upon
Becky, who was unsuspiciously eating her dinner. The little woman,
attacked on a sudden, but never without arms, lighted up in an instant,
parried and riposted with a home-thrust, which made Wagg's face tingle
with shame; then she returned to her soup with the most perfect calm
and a quiet smile on her face. Wagg's great patron, who gave him
dinners and lent him a little money sometimes, and whose election,
newspaper, and other jobs Wagg did, gave the luckless fellow such a
savage glance with the eyes as almost made him sink under the table and
burst into tears. He looked piteously at my lord, who never spoke to
him during dinner, and at the ladies, who disowned him. At last Becky
herself took compassion upon him and tried to engage him in talk. He
was not asked to dinner again for six weeks; and Fiche, my lord's
confidential man, to whom Wagg naturally paid a good deal of court, was
instructed to tell him that if he ever dared to say a rude thing to
Mrs. Crawley again, or make her the butt of his stupid jokes, Milor
would put every one of his notes of hand into his lawyer's hands and
sell him up without mercy. Wagg wept before Fiche and implored his
dear friend to intercede for him. He wrote a poem in favour of Mrs. R.
C., which appeared in the very next number of the Harum-scarum
Magazine, which he conducted. He implored her good-will at parties
where he met her. He cringed and coaxed Rawdon at the club. He was
allowed to come back to Gaunt House after a while. Becky was always
good to him, always amused, never angry.

His lordship's vizier and chief confidential servant (with a seat in
parliament and at the dinner table), Mr. Wenham, was much more prudent
in his behaviour and opinions than Mr. Wagg. However much he might be
disposed to hate all parvenus (Mr. Wenham himself was a staunch old
True Blue Tory, and his father a small coal-merchant in the north of
England), this aide-de-camp of the Marquis never showed any sort of
hostility to the new favourite, but pursued her with stealthy
kindnesses and a sly and deferential politeness which somehow made
Becky more uneasy than other people's overt hostilities.

How the Crawleys got the money which was spent upon the entertainments
with which they treated the polite world was a mystery which gave rise
to some conversation at the time, and probably added zest to these
little festivities. Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave
his brother a hands