e opera; what had been her
previous history; and what her conduct during her married life--as I
have no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictated
by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here. But Becky
was left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentleman
and relative who had been once rather partial to her.

The revenues of the Governor of Coventry Island are not large. A part
of them were set aside by his Excellency for the payment of certain
outstanding debts and liabilities, the charges incident on his high
situation required considerable expense; finally, it was found that he
could not spare to his wife more than three hundred pounds a year,
which he proposed to pay to her on an undertaking that she would never
trouble him. Otherwise, scandal, separation, Doctors' Commons would
ensue. But it was Mr. Wenham's business, Lord Steyne's business,
Rawdon's, everybody's--to get her out of the country, and hush up a
most disagreeable affair.

She was probably so much occupied in arranging these affairs of
business with her husband's lawyers that she forgot to take any step
whatever about her son, the little Rawdon, and did not even once
propose to go and see him. That young gentleman was consigned to the
entire guardianship of his aunt and uncle, the former of whom had
always possessed a great share of the child's affection. His mamma
wrote him a neat letter from Boulogne, when she quitted England, in
which she requested him to mind his book, and said she was going to
take a Continental tour, during which she would have the pleasure of
writing to him again. But she never did for a year afterwards, and
not, indeed, until Sir Pitt's only boy, always sickly, died of
hooping-cough and measles--then Rawdon's mamma wrote the most
affectionate composition to her darling son, who was made heir of
Queen's Crawley by this accident, and drawn more closely than ever to
the kind lady, whose tender heart had already adopted him. Rawdon
Crawley, then grown a tall, fine lad, blushed when he got the letter.
"Oh, Aunt Jane, you are my mother!" he said; "and not--and not that
one." But he wrote back a kind and respectful letter to Mrs. Rebecca,
then living at a boarding-house at Florence. But we are advancing
matters.

Our darling Becky's first flight was not very far. She perched upon
the French coast at Boulogne, that refuge of so much exiled English
innocence, and there lived