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should be friends with your brothers family than enemies, as those foolish Butes are. When your father dies, Queens Crawley will be a pleasant house for you and me to pass the winter in. If we are ruined, you can carve and take charge of the stable, and I can be a governess to Lady Janes children. Ruined! fiddlede-dee! I will get you a good place before that; or Pitt and his little boy will die, and we will be Sir Rawdon and my lady. While there is life, there is hope, my dear, and I intend to make a man of you yet. Who sold your horses for you? Who paid your debts for you? Rawdon was obliged to confess that he owed all these benefits to his wife, and to trust himself to her guidance for the future. Indeed, when Miss Crawley quitted the world, and that money for which all her relatives had been fighting so eagerly was finally left to Pitt, Bute Crawley, who found that only five thousand pounds had been left to him instead of the twenty upon which he calculated, was in such a fury at his disappointment that he vented it in savage abuse upon his nephew; and the quarrel always rankling between them ended in an utter breach of intercourse. Rawdon Crawleys conduct, on the other hand, who got but a hundred pounds, was such as to astonish his brother and delight his sister-in-law, who was disposed to look kindly upon all the members of her husbands family. He wrote to his brother a very frank, manly, good- humoured letter from Paris. He was aware, he said, that by his own marriage he had forfeited his aunts favour; and though he did not disguise his disappointment that she should have been so entirely relentless towards him, he was glad that the money was still kept in their branch of the family, and heartily congratulated his brother on his good fortune. He sent his affectionate remembrances to his sister, and hoped to have her good-will for Mrs. Rawdon; and the letter concluded with a postscript to Pitt in the latter ladys own handwriting. She, too, begged to join in her husbands congratulations. She should ever remember Mr. Crawleys kindness to her in early days when she was a friendless orphan, the instructress of his little sisters, in whose welfare she still took the tenderest interest. She wished him every happiness in his married life, and, asking his permission to offer her remembrances to Lady Jane (of whose goodness all the world informed her), she hoped that one day she might be allowed to present her little boy to his uncle and aunt, and begged to bespeak for him their good-will and protection. Pitt Crawley received this communication very graciouslymore graciously than Miss Crawley had received some of Rebeccas previous compositions in Rawdons handwriting; and as for Lady Jane, she was so charmed with the letter that she expected her husband would instantly divide his aunts legacy into two equal portions and send off one-half to his brother at Paris. To her Ladyships surprise, however, Pitt declined to accommodate his brother with a cheque for thirty thousand pounds. But he made Rawdon a handsome offer of his hand whenever the latter should come to England and choose to take it; and, thanking Mrs. Crawley for her good opinion of himself and Lady Jane, he graciously pronounced his willingness to take any opportunity to serve her little boy. Thus an almost reconciliation was brought about between the brothers. When Rebecca came to town Pitt and his wife were not in London. Many a time she drove by the old door in Park Lane to see whether they had taken possession of Miss Crawleys house there. But the new family did not make its appearance; it was only through Raggles that she heard of their movementshow Miss Crawleys domestics had been dismissed with decent gratuities, and how Mr. Pitt had only once made his appearance in London, when he stopped for a few days at the house, did business with his lawyers there, and sold off all Miss Crawleys French novels to a bookseller out of Bond Street. Becky had reasons of her own which caused her to long for the arrival of her new relation. When Lady Jane comes, thought she, she shall be my sponsor in London society; and as for the women! bah! the women will ask me when they find the men want to see me. An article as necessary to a lady in this position as her brougham or her bouquet is her companion. I have always admired the way in which the tender creatures, who cannot exist without sympathy, hire an exceedingly plain friend of their own sex from whom they are almost inseparable. The sight of that inevitable woman in her faded gown seated behind her dear friend in the opera- box, or occupying the back seat of the barouche, is always a wholesome and moral one to me, as jolly a reminder as that of the Deaths-head which figured in the repasts of Egyptian bon-vivants, a strange sardonic memorial of |
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