f joy, sorrow, or
other business of life, and, after such an event as a
marriage, mother and daughter were surely at liberty to give
way to a sensibility which is as tender as it is refreshing.
About a question of marriage I have seen women
who hate each other kiss and cry together quite fondly.
How much more do they feel when they love!  Good mothers
are married over again at their daughters' weddings:
and as for subsequent events, who does not know how
ultra-maternal grandmothers are?--in fact a woman, until
she is a grandmother, does not often really know what to
be a mother is.  Let us respect Amelia and her mamma
whispering and whimpering and laughing and crying in
the parlour and the twilight.  Old Mr. Sedley did.  HE had
not divined who was in the carriage when it drove up.  He
had not flown out to meet his daughter, though he kissed
her very warmly when she entered the room (where he
was occupied, as usual, with his papers and tapes and
statements of accounts), and after sitting with the mother
and daughter for a short time, he very wisely left the
little apartment in their possession.

George's valet was looking on in a very supercilious
manner at Mr. Clapp in his shirt-sleeves, watering his
rose-bushes.  He took off his hat, however, with much
condescension to Mr. Sedley, who asked news about
his son-in-law, and about Jos's carriage, and whether his
horses had been down to Brighton, and about that
infernal traitor Bonaparty, and the war; until the Irish
maid-servant came with a plate and a bottle of wine,
from which the old gentleman insisted upon helping the
valet.  He gave him a half-guinea too, which the servant
pocketed with a mixture of wonder and contempt.  "To
the health of your master and mistress, Trotter," Mr.
Sedley said, "and here's something to drink your health
when you get home, Trotter."

There were but nine days past since Amelia had left
that little cottage and home--and yet how far off the
time seemed since she had bidden it farewell.  What a
gulf lay between her and that past life.  She could look
back to it from her present standing-place, and contemplate,
almost as another being, the young unmarried girl
absorbed in her love, having no eyes but for one special
object, receiving parental affection if not ungratefully,
at least indifferently, and as if it were her due--her
whole heart and thoughts bent on the accomplishment of
one desire.  The review of those days, so lately gone yet
so far away, touched her with shame; and the aspect of
the kind parents filled her with tender remorse.  Was the
prize gained--the heaven of life--and the winner still
doubtful and unsatisfied?  As his hero and heroine pass
the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the
curtain, as if the drama were over then:  the doubts and
struggles of life ended:  as if, once landed in the marriage
country, all were green and pleasant there:  and wife
and husband had nothing to do but to link each other's
arms together, and wander gently downwards towards
old age in happy and perfect fruition.  But our little
Amelia was just on the bank of her new country, and was
already looking anxiously back towards the sad friendly
figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from the
other distant shore.

In honour of the young bride's arrival, her mother
thought it necessary to prepare I don't know what festive
entertainment, and after the first ebullition of talk, took
leave of Mrs. George Osborne for a while, and dived
down to the lower regions of the house to a sort of
kitchen-parlour (occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Clapp, and
in the evening, when her dishes were washed and her
curl-papers removed, by Miss Flannigan, the Irish servant),
there to take measures for the preparing of a magnificent ornamented tea.  All people have their ways of
expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a
muffin and a quantity of orange marmalade spread out
in a little cut-glass saucer would be peculiarly agreeable
refreshments to Amelia in her most interesting situation.

While these delicacies were being transacted below,
Amelia, leaving the drawing-room, walked upstairs and
found herself, she scarce knew how, in the little room
which she had occupied before her marriage, and in that
very chair in which she had passed so many bitter hours.
She sank back in its arms as if it were an old friend;
and fell to thinking over the past week, and the life
beyond it.  Already to be looking sadly and vaguely back:
always to be pining for something which, when obtained,
brought doubt and sadness rather than pleasure; here
was the lot of our poor little creature and harmless lost
wanderer in the great struggling crowds of Vanity Fair.

