-and here I am, poor and friendless."

"How old is he?" Emmy asked.

"Eleven," said Becky.

"Eleven!" cried the other. "Why, he was born the same year with
Georgy, who is--"

"I know, I know," Becky cried out, who had in fact quite forgotten all
about little Rawdon's age. "Grief has made me forget so many things,
dearest Amelia. I am very much changed: half-wild sometimes. He was
eleven when they took him away from me. Bless his sweet face; I have
never seen it again."

"Was he fair or dark?" went on that absurd little Emmy. "Show me his
hair."

Becky almost laughed at her simplicity. "Not to-day, love--some other
time, when my trunks arrive from Leipzig, whence I came to this
place--and a little drawing of him, which I made in happy days."

"Poor Becky, poor Becky!" said Emmy. "How thankful, how thankful I
ought to be"; (though I doubt whether that practice of piety inculcated
upon us by our womankind in early youth, namely, to be thankful because
we are better off than somebody else, be a very rational religious
exercise) and then she began to think, as usual, how her son was the
handsomest, the best, and the cleverest boy in the whole world.

"You will see my Georgy," was the best thing Emmy could think of to
console Becky. If anything could make her comfortable that would.

And so the two women continued talking for an hour or more, during
which Becky had the opportunity of giving her new friend a full and
complete version of her private history. She showed how her marriage
with Rawdon Crawley had always been viewed by the family with feelings
of the utmost hostility; how her sister-in-law (an artful woman) had
poisoned her husband's mind against her; how he had formed odious
connections, which had estranged his affections from her: how she had
borne everything--poverty, neglect, coldness from the being whom she
most loved--and all for the sake of her child; how, finally, and by the
most flagrant outrage, she had been driven into demanding a separation
from her husband, when the wretch did not scruple to ask that she
should sacrifice her own fair fame so that he might procure advancement
through the means of a very great and powerful but unprincipled
man--the Marquis of Steyne, indeed. The atrocious monster!

This part of her eventful history Becky gave with the utmost feminine
delicacy and the most indignant virtue. Forced to fly her husband's
roof by this insult, the coward had pursued his