e actions of
very vain, heartless, pleasure-seeking people are very often improper
(as are many of yours, my friend with the grave face and spotless
reputation--but that is merely by the way); and what are those of a
woman without faith--or love--or character? And I am inclined to think
that there was a period in Mrs Becky's life when she was seized, not by
remorse, but by a kind of despair, and absolutely neglected her person
and did not even care for her reputation.

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was
brought about by degrees, after her calamity, and after many struggles
to keep up--as a man who goes overboard hangs on to a spar whilst any
hope is left, and then flings it away and goes down, when he finds that
struggling is in vain.

She lingered about London whilst her husband was making preparations
for his departure to his seat of government, and it is believed made
more than one attempt to see her brother-in-law, Sir Pitt Crawley, and
to work upon his feelings, which she had almost enlisted in her favour.
As Sir Pitt and Mr. Wenham were walking down to the House of Commons,
the latter spied Mrs. Rawdon in a black veil, and lurking near the
palace of the legislature. She sneaked away when her eyes met those of
Wenham, and indeed never succeeded in her designs upon the Baronet.

Probably Lady Jane interposed. I have heard that she quite astonished
her husband by the spirit which she exhibited in this quarrel, and her
determination to disown Mrs. Becky. Of her own movement, she invited
Rawdon to come and stop in Gaunt Street until his departure for
Coventry Island, knowing that with him for a guard Mrs. Becky would not
try to force her door; and she looked curiously at the superscriptions
of all the letters which arrived for Sir Pitt, lest he and his
sister-in-law should be corresponding. Not but that Rebecca could have
written had she a mind, but she did not try to see or to write to Pitt
at his own house, and after one or two attempts consented to his demand
that the correspondence regarding her conjugal differences should be
carried on by lawyers only.

The fact was that Pitt's mind had been poisoned against her. A short
time after Lord Steyne's accident Wenham had been with the Baronet and
given him such a biography of Mrs. Becky as had astonished the member
for Queen's Crawley. He knew everything regarding her: who her father
was; in what year her mother danced at th