e beats all the women I have ever
seen in the course of all my well-spent life. They are babies compared
to her. I am a greenhorn myself, and a fool in her hands--an old fool.
She is unsurpassable in lies." His lordship's admiration for Becky rose
immeasurably at this proof of her cleverness. Getting the money was
nothing--but getting double the sum she wanted, and paying nobody--it
was a magnificent stroke. And Crawley, my lord thought--Crawley is not
such a fool as he looks and seems. He has managed the matter cleverly
enough on his side. Nobody would ever have supposed from his face and
demeanour that he knew anything about this money business; and yet he
put her up to it, and has spent the money, no doubt. In this opinion
my lord, we know, was mistaken, but it influenced a good deal his
behaviour towards Colonel Crawley, whom he began to treat with even
less than that semblance of respect which he had formerly shown towards
that gentleman. It never entered into the head of Mrs. Crawley's
patron that the little lady might be making a purse for herself; and,
perhaps, if the truth must be told, he judged of Colonel Crawley by his
experience of other husbands, whom he had known in the course of the
long and well-spent life which had made him acquainted with a great
deal of the weakness of mankind. My lord had bought so many men during
his life that he was surely to be pardoned for supposing that he had
found the price of this one.

He taxed Becky upon the point on the very first occasion when he met
her alone, and he complimented her, good-humouredly, on her cleverness
in getting more than the money which she required. Becky was only a
little taken aback. It was not the habit of this dear creature to tell
falsehoods, except when necessity compelled, but in these great
emergencies it was her practice to lie very freely; and in an instant
she was ready with another neat plausible circumstantial story which
she administered to her patron. The previous statement which she had
made to him was a falsehood--a wicked falsehood--she owned it. But who
had made her tell it? "Ah, my Lord," she said, "you don't know all I
have to suffer and bear in silence; you see me gay and happy before
you--you little know what I have to endure when there is no protector
near me. It was my husband, by threats and the most savage treatment,
forced me to ask for that sum about which I deceived you. It was he
who, foreseeing that questio