Here she sate, and recalled to herself fondly that image
of George to which she had knelt before marriage.  Did
she own to herself how different the real man was from
that superb young hero whom she had worshipped?  It
requires many, many years--and a man must be very bad
indeed--before a woman's pride and vanity will let her
own to such a confession.  Then Rebecca's twinkling
green eyes and baleful smile lighted upon her, and filled
her with dismay.  And so she sate for awhile indulging
in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that very
listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant
had found her, on the day when she brought up the
letter in which George renewed his offer of marriage.

She looked at the little white bed, which had been hers
a few days before, and thought she would like to sleep
in it that night, and wake, as formerly, with her mother
smiling over her in the morning:  Then she thought with
terror of the great funereal damask pavilion in the vast
and dingy state bedroom, which was awaiting her at the
grand hotel in Cavendish Square.  Dear little white bed!
how many a long night had she wept on its pillow!
How she had despaired and hoped to die there; and now
were not all her wishes accomplished, and the lover of
whom she had despaired her own for ever?  Kind mother!
how patiently and tenderly she had watched round that
bed!  She went and knelt down by the bedside; and there
this wounded and timorous, but gentle and loving soul,
sought for consolation, where as yet, it must be owned,
our little girl had but seldom looked for it.  Love had
been her faith hitherto; and the sad, bleeding disappointed
heart began to feel the want of another consoler.

Have we a right to repeat or to overhear her prayers?
These, brother, are secrets, and out of the domain of
Vanity Fair, in which our story lies.

But this may be said, that when the tea was finally
announced, our young lady came downstairs a great deal
more cheerful; that she did not despond, or deplore her
fate, or think about George's coldness, or Rebecca's eyes,
as she had been wont to do of late.  She went downstairs,
and kissed her father and mother, and talked to
the old gentleman, and made him more merry than he
had been for many a day.  She sate down at the piano
which Dobbin had bought for her, and sang over all her
father's favourite old songs.  She pronounced the tea to
be excellent, and praised the exquisite taste in which
the marmalade was arranged in the saucers.  And in
determining to make everybody else happy, she found
herself so; and was sound asleep in the great funereal
pavilion, and only woke up with a smile when George
arrived from the theatre.

For the next day, George had more important "business"
to transact than that which took him to see Mr.
Kean in Shylock.  Immediately on his arrival in London
he had written off to his father's solicitors, signifying his
royal pleasure that an interview should take place between
them on the morrow.  His hotel bill, losses at
billiards and cards to Captain Crawley had almost drained
the young man's purse, which wanted replenishing before
he set out on his travels, and he had no resource but
to infringe upon the two thousand pounds which the
attorneys were commissioned to pay over to him.  He
had a perfect belief in his own mind that his father
would relent before very long.  How could any parent
be obdurate for a length of time against such a
paragon as he was?  If his mere past and personal merits did
not succeed in mollifying his father, George determined
that he would distinguish himself so prodigiously in the
ensuing campaign that the old gentleman must give in to
him.  And if not?  Bah! the world was before him.  His
luck might change at cards, and there was a deal of
spending in two thousand pounds.

So he sent off Amelia once more in a carriage to her
mamma, with strict orders and carte blanche to the two
ladies to purchase everything requisite for a lady of Mrs.
George Osborne's fashion, who was going on a foreign
tour.  They had but one day to complete the outfit, and
it may be imagined that their business therefore occupied
them pretty fully.  In a carriage once more, bustling
about from milliner to linen-draper, escorted back to the
carriage by obsequious shopmen or polite owners, Mrs.
Sedley was herself again almost, and sincerely happy for
the first time since their misfortunes.  Nor was Mrs.
Amelia at all above the pleasure of shopping, and
bargaining, and seeing and buying pretty things.  (Would
any man, the most philosophic, give twopence for a
woman who was?)  She gave herself a little treat,
obedient to her husband's orders, and purchased a
quantity of lady's gear, showing a great deal of taste and
elegant discernment, as all the shopfolks said.

