When the ladies of Gaunt House were at breakfast that morning, LordSteyne (who took his chocolate in private and seldom disturbed thefemales of his household, or saw them except upon public days, or whenthey crossed each other in the hall, or when from his pit-box at theopera he surveyed them in their box on the grand tier) his lordship, wesay, appeared among the ladies and the children who were assembled overthe tea and toast, and a battle royal ensued apropos of Rebecca.

"My Lady Steyne," he said, "I want to see the list for your dinner onFriday; and I want you, if you please, to write a card for Colonel andMrs. Crawley."

"Blanche writes them," Lady Steyne said in a flutter. "Lady Gauntwrites them."

"I will not write to that person," Lady Gaunt said, a tall and statelylady, who looked up for an instant and then down again after she hadspoken. It was not good to meet Lord Steyne's eyes for those who hadoffended him.

"Send the children out of the room. Go!" said he pulling at thebell-rope. The urchins, always frightened before him, retired: theirmother would have followed too. "Not you," he said. "You stop."

"My Lady Steyne," he said, "once more will you have the goodness to goto the desk and write that card for your dinner on Friday?"

"My Lord, I will not be present at it," Lady Gaunt said; "I will gohome."

"I wish you would, and stay there. You will find the bailiffs atBareacres very pleasant company, and I shall be freed from lendingmoney to your relations and from your own damned tragedy airs. Who areyou to give orders here? You have no money. You've got no brains. Youwere here to have children, and you have not had any. Gaunt's tired ofyou, and George's wife is the only person in the family who doesn'twish you were dead. Gaunt would marry again if you were."

"I wish I were," her Ladyship answered with tears and rage in her eyes.

"You, forsooth, must give yourself airs of virtue, while my wife, whois an immaculate saint, as everybody knows, and never did wrong in herlife, has no objection to meet my young friend Mrs. Crawley. My LadySteyne knows that appearances are sometimes against the best of women;that lies are often told about the most innocent of them. Pray, madam,shall I tell you some little anecdotes about my Lady Bareacres, yourmamma?"

"You may strike me if you like, sir, or hit any cruel blow," Lady Gauntsaid. To see his wife and daughter suffering always put his Lordshipinto a good humour.

"My sweet Blanche," he said, "I am a gentleman, and never lay my handupon a woman, save in the way of kindness. I only wish to correctlittle faults in your character. You women are too proud, and sadlylack humility, as Father Mole, I'm sure, would tell my Lady Steyne ifhe were here. You mustn't give yourselves airs; you must be meek andhumble, my blessings. For all Lady Steyne knows, this calumniated,simple, good-humoured Mrs. Crawley is quite innocent--even moreinnocent than herself. Her husband's character is not good, but it isas good as Bareacres', who has played a little and not paid a greatdeal, who cheated you out of the only legacy you ever had and left youa pauper on my hands. And Mrs. Crawley is not very well-born, but sheis not worse than Fanny's illustrious ancestor, the first de la Jones."

"The money which I brought into the family, sir," Lady George criedout--

"You purchased a contingent reversion with it," the Marquis saiddarkly. "If Gaunt dies, your husband may come to his honours; yourlittle boys may inherit them, and who knows what besides? In themeanwhile, ladies, be as proud and virtuous as you like abroad, butdon't give ME any airs. As for Mrs. Crawley's character, I shan'tdemean myself or that most spotless and perfectly irreproachable ladyby even hinting that it requires a defence. You will be pleased toreceive her with the utmost cordiality, as you will receive all personswhom I present in this house. This house?" He broke out with a laugh."Who is the master of it? and what is it? This Temple of Virtue belongsto me. And if I invite all Newgate or all Bedlam here, by ------ theyshall be welcome."

After this vigorous allocution, to one of which sort Lord Steynetreated his "Hareem" whenever symptoms of insubordination appeared inhis household, the crestfallen women had nothing for it but to obey.Lady Gaunt wrote the invitation which his Lordship required, and sheand her mother-in-law drove in person, and with bitter and humiliatedhearts, to leave the cards on Mrs. Rawdon, the reception of whichcaused that innocent woman so much pleasure.

There were families in London who would have sacrificed a year's incometo receive such an honour at the hands of those great ladies. Mrs.Frederick Bullock, for instance, would have gone on her knees from MayFair to Lombard Street, if Lady Steyne and Lady Gaunt had been waitingin the City to raise her up and say, "Come to us next Friday"--not toone of the great crushes and grand balls of Gaunt House, whithereverybody went, but to the sacred, unapproachable, mysterious,delicious entertainments, to be admitted to one of which was aprivilege, and an honour, and a blessing indeed.

Severe, spotless, and beautiful, Lady Gaunt held the very highest rankin Vanity Fair. The distinguished courtesy with which Lord Steynetreated her charmed everybody who witnessed his behaviour, caused theseverest critics to admit how perfect a gentleman he was, and to ownthat his Lordship's heart at least was in the right place.

