utton;
but put him to starve, and see if he will not purloin a loaf. Becky
consoled herself by so balancing the chances and equalizing the
distribution of good and evil in the world.

The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, ponds, and
gardens, the rooms of the old house where she had spent a couple of
years seven years ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She had
been young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the time when she
ever WAS young--but she remembered her thoughts and feelings seven
years back and contrasted them with those which she had at present, now
that she had seen the world, and lived with great people, and raised
herself far beyond her original humble station.

"I have passed beyond it, because I have brains," Becky thought, "and
almost all the rest of the world are fools. I could not go back and
consort with those people now, whom I used to meet in my father's
studio. Lords come up to my door with stars and garters, instead of
poor artists with screws of tobacco in their pockets. I have a
gentleman for my husband, and an Earl's daughter for my sister, in the
very house where I was little better than a servant a few years ago.
But am I much better to do now in the world than I was when I was the
poor painter's daughter and wheedled the grocer round the corner for
sugar and tea? Suppose I had married Francis who was so fond of me--I
couldn't have been much poorer than I am now. Heigho! I wish I could
exchange my position in society, and all my relations for a snug sum in
the Three Per Cent. Consols"; for so it was that Becky felt the Vanity
of human affairs, and it was in those securities that she would have
liked to cast anchor.

It may, perhaps, have struck her that to have been honest and humble,
to have done her duty, and to have marched straightforward on her way,
would have brought her as near happiness as that path by which she was
striving to attain it. But--just as the children at Queen's Crawley
went round the room where the body of their father lay--if ever Becky
had these thoughts, she was accustomed to walk round them and not look
in. She eluded them and despised them--or at least she was committed
to the other path from which retreat was now impossible. And for my
part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral
senses--the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never
wakened at all. We grieve at being found out and