Page 1054 - vanity-fair

thus Becky said she was a wanderer, poor, unprotected,
friendless, and wretched.
Emmy received this story, which was told at some length,
as those persons who are acquainted with her character
may imagine that she would. She quivered with indignation
at the account of the conduct of the miserable Rawdon and
the unprincipled Steyne. Her eyes made notes of admira-
tion for every one of the sentences in which Becky described
the persecutions of her aristocratic relatives and the falling
away of her husband. (Becky did not abuse him. She spoke
rather in sorrow than in anger. She had loved him only too
fondly: and was he not the father of her boy?) And as for the
separation scene from the child, while Becky was reciting it,
Emmy retired altogether behind her pocket-handkerchief,
so that the consummate little tragedian must have been
charmed to see the effect which her performance produced
on her audience.
Whilst the ladies were carrying on their conversation,
Amelia’s constant escort, the Major (who, of course, did not
wish to interrupt their conference, and found himself rather
tired of creaking about the narrow stair passage of which
the roof brushed the nap from his hat) descended to the
ground-floor of the house and into the great room common
to all the frequenters of the Elephant, out of which the stair
led. This apartment is always in a fume of smoke and lib-
erally sprinkled with beer. On a dirty table stand scores of
corresponding brass candlesticks with tallow candles for the
lodgers, whose keys hang up in rows over the candles. Emmy
had passed blushing through the room anon, where all sorts

1054 Vanity Fair