And about the war that was ensuing, Mrs. Osborne
was not much alarmed; Bonaparty was to be crushed
almost without a struggle.  Margate packets were sailing
every day, filled with men of fashion and ladies of note,
on their way to Brussels and Ghent.  People were going
not so much to a war as to a fashionable tour.  The
newspapers laughed the wretched upstart and swindler to
scorn.  Such a Corsican wretch as that withstand the
armies of Europe and the genius of the immortal
Wellington!  Amelia held him in utter contempt; for it needs
not to be said that this soft and gentle creature took her
opinions from those people who surrounded her, such
fidelity being much too humble-minded to think for itself.
Well, in a word, she and her mother performed a
great day's shopping, and she acquitted herself with
considerable liveliness and credit on this her first
appearance in the genteel world of London.

George meanwhile, with his hat on one side, his elbows
squared, and his swaggering martial air, made for
Bedford Row, and stalked into the attorney's offices as if
he was lord of every pale-faced clerk who was scribbling
there.  He ordered somebody to inform Mr. Higgs that
Captain Osborne was waiting, in a fierce and patronizing
way, as if the pekin of an attorney, who had thrice his
brains, fifty times his money, and a thousand times his
experience, was a wretched underling who should
instantly leave all his business in life to attend on the
Captain's pleasure.  He did not see the sneer of contempt
which passed all round the room, from the first
clerk to the articled gents, from the articled gents to the
ragged writers and white-faced runners, in clothes too
tight for them, as he sate there tapping his boot with his
cane, and thinking what a parcel of miserable poor devils
these were.  The miserable poor devils knew all about his
affairs.  They talked about them over their pints of beer
at their public-house clubs to other clerks of a night.
Ye gods, what do not attorneys and attorneys' clerks
know in London!  Nothing is hidden from their
inquisition, and their families mutely rule our city.

Perhaps George expected, when he entered Mr. Higgs's
apartment, to find that gentleman commissioned to give
him some message of compromise or conciliation from
his father; perhaps his haughty and cold demeanour
was adopted as a sign of his spirit and resolution:  but if
so, his fierceness was met by a chilling coolness and
indifference on the attorney's part, that rendered
swaggering absurd.  He pretended to be writing at a paper,
when the Captain entered.  "Pray, sit down, sir," said he,
"and I will attend to your little affair in a moment.  Mr.
Poe, get the release papers, if you please"; and then he
fell to writing again.

Poe having produced those papers, his chief calculated
the amount of two thousand pounds stock at the rate of
the day; and asked Captain Osborne whether he would
take the sum in a cheque upon the bankers, or whether
he should direct the latter to purchase stock to that
amount.  "One of the late Mrs. Osborne's trustees is out
of town," he said indifferently, "but my client wishes to
meet your wishes, and have done with the business as
quick as possible."

"Give me a cheque, sir," said the Captain very surlily.
"Damn the shillings and halfpence, sir," he added, as the
lawyer was making out the amount of the draft; and,
flattering himself that by this stroke of magnanimity he
had put the old quiz to the blush, he stalked out of
the office with the paper in his pocket.

"That chap will be in gaol in two years," Mr. Higgs said
to Mr. Poe.

"Won't O. come round, sir, don't you think?"

"Won't the monument come round," Mr. Higgs replied.

"He's going it pretty fast," said the clerk.  "He's only
married a week, and I saw him and some other military
chaps handing Mrs. Highflyer to her carriage after the
play." And then another case was called, and Mr. George
Osborne thenceforth dismissed from these worthy
gentlemen's memory.

The draft was upon our friends Hulker and Bullock of
Lombard Street, to whose house, still thinking he was
doing business, George bent his way, and from whom he
received his money.  Frederick Bullock, Esq., whose
yellow face was over a ledger, at which sate a demure clerk,
happened to be in the banking-room when George entered.
His yellow face turned to a more deadly colour
when he saw the Captain, and he slunk back guiltily into
the inmost parlour.  George was too busy gloating over
the money (for he had never had such a sum before), to
mark the countenance or flight of the cadaverous suitor
of his sister.

