The mansion of Sir Pitt Crawley, in Great Gaunt Street, was justbeginning to dress itself for the day, as Rawdon, in his eveningcostume, which he had now worn two days, passed by the scared femalewho was scouring the steps and entered into his brother's study. LadyJane, in her morning-gown, was up and above stairs in the nurserysuperintending the toilettes of her children and listening to themorning prayers which the little creatures performed at her knee.Every morning she and they performed this duty privately, and beforethe public ceremonial at which Sir Pitt presided and at which all thepeople of the household were expected to assemble. Rawdon sat down inthe study before the Baronet's table, set out with the orderly bluebooks and the letters, the neatly docketed bills and symmetricalpamphlets, the locked account-books, desks, and dispatch boxes, theBible, the Quarterly Review, and the Court Guide, which all stood as ifon parade awaiting the inspection of their chief.

A book of family sermons, one of which Sir Pitt was in the habit ofadministering to his family on Sunday mornings, lay ready on the studytable, and awaiting his judicious selection. And by the sermon-bookwas the Observer newspaper, damp and neatly folded, and for Sir Pitt'sown private use. His gentleman alone took the opportunity of perusingthe newspaper before he laid it by his master's desk. Before he hadbrought it into the study that morning, he had read in the journal aflaming account of "Festivities at Gaunt House," with the names of allthe distinguished personages invited by the Marquis of Steyne to meethis Royal Highness. Having made comments upon this entertainment tothe housekeeper and her niece as they were taking early tea and hotbuttered toast in the former lady's apartment, and wondered how theRawding Crawleys could git on, the valet had damped and folded thepaper once more, so that it looked quite fresh and innocent against thearrival of the master of the house.

Poor Rawdon took up the paper and began to try and read it until hisbrother should arrive. But the print fell blank upon his eyes, and hedid not know in the least what he was reading. The Government news andappointments (which Sir Pitt as a public man was bound to peruse,otherwise he would by no means permit the introduction of Sunday papersinto his household), the theatrical criticisms, the fight for a hundredpounds a side between the Barking Butcher and the Tutbury Pet, theGaunt House chronicle itself, which contained a most complimentarythough guarded account of the famous charades of which Mrs. Becky hadbeen the heroine--all these passed as in a haze before Rawdon, as hesat waiting the arrival of the chief of the family.

Punctually, as the shrill-toned bell of the black marble study clockbegan to chime nine, Sir Pitt made his appearance, fresh, neat, smuglyshaved, with a waxy clean face, and stiff shirt collar, his scanty haircombed and oiled, trimming his nails as he descended the stairsmajestically, in a starched cravat and a grey flannel dressing-gown--areal old English gentleman, in a word--a model of neatness and everypropriety. He started when he saw poor Rawdon in his study in tumbledclothes, with blood-shot eyes, and his hair over his face. He thoughthis brother was not sober, and had been out all night on some orgy."Good gracious, Rawdon," he said, with a blank face, "what brings youhere at this time of the morning? Why ain't you at home?"

"Home," said Rawdon with a wild laugh. "Don't be frightened, Pitt. I'mnot drunk. Shut the door; I want to speak to you."

Pitt closed the door and came up to the table, where he sat down in theother arm-chair--that one placed for the reception of the steward,agent, or confidential visitor who came to transact business with theBaronet--and trimmed his nails more vehemently than ever.

"Pitt, it's all over with me," the Colonel said after a pause. "I'mdone."

"I always said it would come to this," the Baronet cried peevishly, andbeating a tune with his clean-trimmed nails. "I warned you a thousandtimes. I can't help you any more. Every shilling of my money is tiedup. Even the hundred pounds that Jane took you last night werepromised to my lawyer to-morrow morning, and the want of it will put meto great inconvenience. I don't mean to say that I won't assist youultimately. But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as wellhope to pay the National Debt. It is madness, sheer madness, to thinkof such a thing. You must come to a compromise. It's a painful thingfor the family, but everybody does it. There was George Kitely, LordRagland's son, went through the Court last week, and was what they callwhitewashed, I believe. Lord Ragland would not pay a shilling for him,and--"

"It's not money I want," Rawdon broke in. "I'm not come to you aboutmyself. Never mind what happens to me."

"What is the matter, then?" said Pitt, somewhat relieved.

