Later on she had her triumph, for when the gentlemen came in they crowded round the piano. “And Mr. Paul Jefferson Jones (an American guest) thought he had made a conquest of Lady Gaunt by going up to her ladyship, and praising her delightful friend’s first-rate singing.” Once Becky had been recognised at Gaunt House, other ladies began to acknowledge her, none the less eagerly because she was known not to be too favourably regarded by the Steyne females. The great Lady Fitz Willis paid her marked attention. When anyone was taken up by this lady, her position was safe. Not that she was amusing or clever or beautiful, “being a faded person of fifty seven”: but nevertheless she was a recognised leader whose social verdict was undisputed. Under her ægis Becky was safe; and it was thrown over our little adventuress because of an early rivalry between Lady Fitz Willis and Lady Steyne. Now the success of Becky with all her disadvantages was not undeserved. She had wit, tact, courage. She could flatter where necessary: but she could defy an enemy when she thought fit. Very great ladies feared her biting sarcasm if they provoked it; and she won her place because of her weapons of defiance as well as her powers of attraction. She fell from her high position because she was found out; but, even after her exposure and Rawdon’s eye-opening to her unfaithfulness to his cause, she fought on in the social battle; and the last glimpse of her is at a charity bazaar! But the society which Becky Sharp conquered by her brains was soon to be stormed by wealth. And Thackeray describes the process in the novels of a later period. The strife was only beginning in “Vanity Fair.” Lord Steyne’s younger son, we are told, married the daughter of the great banker Lord Helvellyn; but this was exceptional. The city was just beginning to intermarry with the lesser nobility. Miss Schwartz, the rich West Indian, who was destined for young George Osborne, was married into the noble family of McMull. The younger Miss Osborne married, after much haggling over settlements, Frederick Bullock of Hulker Bullock and Co., whose family was allied with the impecunious nobility; but she was completely out of society. She would have gone on her knees to Gaunt House to be asked to dinner there. Her father, whose means would have procured him an entrance into any society a few years later, then lived in an unfashionable part of London, and his dinner parties were dull, pompous gatherings, the most honoured guest being Sir Thomas Coffin, “the hanging judge” for whose benefit the famous tawny port was always produced.