The ladies of Gaunt House called Lady Bareacres in to their aid, inorder to repulse the common enemy. One of Lady Gaunt's carriages wentto Hill Street for her Ladyship's mother, all whose equipages were inthe hands of the bailiffs, whose very jewels and wardrobe, it was said,had been seized by those inexorable Israelites. Bareacres Castle wastheirs, too, with all its costly pictures, furniture, and articles ofvertu--the magnificent Vandykes; the noble Reynolds pictures; theLawrence portraits, tawdry and beautiful, and, thirty years ago, deemedas precious as works of real genius; the matchless Dancing Nymph ofCanova, for which Lady Bareacres had sat in her youth--Lady Bareacressplendid then, and radiant in wealth, rank, and beauty--a toothless,bald, old woman now--a mere rag of a former robe of state. Her lord,painted at the same time by Lawrence, as waving his sabre in front ofBareacres Castle, and clothed in his uniform as Colonel of theThistlewood Yeomanry, was a withered, old, lean man in a greatcoat anda Brutus wig, slinking about Gray's Inn of mornings chiefly and diningalone at clubs. He did not like to dine with Steyne now. They had runraces of pleasure together in youth when Bareacres was the winner. ButSteyne had more bottom than he and had lasted him out. The Marquis wasten times a greater man now than the young Lord Gaunt of '85, andBareacres nowhere in the race--old, beaten, bankrupt, and broken down.He had borrowed too much money of Steyne to find it pleasant to meethis old comrade often. The latter, whenever he wished to be merry,used jeeringly to ask Lady Gaunt why her father had not come to seeher. "He has not been here for four months," Lord Steyne would say. "Ican always tell by my cheque-book afterwards, when I get a visit fromBareacres. What a comfort it is, my ladies, I bank with one of mysons' fathers-in-law, and the other banks with me!"

Of the other illustrious persons whom Becky had the honour to encounteron this her first presentation to the grand world, it does not becomethe present historian to say much. There was his Excellency the Princeof Peterwaradin, with his Princess--a nobleman tightly girthed, with alarge military chest, on which the plaque of his order shonemagnificently, and wearing the red collar of the Golden Fleece roundhis neck. He was the owner of countless flocks. "Look at his face. Ithink he must be descended from a sheep," Becky whispered to LordSteyne. Indeed, his Excellency's countenance, long, solemn, and white,with the ornament round his neck, bore some resemblance to that of avenerable bell-wether.

There was Mr. John Paul Jefferson Jones, titularly attached to theAmerican Embassy and correspondent of the New York Demagogue, who, byway of making himself agreeable to the company, asked Lady Steyne,during a pause in the conversation at dinner, how his dear friend,George Gaunt, liked the Brazils? He and George had been most intimateat Naples and had gone up Vesuvius together. Mr. Jones wrote a fulland particular account of the dinner, which appeared duly in theDemagogue. He mentioned the names and titles of all the guests, givingbiographical sketches of the principal people. He described thepersons of the ladies with great eloquence; the service of the table;the size and costume of the servants; enumerated the dishes and winesserved; the ornaments of the sideboard; and the probable value of theplate. Such a dinner he calculated could not be dished up underfifteen or eighteen dollars per head. And he was in the habit, untilvery lately, of sending over proteges, with letters of recommendationto the present Marquis of Steyne, encouraged to do so by the intimateterms on which he had lived with his dear friend, the late lord. Hewas most indignant that a young and insignificant aristocrat, the Earlof Southdown, should have taken the pas of him in their procession tothe dining-room. "Just as I was stepping up to offer my hand to avery pleasing and witty fashionable, the brilliant and exclusive Mrs.Rawdon Crawley,"--he wrote--"the young patrician interposed between meand the lady and whisked my Helen off without a word of apology. I wasfain to bring up the rear with the Colonel, the lady's husband, a stoutred-faced warrior who distinguished himself at Waterloo, where he hadbetter luck than befell some of his brother redcoats at New Orleans."

The Colonel's countenance on coming into this polite society wore asmany blushes as the face of a boy of sixteen assumes when he isconfronted with his sister's schoolfellows. It has been told beforethat honest Rawdon had not been much used at any period of his life toladies' company. With the men at the Club or the mess room, he waswell enough; and could ride, bet, smoke, or play at billiards with theboldest of them. He had had his time for female friendships too, butthat was twenty years ago, and the ladies were of the rank of thosewith whom Young Marlow in the comedy is represented as having beenfamiliar before he became abashed in the presence of Miss Hardcastle.The times are such that one scarcely dares to allude to that kind ofcompany which thousands of our young men in Vanity Fair are frequentingevery day, which nightly fills casinos and dancing-rooms, which isknown to exist as well as the Ring in Hyde Park or the Congregation atSt. James's--but which the most squeamish if not the most moral ofsocieties is determined to ignore. In a word, although Colonel Crawleywas now five-and-forty years of age, it had not been his lot in life tomeet with a half dozen good women, besides his paragon of a wife. Allexcept her and his kind sister Lady Jane, whose gentle nature had tamedand won him, scared the worthy Colonel, and on occasion of his firstdinner at Gaunt House he was not heard to make a single remark exceptto state that the weather was very hot. Indeed Becky would have lefthim at home, but that virtue ordained that her husband should be by herside to protect the timid and fluttering little creature on her firstappearance in polite society.