Fred Bullock told old Osborne of his son's appearance
and conduct.  "He came in as bold as brass," said
Frederick.  "He has drawn out every shilling.  How long
will a few hundred pounds last such a chap as that?"
Osborne swore with a great oath that he little cared when or
how soon he spent it.  Fred dined every day in Russell
Square now.  But altogether, George was highly pleased
with his day's business.  All his own baggage and outfit
was put into a state of speedy preparation, and he paid
Amelia's purchases with cheques on his agents, and with
the splendour of a lord.




CHAPTER XXVII


In Which Amelia Joins Her Regiment

When Jos's fine carriage drove up to the inn door at
Chatham, the first face which Amelia recognized was the
friendly countenance of Captain Dobbin, who had been
pacing the street for an hour past in expectation of his
friends' arrival.  The Captain, with shells on his frockcoat,
and a crimson sash and sabre, presented a military
appearance, which made Jos quite proud to be able to
claim such an acquaintance, and the stout civilian hailed
him with a cordiality very different from the reception
which Jos vouchsafed to his friend in Brighton and Bond
Street.

Along with the Captain was Ensign Stubble; who, as
the barouche neared the inn, burst out with an exclamation
of "By Jove! what a pretty girl"; highly applauding
Osborne's choice.  Indeed, Amelia dressed in her wedding-
pelisse and pink ribbons, with a flush in her face,
occasioned by rapid travel through the open air, looked so
fresh and pretty, as fully to justify the Ensign's compliment.
Dobbin liked him for making it.  As he stepped forward
to help the lady out of the carriage, Stubble saw
what a pretty little hand she gave him, and what a sweet
pretty little foot came tripping down the step.  He blushed
profusely, and made the very best bow of which he was
capable; to which Amelia, seeing the number of the the
regiment embroidered on the Ensign's cap, replied with a
blushing smile, and a curtsey on her part; which finished
the young Ensign on the spot.  Dobbin took most kindly to
Mr. Stubble from that day, and encouraged him to talk
about Amelia in their private walks, and at each other's
quarters.  It became the fashion, indeed, among all the
honest young fellows of the --th to adore and admire
Mrs. Osborne.  Her simple artless behaviour, and
modest kindness of demeanour, won all their unsophisticated
hearts; all which simplicity and sweetness are quite
impossible to describe in print.  But who has not beheld
these among women, and recognised the presence of all
sorts of qualities in them, even though they say no more
to you than that they are engaged to dance the next
quadrille, or that it is very hot weather?  George, always the
champion of his regiment, rose immensely in the opinion
of the youth of the corps, by his gallantry in marrying this
portionless young creature, and by his choice of such a
pretty kind partner.

In the sitting-room which was awaiting the travellers,
Amelia, to her surprise, found a letter addressed to Mrs.
Captain Osborne.  It was a triangular billet, on pink paper,
and sealed with a dove and an olive branch, and a
profusion of light blue sealing wax, and it was written in
a very large, though undecided female hand.

"It's Peggy O'Dowd's fist," said George, laughing.  "I
know it by the kisses on the seal." And in fact, it was a
note from Mrs. Major O'Dowd, requesting the pleasure
of Mrs. Osborne's company that very evening to a small
friendly party.  "You must go," George said.  "You will
make acquaintance with the regiment there.  O'Dowd goes
in command of the regiment, and Peggy goes in command

But they had not been for many minutes in the enjoyment
of Mrs. O'Dowd's letter, when the door was flung
open, and a stout jolly lady, in a riding-habit, followed by
a couple of officers of Ours, entered the room.

"Sure, I couldn't stop till tay-time.  Present me, Garge,
my dear fellow, to your lady.  Madam, I'm deloighted to
see ye; and to present to you me husband, Meejor
O'Dowd"; and with this, the jolly lady in the riding-habit
grasped Amelia's hand very warmly, and the latter knew
at once that the lady was before her whom her husband
had so often laughed at.  "You've often heard of me from
that husband of yours," said the lady, with great vivacity.

"You've often heard of her," echoed her husband, the
Major.

Amelia answered, smiling, "that she had."

"And small good he's told you of me," Mrs. O'Dowd
replied; adding that "George was a wicked divvle."

