“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! Everybody 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 pocket-handkerchief 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.
A Vagabond Chapter
We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley’s
biography with that lightness and delicacy which the
world demands—the moral world, that has,
perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable
repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.
There are things we do and know perfectly well in Vanity
Fair, though we never speak of 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 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
amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above
