army and the unexpected arrival of the French King, Louis XVIII of France into Brussels exile, yet Sharp's main interest is in humiliating Amelia at the ball over her — in Sharp's eyes — poor quality gown. Soon after, Jos wants to propose to Sharp, but he loses his nerve and subsequently disappears — escaping back to Calcutta — and by the time he eventually does propose, comments Knoepflmacher, "both Becky Sharp and our attitude toward her have moved on". Meanwhile, for Sharp, "he has become her last straw, not her first". Rawdon and Sharp have wed and have a son, also named Rawdon, but his role in her life is more in the manner of being a prop for Sharp to demonstrate her marital bliss. She makes her sitting room a salon — with "ice and coffee ... the best there is in London — where she can be surrounded by admirers, among whom she ranks men of a "small but elite crowd". It is no surprise, suggests Frazee, that Sharp eventually meets the King — who had been regent, now George IV— and in his "high presence Mrs Rawdon passed her examination, and as it were, took her degree in reputation" from him: the King, suggests Thackeray, had created the very conditions which allowed Sharp to flourish. Sharp's marriage to Rawdon Crawley is a major step up the social ladder, although, comments Bloom, this "ladder was a magic one and could withdraw itself at will". When her husband is arrested and held for a £100 debt, she writes to him from bed, insisting that she is doing everything in her power to release her "pauvre prisonnier". When he finally returns, finding her with Lord Steyne, he complains that she has not left him even £100 to take with him. Sharp was not sleeping with Steyne; rather, she reckoned that she needed what she calls a "moral sheepdog", and that that was to be Steyne. Rawdon was mistaken: she was further ingratiating herself with Steyne as a stepping-stone to reaching the pinnacle of English society. Sharp finishes her days self-styling herself the Lady Crawley, a demi-mondaine living in penury in Curzon Street. Lisa Jadwin has described the book as ending "on a note of malignant irresolution". Sharp's fate is, to some degree ambiguous, and it is possible that Thackeray pastiches the classic Victorian novel's denouement in which the heroine