"That I'll go bail for," said the Major, trying to look
knowing, at which George laughed; and Mrs. O'Dowd,
with a tap of her whip, told the Major to be quiet; and
then requested to be presented in form to Mrs. Captain
Osborne.

"This, my dear," said George with great gravity, "is my
very good, kind, and excellent friend, Auralia Margaretta,
otherwise called Peggy."

"Faith, you're right," interposed the Major.

"Otherwise called Peggy, lady of Major Michael
O'Dowd, of our regiment, and daughter of Fitzjurld
Ber'sford de Burgo Malony of Glenmalony, County Kildare."

"And Muryan Squeer, Doblin," said the lady with calm
superiority.

"And Muryan Square, sure enough," the Major
whispered.

"'Twas there ye coorted me, Meejor dear," the lady
said; and the Major assented to this as to every other
proposition which was made generally in company.

Major O'Dowd, who had served his sovereign in every
quarter of the world, and had paid for every step in his
profession by some more than equivalent act of daring
and gallantry, was the most modest, silent, sheep-faced
and meek of little men, and as obedient to his wife as if
he had been her tay-boy.  At the mess-table he sat silently,
and drank a great deal.  When full of liquor, he
reeled silently home.  When he spoke, it was to agree with
everybody on every conceivable point; and he passed
through life in perfect ease and good-humour.  The
hottest suns of India never heated his temper; and the
Walcheren ague never shook it.  He walked up to a battery
with just as much indifference as to a dinner-table; had
dined on horse-flesh and turtle with equal relish and
appetite; and had an old mother, Mrs. O'Dowd of
O'Dowdstown indeed, whom he had never disobeyed
but when he ran away and enlisted, and when he persisted
in marrying that odious Peggy Malony.

Peggy was one of five sisters, and eleven children of the
noble house of Glenmalony; but her husband, though her
own cousin, was of the mother's side, and so had not the
inestimable advantage of being allied to the Malonys,
whom she believed to be the most famous family in the
world.  Having tried nine seasons at Dublin and two at
Bath and Cheltenham, and not finding a partner for life,
Miss Malony ordered her cousin Mick to marry her when
she was about thirty-three years of age; and the honest
fellow obeying, carried her off to the West Indies, to
preside over the ladies of the --th regiment, into which he
had just exchanged.

Before Mrs. O'Dowd was half an hour in Amelia's (or
indeed in anybody else's) company, this amiable lady told
all her birth and pedigree to her new friend.  "My dear,"
said she, good-naturedly, "it was my intention that Garge
should be a brother of my own, and my sister Glorvina
would have suited him entirely.  But as bygones are
bygones, and he was engaged to yourself, why, I'm
determined to take you as a sister instead, and to look upon
you as such, and to love you as one of the family.  Faith,
you've got such a nice good-natured face and way widg
you, that I'm sure we'll agree; and that you'll be an
addition to our family anyway."

"'Deed and she will," said O'Dowd, with an approving
air, and Amelia felt herself not a little amused and
grateful to be thus suddenly introduced to so large a
party of relations.

"We're all good fellows here," the Major's lady continued.
"There's not a regiment in the service where you'll
find a more united society nor a more agreeable mess-
room.  There's no quarrelling, bickering, slandthering, nor
small talk amongst us.  We all love each other."

"Especially Mrs. Magenis," said George, laughing.

"Mrs. Captain Magenis and me has made up, though
her treatment of me would bring me gray hairs with
sorrow to the grave."

"And you with such a beautiful front of black, Peggy,
my dear," the Major cried.

"Hould your tongue, Mick, you booby.  Them husbands
are always in the way, Mrs. Osborne, my dear; and as
for my Mick, I often tell him he should never open his
mouth but to give the word of command, or to put meat
and drink into it.  I'll tell you about the regiment, and
warn you when we're alone.  Introduce me to your brother
now; sure he's a mighty fine man, and reminds me of me
cousin, Dan Malony (Malony of Ballymalony, my dear,
you know who mar'ied Ophalia Scully, of Oystherstown,
own cousin to Lord Poldoody).  Mr. Sedley, sir, I'm
deloighted to be made known te ye.  I suppose you'll dine
at the mess to-day.  (Mind that divvle of a docther, Mick,
and whatever ye du, keep yourself sober for me party
this evening.)"

