with many of them by interested malevolence, it shall not be for a person of importance; she gave little repeated here. But Becky was left with a tea-parties in her private room, and shared sad, sad reputation in the esteem of a coun- in the innocent amusements of the place-in try gentleman and relative who had been once rather partial to her.

The revenues of the Governor of Coven try Island are not large. A part of them was set aside by his excellency for the payment of certain debts and the insurance of his life; the charges incident to his high situation required considerable expense: finally, it was found that he could not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year, which he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would never trouble him. Otherwise: scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would ensue. But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business, Rawdon's, every body's-to get her out of the country, and hush up a most disagreeable affair.

very far.

sea-bathing, and in jaunts in open carriages, in strolls on the sands, and in visits to the play. Mrs. Burjoice, the printer's lady, who was boarding with her family at the hotel for the summer, and to whom her Burjoice came of a Saturday and Sunday, voted her charming; until that rogue of a Burjoice began to pay her too much attention. But there was nothing in the story, only that Becky was always affable, easy, and good-natured-and with men especially.

Numbers of people were going abroad as usual at the end of the season, and Becky had plenty of opportunities of finding out by the behavior of her acquaintances of the great London world the opinion of "society" as regarded her conduct. One day it was Lady Partlet and her daughters whom

Becky confronted as she was walking modestly on Boulogne pier, the cliffs of Albion shining in the distance across the deep blue sea. Lady Partlet marshaled all her daughters round her with a sweep of her parasol, and retreated from the pier, darting savage glances at poor little Becky, who stood alone there.

They did not avoid her. They giggled, cackled, tattled, condoled, consoled, and patronized her until they drove her almost wild with rage. To be patronized by them!. she thought, as they went away simpering after kissing her. And she heard Beaumoris's laugh ringing on the stair, and knew quite well how to interpret his hilarity.

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On another day the packet came in. It It was after this visit that Becky, who. had been blowing fresh, and it always suited had paid her weekly bills; Becky who had Becky's humor to see the droll, woe-begone made herself agreeable to every body in the faces of the people as they emerged from house-who smiled at the landlady, called the boat. Lady Slingstone happened to be the waiters Monsieur," and paid the chamon board this day. Her ladyship had been bermaids in politeness and apologies, what far exceedingly ill in her carriage, and was more than compensated for a little niggardgreatly exhausted, and scarcely fit to walk liness in point of money (of which Becky up the plank from the ship to the pier. But all her energies rallied the instant she saw Becky smiling roguishly under a pink bonnet and giving her a glance of scorn, such as would have shriveled up most women, she walked into the custom house quite unsupported. Becky only laughed: but I don't think she liked it. She felt she was alone, quite alone; and the far-off shining cliffs of England were impassable to her.

never was free), that Becky, we say, received a notice to quit from the landlord, who had been told by some one that she was quite an unfit person to have at his hotel, where English ladies would not sit down with her. And she was forced to fly into lodgings, of which the dullness and solitude were most wearisome to her.

Still she held up, in spite of these rebuffs, and tried to make a character for herself, and conquer scandal. She went to church very regularly, and sang louder than any body there. She took up the cause of the widows of the shipwrecked fishermen, and gave work and drawings for the Quashyboo Mission: she subscribed to the assembly, and wouldn't waltz. In a word, she did every thing that was respectable, and that is why we dwell on this part of her career with more fondness than upon subsequent parts of her history, which are not so pleasant. She saw people avoiding her, and still laboriously smiled upon them; you never could suppose from her countenance what pangs of humiliation she might be enduring inwardly.

The behavior of the men had undergone too I don't know what change. Grinstone showed his teeth and laughed in her face with a familiarity that was not pleasant. Little Bob Suckling, who was cap in hand to her three months before, and would walk a mile in the rain to see for her carriage in the line at Gaunt House, was talking to Fitzoof of the Guards (Lord Heehaw's son) one day upon the jetty, as Becky took her walk there. Little Bobby nodded to her over his shoulder without moving his hat, and continued his conversation with the heir of Heehaw. Tom Raikes tried to walk into her sitting-room at the inn with a cigar in his mouth; but she closed the door upon him and would have locked it, only that his Her history was, after all, a mystery. fingers were inside. She began to feel that Parties were divided about her. Some she was very lonely indeed. If he'd been people, who took the trouble to busy themhere," she said, "those cowards would never selves in the matter, said that she was the have dared to insult me." She thought criminal; while others vowed that she was about "him" with great sadness, and per- as innocent as a lamb, and that her odious haps longing-about his honest, stupid, con- husband was in fault. She won over a good stant kindness and fidelity; his never-ceasing many hy bursting into tears about her boy, obedience; his good humor; his bravery and exhibiting the most frantic grief when and courage. Very likely she cried, for she his name was mentioned, or she saw any was particularly lively, and had put on a lit-body like him. She gained good Mrs. Aldertle extra rouge when she came down to din

ner.

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She rouged regularly now: and-and her maid got Cognac for her besides that which was charged in the hotel bill.

