rebuke on
the part of the housekeeper. »There has been better ladies, and there has been
worser, Hester,« was Miss Horrocks' reply to this compliment of her inferior. So
she ruled, having supreme power over all except her father, whom, however, she
treated with considerable haughtiness, warning him not to be too familiar in his
behaviour to one »as was to be a Baronet's lady.« Indeed, she rehearsed that
exalted part in life with great satisfaction to herself, and to the amusement of
old Sir Pitt, who chuckled at her airs and graces, and would laugh by the hour
together at her assumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life. He swore
it was as good as a play to see her in the character of a fine dame; and he made
her put on one of the first Lady Crawley's Court dresses, swearing (entirely to
Miss Horrocks' own concurrence) that the dress became her prodigiously, and
threatening to drive her off that very instant to Court in a coach-and-four. She
had the ransacking of the wardrobes of the two defunct ladies, and cut and
hacked their posthumous finery so as to suit her own tastes and figure. And she
would have liked to take possession of their jewels and trinkets too; but the
old Baronet had locked them away in his private cabinet, nor could she coax or
wheedle him out of the keys. And it is a fact, that some time after she left
Queen's Crawley a copy-book belonging to this lady was discovered, which showed
that she had taken great pains in private to learn the art of writing in
general, and especially of writing her own name as Lady Crawley, Lady Betsy
Horrocks, Lady Elizabeth Crawley, etc.
    Though the good people of the Parsonage never went to the Hall, and shunned
the horrid old dotard its owner, yet they kept a strict knowledge of all that
happened there, and were looking out every day for the catastrophe for which
Miss Horrocks was also eager. But Fate intervened enviously, and prevented her
from receiving the reward due to such immaculate love and virtue.
    One day the Baronet surprised »her Ladyship,« as he jocularly called her,
seated at that old and tuneless piano in the drawing-room, which had scarcely
been touched since Becky Sharp played quadrilles upon it - seated at the piano
with the utmost gravity, and squalling to the best of her power in imitation of
the music which she had sometimes heard. The little kitchen-maid on her
promotion was standing at her mistress's side