I must ask you to pardon me if I linger over this theme and try to elaborate it. Becky had had a good deal of experience before her chance came, and she was fit to take it. Her brother-in-law, Pitt Crawley, was always a little smitten by her charm and determined to do the right thing by Rawdon by inviting him and Becky to Queen’s Crawley. Becky strikes the right note at once--they go by coach, “it looks more humble.” Once there, she captivates Lady Jane by affecting interest in her nursery. But these are only the outworks, Lady Jane is kind and soft, Pitt is pompous and easily flattered. But the citadel remained unvanquished in the person of Lady Southdown, Pitt’s mother-in-law. Here we have Thackeray’s counterpart of Lady Caroline de Burgh, a countess of austere evangelical piety, combined with a firm but by no means constant belief in patent medicines and more or less irregular clergy and medical practitioners, who forces her doctrines and her doctorings without mercy upon her dependants and inferiors. “She would order Gaffer Hodge to be converted, as she would order Goody Hicks to take a James’ powder, without appeal, resistance or benefit of clergy.” Our author describes her as “this awful missionary of the Truth,” driving about her estate administering tracts and medicaments. A lady so domineering, so aristocratic, so virtuous could not be expected to receive poor Becky with her doubtful antecedents and still more questionable conduct. She vows she will leave Queen’s Crawley if ever Mrs. Rawdon sets foot in the home. But Pitt Crawley knows womankind: “She has spent her last dividends, and has nowhere to go. A countess living in an inn is a ruined woman.” This shrewd diagnosis is correct: her ladyship remains and manifests her disapproval of Becky by a stony silence. That astute little woman, however, is not daunted. She reads the countess’s tracts; she is troubled about her soul. Her ladyship cannot resist the temptation of snatching such a brand from the burning. She hopes to convert Becky, who is prepared for a greater sacrifice. She offers her body as well as her soul, and consults Lady Southdown about her health. The victory is won. That night the fearsome form of the great lady appears in night attire at Becky’s bedside and forces her to drink the decoction she has prepared. Her victim swallows it and makes so good a story of the incident that her male friends are convulsed, and thus, “for the first time in her life, Lady Southdown was made amusing.” It is when Mrs. Rawdon Crawley forces her way into the company of the real leaders of London society that we get a true glimpse of the social life of the period, and I shall ask your permission to read the well-known but I think rarely quoted account of her début at the dinner party at Gaunt House. To me, I confess, it seems inimitable. I must, however, remind you of the scenes which lead up to it. First, there is Lord Steyne’s request or rather order to the