Page 692 - vanity-fair

was, in truth, some White Hermitage from the Marquis of
Steyne’s famous cellars, which brought fire into the Baron-
et’s pallid cheeks and a glow into his feeble frame.
Then when he had drunk up the bottle of petit vin blanc,
she gave him her hand, and took him up to the drawing-
room, and made him snug on the sofa by the fire, and let
him talk as she listened with the tenderest kindly interest,
sitting by him, and hemming a shirt for her dear little boy.
Whenever Mrs. Rawdon wished to be particularly humble
and virtuous, this little shirt used to come out of her work-
box. It had got to be too small for Rawdon long before it was
finished.
Well, Rebecca listened to Pitt, she talked to him, she
sang to him, she coaxed him, and cuddled him, so that he
found himself more and more glad every day to get back
from the lawyer’s at Gray’s Inn, to the blazing fire in Curzon
Street—a gladness in which the men of law likewise par-
ticipated, for Pitt’s harangues were of the longestand so that
when he went away he felt quite a pang at departing. How
pretty she looked kissing her hand to him from the carriage
and waving her handkerchief when he had taken his place
in the mail! She put the handkerchief to her eyes once. He
pulled his sealskin cap over his, as the coach drove away,
and, sinking back, he thought to himself how she respected
him and how he deserved it, and how Rawdon was a fool-
ish dull fellow who didn’t half-appreciate his wife; and how
mum and stupid his own wife was compared to that bril-
liant little Becky. Becky had hinted every one of these things
herself, perhaps, but so delicately and gently that you hardly

692 Vanity Fair