compliments, and an intimation that it was not her custom to transact bargains with ladies' maids.
This curt reply brought the Earl in person to Becky's apartment; but he could get no more success than the first ambassador. "Send a lady's maid to me!" Mrs. Crawley cried in great anger; "why didn't my Lady Bareacres tell me to go and saddle the horses! Is it her Ladyship that wants to escape, or her Ladyship's femme de chambre?" And this was all the answer that the Earl bore back to his Countess.
What will not necessity do? The Countess herself actually came to wait upon Mrs. Crawley on the failure of her second envoy. She entreated her to name her own price; she even offered to invite Becky to Bareacres House, if the latter would but give her the means of returning to that residence. Mrs. Crawley sneered at her.
"I don't want to be waited on by bailiffs in livery," she said; "you will never get back though most probably—at least, not you and your diamonds together. The French will have those. They will be here in two hours, and I shall be half way to Ghent by that time. I would not sell you my horses, no, not for the two largest diamonds that your Ladyship wore at the ball." Lady Bareacres trembled with rage and terror. The diamonds were sewed into her habit, and secreted in my Lord's padding and boots. "Woman, the diamonds are at the banker's, and I will have the horses," she said. Rebecca laughed in her face. The infuriate Countess went below, and sate in her carriage; her maid, her courier, and her husband were sent once more through the town, each to look for cattle; and wo betide those who came last! Her Ladyship was resolved on departing the very instant the horses arrived from any quarter—with her husband or without him.
Rebecca had the pleasure of seeing her Ladyship in the horseless carriage, and keeping her eyes fixed upon her, and bewailing, in the loudest tone of voice, the Countess's perplexities. "Not to be able to get horses!" she said, "and to have all those diamonds sewed in to the carriage cushions! What a prize it will be for the French when they come!—the carriage and the diamonds I mean; not the lady!" She gave this information to the landlord, to the servants, to the guests, and the innumerable stragglers about the court-yard. Lady Bareacres could have shot her from the carriage-window.
It was while enjoying the humiliation of her enemy that Rebecca caught sight of Jos, who made towards her directly he perceived her.
That altered, frightened, fat face, told his secret well enough. He too wanted to fly, and was on the look-out for the means of escape. "He shall buy my horses," thought Rebecca, "and I'll ride the mare."
Jos walked up to his friend, and put the question for the hundredth time during the past hour, "Did she know where horses were to be had?"
"What, you fly?" said Rebecca, with a laugh. "I thought you were the champion of all the ladies, Mr. Sedley."
"I—I'm not a military man," gasped he.
"And Amelia?—Who is to protect that poor little sister of yours," asked Rebecca. "You surely would not desert her?"
"What good can I do her, suppose—suppose the enemy arrive?" Jos