"He

ney's heart in that way, who was rather the queen of British Boulogne, and gave the most dinners and balls of all the residents there, by weeping when Master Alderney came from Doctor Swishtail's academy to Perhaps the insults of the men were not, pass his holidays with his mother. however, so intolerable to her as the sympa- and her Rawdon were of the same age, and thy of certain women. Mrs. Crackenbury so like," Becky said, in a voice choking and Mrs. Washington White passed through Boulogne on their way to Switzerland. (The party were protected by Colonel Hornby, young Beaumoris, and, of course, old Crackenbury, and Mrs. White's little girl).

with agony; whereas there was five years' difference between the boys' ages, and no more likeness between them than between my respected reader and his humble servant. Wenham, when he was going abroad, on his

way to Kissengen to join Lord Steyne, enlightened Mrs. Alderney on this point, and told her how he was much more able to describe little Rawdon than his mamma, who notoriously hated him, and never saw him; how he was thirteen years old, while little Alderney was but nine; fair, while the other darling was dark-in a word, caused the lady in question to repent of her good humor.

quently at the table d'hôte of the hotel. Mrs. Eagles had heard-who indeed had not?-some of the scandal of the Steyne affair; but after a conversation with Becky, she pronounced that Mrs. Crawley was an angel, her husband a ruffian, Lord Steyne an unprincipled wretch, as every body knew, and the whole case against Mrs. Crawley an infamous and wicked conspiracy of that rascal Wenham. "If you were a Whenever Becky made a little circle for man of any spirit, Mr. Eagles, you would herself with incredible toils and labor, some-box the wretch's ears the next time you see body came and swept it down rudely, and she had all her work to begin over again. It was very hard: very hard: lonely, and disheartening.

him at the club," she said to her husband. But Eagles was only a quiet old gentleman, husband to Mrs. Eagles, with a taste for geology, and not tall enough to reach any body's ears.

The Eagles then patronized Mrs. Rawdon, took her to live with her at her own house at Paris, quarreled with the embassador's wife because she would not receive her protégée, and did all that lay in woman's power to keep Becky straight in the paths

Becky was respectable and orderly at

There was Mrs. Newbright who took her up for some time, attracted by the sweetness of her singing at church, and by her proper views upon serious subjects, concerning which, in former days, at Queen's Crawley, Mrs. Becky had had a good deal of instruction. Well, she not only took tracts, but she read them. She worked of virtue and good repute. flannel petticoats for the Quashy boos--cotton nightcaps for the Cocoanut Indians-first, but the life of humdrum virtue grew painted hand-screens for the conversion of utterly tedious to her before long. It was the pope and the Jews-sate under Mr. the same routine every day, the same dullRowls, on Wednesdays, Mr. Huggleton on ness and comfort, the same drive over the Thursdays, attended two Sunday services same stupid Bois de Boulogne, the same at church, besides Mr. Bawler, the Darbyite, company of an evening, the same Blair's in the evening, and all in vain. Mrs. New- Sermon of a Sunday night-the same opera bright had occasion to correspond with the always being acted over and over again; Countess of Southdown about the Warm- Becky was dying of weariness, when, luckiingpan Fund for the Feejee Islanders (for ly for her, young Mr. Eagles came from the management of which admirable charity Cambridge, and his mother, seeing the imboth of these ladies formed part of a female pression which her little friend made upon committee), and having mentioned her him, straightway gave Becky warning. "sweet friend," Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, the dowager countess wrote back such a letter regarding Becky, with such particulars, hints, facts, falsehoods, and general comminations, that intimacy between Mrs. Newbright and Mrs. Crawley ceased forthwith and all the serious world of Tours, where this misfortune took place, immediately parted company with the reprobate. Those who know the English Colonies abroad, know that we carry with us our pride, pills, prejudices, Harvey-sauces, cayenne peppers, and other lares, making a little Britain where we settle down.

Then she tried keeping house with a female friend; then the double ménage began to quarrel and get into debt. Then she determined upon a boarding-house existence, and lived for some time at that famous mansion kept by Madame de Saint Amour, in the Rue Royale, at Paris, where she began exercising her graces and fascinations upon the shabby dandies and fly-blown beauties who frequented her ladyship's salons. Becky loved society, and, indeed, could no more exist without it than an opium-eater without his dram; and she was happy enough at the period of her boardinghouse life. "The women here are as amusing as those in May-fair," she told an

From one colony to another Becky filed uneasily. From Boulogne to Dieppe, from Dieppe to Caen, from Caen to Tours-old London friend who met her-" only trying with all her might to be respectable, and alas! always found out some day or other, and pecked out of the cage by the real daws.

Mrs. Hook Eagles took her up at one of these places a woman without a blemish in her character, and a house in Portmansquare. She was staying at the hotel at Dieppe, whither Becky fled, and they made each other's acquaintance first at sea, where they were swimming together, and subse

their dresses are not quite so fresh. The
men wear cleaned gloves, and are sad
rogues, certainly, but they are not worse
than Jack This, and Tom That. The mis-
tress of the house is a little vulgar, but I
don't think she is so vulgar as Lady
and here she named the name of a great
leader of fashion that I would die rather
than reveal. In fact, when you saw Mad-
ame de Sainte Amour's rooms lighted up of
a night, men with plaques and cordons at the

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