Page:Vanity Fair 1848.djvu/131

 I like best, is for a nobleman to marry a miller's daughter, as Lord Flowerdale did—it makes all the women so angry—I wish some great man would run away with you, my dear; I'm sure you're pretty enough."

"Two post-boys!—Oh! it would be delightful!" Rebecca owned.

"And what I like next best, is, for a poor fellow to run away with a rich girl. I have set my heart on Rawdon running away with some one."

"A rich some one, or a poor some one?"

"Why, you goose! Rawdon has not a shilling but what I give him. He is criblé de dettes—he must repair his fortunes, and succeed in the world."

"Is he very clever?" Rebecca asked.

"Clever, my love?—not an idea in the world beyond his horses, and his regiment, and his hunting, and his play; but he must succeed—he's so delightfully wicked. Don't you know he has killed a man, and shot an injured father through the hat only? He's adored in his regiment; and all the young men at Wattier's and the Cocoa Tree swear by him.

When Miss Rebecca Sharp wrote to her beloved friend the account of the little ball at Queen's Crawley, and the manner in which, for the first time, Captain Crawley, had distinguished her, she did not, strange to relate, give an altogether accurate account of the transaction. The Captain had distinguished her a great number of times before. The Captain had met her in a half-score of walks. The Captain had lighted upon her in a half-hundred of corridors and passages. The Captain had hung over her piano twenty times of an evening, as (My Lady was now up stairs, being ill, and nobody heeded her) she sang. The Captain had written her notes (the best that the great blundering dragoon could devise and spell; but dulness gets on as well as any other quality with women). But when he put the first of the notes into the leaves of the song she was singing, the little governess, rising and looking him steadily in the face, took up the triangular missive daintily, and waved it about as if it were a cocked hat, and she, advancing to the enemy popped the note into the fire, and made him a very low curtsey, and went back to her place, and began to sing away again more merrily than ever.

"What's that?" said Miss Crawley, interrupted in her after-dinner doze by the stoppage of the music.

"It's a false note," Miss Sharp said, with a laugh; and RawdouRawdon [sic] Crawley fumed with rage and mortification.

Seeing the evident partiality of Miss Crawley for the new governess, how good it was of Mrs. Bute Crawley not to be jealous, and to welcome the young lady to the Rectory, and not only her, but Rawdon Crawley, her husband's rival in the Old Maid's five per cents.! They became very fond of each other's society, Mrs. Crawley and her nephew. He gave up hunting: he declined entertainments at Fuddleston: he would not dine with the mess of the depot at Mudbury: his great pleasure was to stroll