Upon the whole, we are not afraid to own that we rather enjoy her ignis fatuus course, dragging the weak and the vain and the selffish [Transcriber’s note:  sic], through mud and mire, after her, and acting all parts, from the modest rushlight to the gracious star, just as it suits her.  Clever little imp that she is!  What exquisite tact she shows!—­what unflagging good humour!—­what ready self-possession!  Becky never disappoints us; she never even makes us tremble.  We know that her answer will come exactly suiting her one particular object, and frequently three or four more in prospect.  What respect, too, she has for those decencies which more virtuous, but more stupid humanity, often disdains!  What detection of all that is false and mean!  What instinct for all that is true and great!  She is her master’s true pupil in that:  she knows what is really divine as well as he, and bows before it.  She honours Dobbin in spite of his big feet; she respects her husband more than ever she did before, perhaps for the first time, at the very moment when he is stripping not only her jewels, but name, honour, and comfort off her.

We are not so sure either whether we are justified in calling hers "le mauvais coeur." Becky does not pursue any one vindictively; she never does gratuitous mischief.  The fountain is more dry than poisoned.  She is even generous—­when she can afford it.  Witness that burst of plain speaking in Dobbin’s favour to the little dolt Amelia, for which we forgive her many a sin.  ’Tis true she wanted to get rid of her; but let that pass.  Becky was a thrifty dame, and liked to despatch two birds with one stone.  And she was honest, too, after a fashion.  The part of wife she acts at first as well, and better than most; but as for that of mother, there she fails from the beginning.  She knew that maternal love was no business of hers—­that a fine frontal development could give her no help there—­and puts so little spirit into her imitation that no one could be taken in for a moment.  She felt that that bill, of all others, would be sure to be dishonoured, and it went against her conscience—­we mean her sense—­to send it in.

In short, the only respect in which Becky’s course gives us pain is when it locks itself into that of another, and more genuine child of this earth.  No one can regret those being entangled in her nets whose vanity and meanness of spirit alone led them into its meshes—­such are rightly served; but we do grudge her that real sacred thing called love, even of a Rawdon Crawley, who has more of that self-forgetting, all-purifying feeling for his little evil spirit than many a better man has for a good woman.  We do grudge Becky a heart, though it belong only to a swindler.  Poor, sinned against, vile, degraded, but still true-hearted Rawdon!—­you stand next in our affections and sympathies to honest Dobbin himself.  It was the instinct of a good nature which made the Major feel that the stamp of