"It's the boy," said Rawdon in a husky voice. "I want you to promiseme that you will take charge of him when I'm gone. That dear good wifeof yours has always been good to him; and he's fonder of her than he isof his . . .--Damn it. Look here, Pitt--you know that I was to havehad Miss Crawley's money. I wasn't brought up like a younger brother,but was always encouraged to be extravagant and kep idle. But for thisI might have been quite a different man. I didn't do my duty with theregiment so bad. You know how I was thrown over about the money, andwho got it."

"After the sacrifices I have made, and the manner in which I have stoodby you, I think this sort of reproach is useless," Sir Pitt said."Your marriage was your own doing, not mine."

"That's over now," said Rawdon. "That's over now." And the words werewrenched from him with a groan, which made his brother start.

"Good God! is she dead?" Sir Pitt said with a voice of genuine alarmand commiseration.

"I wish I was," Rawdon replied. "If it wasn't for little Rawdon I'dhave cut my throat this morning--and that damned villain's too."

Sir Pitt instantly guessed the truth and surmised that Lord Steyne wasthe person whose life Rawdon wished to take. The Colonel told hissenior briefly, and in broken accents, the circumstances of the case."It was a regular plan between that scoundrel and her," he said. "Thebailiffs were put upon me; I was taken as I was going out of his house;when I wrote to her for money, she said she was ill in bed and put meoff to another day. And when I got home I found her in diamonds andsitting with that villain alone." He then went on to describe hurriedlythe personal conflict with Lord Steyne. To an affair of that nature,of course, he said, there was but one issue, and after his conferencewith his brother, he was going away to make the necessary arrangementsfor the meeting which must ensue. "And as it may end fatally with me,"Rawdon said with a broken voice, "and as the boy has no mother, I mustleave him to you and Jane, Pitt--only it will be a comfort to me if youwill promise me to be his friend."

The elder brother was much affected, and shook Rawdon's hand with acordiality seldom exhibited by him. Rawdon passed his hand over hisshaggy eyebrows. "Thank you, brother," said he. "I know I can trustyour word."

"I will, upon my honour," the Baronet said. And thus, and almostmutely, this bargain was struck between them.

Then Rawdon took out of his pocket the little pocket-book which he haddiscovered in Becky's desk, and from which he drew a bundle of thenotes which it contained. "Here's six hundred," he said--"you didn'tknow I was so rich. I want you to give the money to Briggs, who lentit to us--and who was kind to the boy--and I've always felt ashamed ofhaving taken the poor old woman's money. And here's some more--I'veonly kept back a few pounds--which Becky may as well have, to get onwith." As he spoke he took hold of the other notes to give to hisbrother, but his hands shook, and he was so agitated that thepocket-book fell from him, and out of it the thousand-pound note whichhad been the last of the unlucky Becky's winnings.

Pitt stooped and picked them up, amazed at so much wealth. "Not that,"Rawdon said. "I hope to put a bullet into the man whom that belongsto." He had thought to himself, it would be a fine revenge to wrap aball in the note and kill Steyne with it.

After this colloquy the brothers once more shook hands and parted. LadyJane had heard of the Colonel's arrival, and was waiting for herhusband in the adjoining dining-room, with female instinct, auguringevil. The door of the dining-room happened to be left open, and thelady of course was issuing from it as the two brothers passed out ofthe study. She held out her hand to Rawdon and said she was glad hewas come to breakfast, though she could perceive, by his haggardunshorn face and the dark looks of her husband, that there was verylittle question of breakfast between them. Rawdon muttered someexcuses about an engagement, squeezing hard the timid little hand whichhis sister-in-law reached out to him. Her imploring eyes could readnothing but calamity in his face, but he went away without anotherword. Nor did Sir Pitt vouchsafe her any explanation. The childrencame up to salute him, and he kissed them in his usual frigid manner.The mother took both of them close to herself, and held a hand of eachof them as they knelt down to prayers, which Sir Pitt read to them, andto the servants in their Sunday suits or liveries, ranged upon chairson the other side of the hissing tea-urn. Breakfast was so late thatday, in consequence of the delays which had occurred, that thechurch-bells began to ring whilst they were sitting over their meal;and Lady Jane was too ill, she said, to go to church, though herthoughts had been entirely astray during the period of family devotion.

Rawdon Crawley meanwhile hurried on from Great Gaunt Street, andknocking at the great bronze Medusa's head which stands on the portalof Gaunt House, brought out the purple Silenus in a red and silverwaistcoat who acts as porter of that palace. The man was scared alsoby the Colonel's dishevelled appearance, and barred the way as ifafraid that the other was going to force it. But Colonel Crawley onlytook out a card and enjoined him particularly to send it in to LordSteyne, and to mark the address written on it, and say that ColonelCrawley would be all day after one o'clock at the Regent Club in St.James's Street--not at home. The fat red-faced man looked after himwith astonishment as he strode away; so did the people in their Sundayclothes who were out so early; the charity-boys with shining faces,the greengrocer lolling at his door, and the publican shutting hisshutters in the sunshine, against service commenced. The people jokedat the cab-stand about his appearance, as he took a carriage there, andtold the driver to drive him to Knightsbridge Barracks.

