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 his hands. "She is the first embodiment in English fiction of the woman whose emotions are dominated by her intellect. She is a fighter against fate, and she wages war with unfailing energy, passing lightly, as great warriors do, over the bodies of the killed and wounded."

She does more. She snatches a partial victory out of the jaws of a crushing defeat. The stanchest fighter expects some backing from fate, some good cards to lay on the table. But Becky's fortunes are in Thackeray's hands, and he rules against her at every turn. Life and death are her inexorable opponents. Miss Crawley recovers (which she has no business to do) from a surfeit of lobster, when by dying she would have enriched Rawdon, already in love with Rebecca. Lady Crawley lives just long enough to spoil Becky's chance of marrying Sir Pitt. It is all very hard and very wrong. The little