is shop and his
house, because he had trusted to the Crawley family. His tears and
lamentations made Becky more peevish than ever.

"You all seem to be against me," she said bitterly. "What do you want?
I can't pay you on Sunday. Come back to-morrow and I'll pay you
everything. I thought Colonel Crawley had settled with you. He will
to-morrow. I declare to you upon my honour that he left home this
morning with fifteen hundred pounds in his pocket-book. He has left me
nothing. Apply to him. Give me a bonnet and shawl and let me go out
and find him. There was a difference between us this morning. You all
seem to know it. I promise you upon my word that you shall all be
paid. He has got a good appointment. Let me go out and find him."

This audacious statement caused Raggles and the other personages
present to look at one another with a wild surprise, and with it
Rebecca left them. She went upstairs and dressed herself this time
without the aid of her French maid. She went into Rawdon's room, and
there saw that a trunk and bag were packed ready for removal, with a
pencil direction that they should be given when called for; then she
went into the Frenchwoman's garret; everything was clean, and all the
drawers emptied there. She bethought herself of the trinkets which had
been left on the ground and felt certain that the woman had fled. "Good
Heavens! was ever such ill luck as mine?" she said; "to be so near,
and to lose all. Is it all too late?" No; there was one chance more.

She dressed herself and went away unmolested this time, but alone. It
was four o'clock. She went swiftly down the streets (she had no money
to pay for a carriage), and never stopped until she came to Sir Pitt
Crawley's door, in Great Gaunt Street. Where was Lady Jane Crawley?
She was at church. Becky was not sorry. Sir Pitt was in his study, and
had given orders not to be disturbed--she must see him--she slipped by
the sentinel in livery at once, and was in Sir Pitt's room before the
astonished Baronet had even laid down the paper.

He turned red and started back from her with a look of great alarm and
horror.

"Do not look so," she said. "I am not guilty, Pitt, dear Pitt; you
were my friend once. Before God, I am not guilty. I seem so.
Everything is against me. And oh! at such a moment! just when all my
hopes were about to be realized: just when happiness was in store for
us."

"Is this true, what I see in the paper th