All the bells were jangling and tolling as he reached that place. Hemight have seen his old acquaintance Amelia on her way from Brompton toRussell Square, had he been looking out. Troops of schools were ontheir march to church, the shiny pavement and outsides of coaches inthe suburbs were thronged with people out upon their Sunday pleasure;but the Colonel was much too busy to take any heed of these phenomena,and, arriving at Knightsbridge, speedily made his way up to the room ofhis old friend and comrade Captain Macmurdo, who Crawley found, to hissatisfaction, was in barracks.

Captain Macmurdo, a veteran officer and Waterloo man, greatly liked byhis regiment, in which want of money alone prevented him from attainingthe highest ranks, was enjoying the forenoon calmly in bed. He hadbeen at a fast supper-party, given the night before by Captain theHonourable George Cinqbars, at his house in Brompton Square, to severalyoung men of the regiment, and a number of ladies of the corps deballet, and old Mac, who was at home with people of all ages and ranks,and consorted with generals, dog-fanciers, opera-dancers, bruisers, andevery kind of person, in a word, was resting himself after the night'slabours, and, not being on duty, was in bed.

His room was hung round with boxing, sporting, and dancing pictures,presented to him by comrades as they retired from the regiment, andmarried and settled into quiet life. And as he was now nearly fiftyyears of age, twenty-four of which he had passed in the corps, he had asingular museum. He was one of the best shots in England, and, for aheavy man, one of the best riders; indeed, he and Crawley had beenrivals when the latter was in the Army. To be brief, Mr. Macmurdo waslying in bed, reading in Bell's Life an account of that very fightbetween the Tutbury Pet and the Barking Butcher, which has been beforementioned--a venerable bristly warrior, with a little close-shaved greyhead, with a silk nightcap, a red face and nose, and a great dyedmoustache.

When Rawdon told the Captain he wanted a friend, the latter knewperfectly well on what duty of friendship he was called to act, andindeed had conducted scores of affairs for his acquaintances with thegreatest prudence and skill. His Royal Highness the late lamentedCommander-in-Chief had had the greatest regard for Macmurdo on thisaccount, and he was the common refuge of gentlemen in trouble.

"What's the row about, Crawley, my boy?" said the old warrior. "Nomore gambling business, hay, like that when we shot Captain Marker?"

"It's about--about my wife," Crawley answered, casting down his eyesand turning very red.

The other gave a whistle. "I always said she'd throw you over," hebegan--indeed there were bets in the regiment and at the clubsregarding the probable fate of Colonel Crawley, so lightly was hiswife's character esteemed by his comrades and the world; but seeing thesavage look with which Rawdon answered the expression of this opinion,Macmurdo did not think fit to enlarge upon it further.

"Is there no way out of it, old boy?" the Captain continued in a gravetone. "Is it only suspicion, you know, or--or what is it? Any letters?Can't you keep it quiet? Best not make any noise about a thing of thatsort if you can help it." "Think of his only finding her out now," theCaptain thought to himself, and remembered a hundred particularconversations at the mess-table, in which Mrs. Crawley's reputation hadbeen torn to shreds.

"There's no way but one out of it," Rawdon replied--"and there's only away out of it for one of us, Mac--do you understand? I was put out ofthe way--arrested--I found 'em alone together. I told him he was aliar and a coward, and knocked him down and thrashed him."

"Serve him right," Macmurdo said. "Who is it?"

Rawdon answered it was Lord Steyne.

"The deuce! a Marquis! they said he--that is, they said you--"

"What the devil do you mean?" roared out Rawdon; "do you mean that youever heard a fellow doubt about my wife and didn't tell me, Mac?"

"The world's very censorious, old boy," the other replied. "What thedeuce was the good of my telling you what any tom-fools talked about?"

"It was damned unfriendly, Mac," said Rawdon, quite overcome; and,covering his face with his hands, he gave way to an emotion, the sightof which caused the tough old campaigner opposite him to wince withsympathy. "Hold up, old boy," he said; "great man or not, we'll put abullet in him, damn him. As for women, they're all so."