On her first appearance Lord Steyne stepped forward, taking her hand,and greeting her with great courtesy, and presenting her to LadySteyne, and their ladyships, her daughters. Their ladyships made threestately curtsies, and the elder lady to be sure gave her hand to thenewcomer, but it was as cold and lifeless as marble.

Becky took it, however, with grateful humility, and performing areverence which would have done credit to the best dancer-master, putherself at Lady Steyne's feet, as it were, by saying that his Lordshiphad been her father's earliest friend and patron, and that she, Becky,had learned to honour and respect the Steyne family from the days ofher childhood. The fact is that Lord Steyne had once purchased acouple of pictures of the late Sharp, and the affectionate orphan couldnever forget her gratitude for that favour.

The Lady Bareacres then came under Becky's cognizance--to whom theColonel's lady made also a most respectful obeisance: it was returnedwith severe dignity by the exalted person in question.

"I had the pleasure of making your Ladyship's acquaintance at Brussels,ten years ago," Becky said in the most winning manner. "I had the goodfortune to meet Lady Bareacres at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, thenight before the Battle of Waterloo. And I recollect your Ladyship,and my Lady Blanche, your daughter, sitting in the carriage in theporte-cochere at the Inn, waiting for horses. I hope your Ladyship'sdiamonds are safe."

Everybody's eyes looked into their neighbour's. The famous diamondshad undergone a famous seizure, it appears, about which Becky, ofcourse, knew nothing. Rawdon Crawley retreated with Lord Southdown intoa window, where the latter was heard to laugh immoderately, as Rawdontold him the story of Lady Bareacres wanting horses and "knuckling downby Jove," to Mrs. Crawley. "I think I needn't be afraid of THATwoman," Becky thought. Indeed, Lady Bareacres exchanged terrified andangry looks with her daughter and retreated to a table, where she beganto look at pictures with great energy.

When the Potentate from the Danube made his appearance, theconversation was carried on in the French language, and the LadyBareacres and the younger ladies found, to their farther mortification,that Mrs. Crawley was much better acquainted with that tongue, andspoke it with a much better accent than they. Becky had met otherHungarian magnates with the army in France in 1816-17. She asked afterher friends with great interest The foreign personages thought that shewas a lady of great distinction, and the Prince and the Princess askedseverally of Lord Steyne and the Marchioness, whom they conducted todinner, who was that petite dame who spoke so well?

Finally, the procession being formed in the order described by theAmerican diplomatist, they marched into the apartment where the banquetwas served, and which, as I have promised the reader he shall enjoy it,he shall have the liberty of ordering himself so as to suit his fancy.

But it was when the ladies were alone that Becky knew the tug of warwould come. And then indeed the little woman found herself in such asituation as made her acknowledge the correctness of Lord Steyne'scaution to her to beware of the society of ladies above her own sphere.As they say, the persons who hate Irishmen most are Irishmen; so,assuredly, the greatest tyrants over women are women. When poor littleBecky, alone with the ladies, went up to the fire-place whither thegreat ladies had repaired, the great ladies marched away and tookpossession of a table of drawings. When Becky followed them to thetable of drawings, they dropped off one by one to the fire again. Shetried to speak to one of the children (of whom she was commonly fond inpublic places), but Master George Gaunt was called away by his mamma;and the stranger was treated with such cruelty finally, that even LadySteyne herself pitied her and went up to speak to the friendless littlewoman.

"Lord Steyne," said her Ladyship, as her wan cheeks glowed with ablush, "says you sing and play very beautifully, Mrs. Crawley--I wishyou would do me the kindness to sing to me."

"I will do anything that may give pleasure to my Lord Steyne or toyou," said Rebecca, sincerely grateful, and seating herself at thepiano, began to sing.

She sang religious songs of Mozart, which had been early favourites ofLady Steyne, and with such sweetness and tenderness that the lady,lingering round the piano, sat down by its side and listened until thetears rolled down her eyes. It is true that the opposition ladies atthe other end of the room kept up a loud and ceaseless buzzing andtalking, but the Lady Steyne did not hear those rumours. She was achild again--and had wandered back through a forty years' wilderness toher convent garden. The chapel organ had pealed the same tones, theorganist, the sister whom she loved best of the community, had taughtthem to her in those early happy days. She was a girl once more, andthe brief period of her happiness bloomed out again for an hour--shestarted when the jarring doors were flung open, and with a loud laughfrom Lord Steyne, the men of the party entered full of gaiety.

He saw at a glance what had happened in his absence, and was gratefulto his wife for once. He went and spoke to her, and called her by herChristian name, so as again to bring blushes to her pale face--"My wifesays you have been singing like an angel," he said to Becky. Now thereare angels of two kinds, and both sorts, it is said, are charming intheir way.

Whatever the previous portion of the evening had been, the rest of thatnight was a great triumph for Becky. She sang her very best, and itwas so good that every one of the men came and crowded round the piano.The women, her enemies, were left quite alone. And Mr. Paul JeffersonJones thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to herLadyship and praising her delightful friend's first-rate singing.