"You don't know how fond I was of that one," Rawdon said,half-inarticulately. "Damme, I followed her like a footman. I gave upeverything I had to her. I'm a beggar because I would marry her. ByJove, sir, I've pawned my own watch in order to get her anything shefancied; and she she's been making a purse for herself all the time,and grudged me a hundred pound to get me out of quod." He then fiercelyand incoherently, and with an agitation under which his counsellor hadnever before seen him labour, told Macmurdo the circumstances of thestory. His adviser caught at some stray hints in it. "She may beinnocent, after all," he said. "She says so. Steyne has been a hundredtimes alone with her in the house before."

"It may be so," Rawdon answered sadly, "but this don't look veryinnocent": and he showed the Captain the thousand-pound note which hehad found in Becky's pocket-book. "This is what he gave her, Mac, andshe kep it unknown to me; and with this money in the house, she refusedto stand by me when I was locked up." The Captain could not but ownthat the secreting of the money had a very ugly look.

Whilst they were engaged in their conference, Rawdon dispatched CaptainMacmurdo's servant to Curzon Street, with an order to the domesticthere to give up a bag of clothes of which the Colonel had great need.And during the man's absence, and with great labour and a Johnson'sDictionary, which stood them in much stead, Rawdon and his secondcomposed a letter, which the latter was to send to Lord Steyne.Captain Macmurdo had the honour of waiting upon the Marquis of Steyne,on the part of Colonel Rawdon Crawley, and begged to intimate that hewas empowered by the Colonel to make any arrangements for the meetingwhich, he had no doubt, it was his Lordship's intention to demand, andwhich the circumstances of the morning had rendered inevitable.Captain Macmurdo begged Lord Steyne, in the most polite manner, toappoint a friend, with whom he (Captain M.M.) might communicate, anddesired that the meeting might take place with as little delay aspossible.

In a postscript the Captain stated that he had in his possession abank-note for a large amount, which Colonel Crawley had reason tosuppose was the property of the Marquis of Steyne. And he was anxious,on the Colonel's behalf, to give up the note to its owner.

By the time this note was composed, the Captain's servant returned fromhis mission to Colonel Crawley's house in Curzon Street, but withoutthe carpet-bag and portmanteau, for which he had been sent, and with avery puzzled and odd face.

"They won't give 'em up," said the man; "there's a regular shinty inthe house, and everything at sixes and sevens. The landlord's come inand took possession. The servants was a drinkin' up in thedrawingroom. They said--they said you had gone off with the plate,Colonel"--the man added after a pause--"One of the servants is offalready. And Simpson, the man as was very noisy and drunk indeed, saysnothing shall go out of the house until his wages is paid up."

The account of this little revolution in May Fair astonished and gave alittle gaiety to an otherwise very triste conversation. The twoofficers laughed at Rawdon's discomfiture.

"I'm glad the little 'un isn't at home," Rawdon said, biting his nails."You remember him, Mac, don't you, in the Riding School? How he sat thekicker to be sure! didn't he?"

"That he did, old boy," said the good-natured Captain.

Little Rawdon was then sitting, one of fifty gown boys, in the Chapelof Whitefriars School, thinking, not about the sermon, but about goinghome next Saturday, when his father would certainly tip him and perhapswould take him to the play.

"He's a regular trump, that boy," the father went on, still musingabout his son. "I say, Mac, if anything goes wrong--if I drop--Ishould like you to--to go and see him, you know, and say that I wasvery fond of him, and that. And--dash it--old chap, give him thesegold sleeve-buttons: it's all I've got." He covered his face with hisblack hands, over which the tears rolled and made furrows of white.Mr. Macmurdo had also occasion to take off his silk night-cap and rubit across his eyes.

"Go down and order some breakfast," he said to his man in a loudcheerful voice. "What'll you have, Crawley? Some devilled kidneys anda herring--let's say. And, Clay, lay out some dressing things for theColonel: we were always pretty much of a size, Rawdon, my boy, andneither of us ride so light as we did when we first entered the corps."With which, and leaving the Colonel to dress himself, Macmurdo turnedround towards the wall, and resumed the perusal of Bell's Life, untilsuch time as his friend's toilette was complete and he was at libertyto commence his own.

This, as he was about to meet a lord, Captain Macmurdo performed withparticular care. He waxed his mustachios into a state of brilliantpolish and put on a tight cravat and a trim buff waistcoat, so that allthe young officers in the mess-room, whither Crawley had preceded hisfriend, complimented Mac on his appearance at breakfast and asked if hewas going to be married that Sunday.