"It's the 150th gives us a farewell dinner, my love,"
interposed the Major, "but we'll easy get a card for Mr.
Sedley."

"Run Simple (Ensign Simple, of Ours, my dear Amelia.
I forgot to introjuice him to ye).  Run in a hurry, with
Mrs. Major O'Dowd's compliments to Colonel Tavish,
and Captain Osborne has brought his brothernlaw down,
and will bring him to the 150th mess at five o'clock sharp
--when you and I, my dear, will take a snack here, if you
like."  Before Mrs. O'Dowd's speech was concluded, the
young Ensign was trotting downstairs on his commission.

"Obedience is the soul of the army.  We will go to our
duty while Mrs. O'Dowd will stay and enlighten you,
Emmy," Captain Osborne said; and the two gentlemen,
taking each a wing of the Major, walked out with that
officer, grinning at each other over his head.

And, now having her new friend to herself, the impetuous
Mrs: O'Dowd proceeded to pour out such a
quantity of information as no poor little woman's memory
could ever tax itself to bear.  She told Amelia a thousand
particulars relative to the very numerous family of which
the amazed young lady found herself a member.  "Mrs.
Heavytop, the Colonel's wife, died in Jamaica of the
yellow faver and a broken heart comboined, for the horrud
old Colonel, with a head as bald as a cannon-ball, was
making sheep's eyes at a half-caste girl there.  Mrs.
Magenis, though without education, was a good woman,
but she had the divvle's tongue, and would cheat her own
mother at whist.  Mrs. Captain Kirk must turn up her
lobster eyes forsooth at the idea of an honest round game
(wherein me fawther, as pious a man as ever went to
church, me uncle Dane Malony, and our cousin the
Bishop, took a hand at loo, or whist, every night of their
lives).  Nayther of 'em's goin' with the regiment this time,"
Mrs. O'Dowd added.  "Fanny Magenis stops with her
mother, who sells small coal and potatoes, most likely,
in Islington-town, hard by London, though she's always
bragging of her father's ships, and pointing them out to us
as they go up the river:  and Mrs. Kirk and her children
will stop here in Bethesda Place, to be nigh to her favourite
preacher, Dr. Ramshorn.  Mrs. Bunny's in an interesting
situation--faith, and she always is, then--and has
given the Lieutenant seven already.  And Ensign Posky's
wife, who joined two months before you, my dear, has
quarl'd with Tom Posky a score of times, till you can
hear'm all over the bar'ck (they say they're come to
broken pleets, and Tom never accounted for his black oi),
and she'll go back to her mother, who keeps a ladies'
siminary at Richmond--bad luck to her for running away
from it!  Where did ye get your finishing, my dear?  I had
moin, and no expince spared, at Madame Flanahan's, at
Ilyssus Grove, Booterstown, near Dublin, wid a Marchioness
to teach us the true Parisian pronunciation, and a retired
Mejor-General of the French service to put us
through the exercise."

Of this incongruous family our astonished Amelia found
herself all of a sudden a member:  with Mrs. O'Dowd as
an elder sister.  She was presented to her other female
relations at tea-time, on whom, as she was quiet, good-
natured, and not too handsome, she made rather an
agreeable impression until the arrival of the gentlemen from
the mess of the 150th, who all admired her so, that her
sisters began, of course, to find fault with her.

"I hope Osborne has sown his wild oats," said Mrs.
Magenis to Mrs. Bunny.  "If a reformed rake makes a
good husband, sure it's she will have the fine chance with
Garge," Mrs. O'Dowd remarked to Posky, who had lost
her position as bride in the regiment, and was quite angry
with the usurper.  And as for Mrs. Kirk:  that disciple of
Dr. Ramshorn put one or two leading professional
questions to Amelia, to see whether she was awakened,
whether she was a professing Christian and so forth, and
finding from the simplicity of Mrs. Osborne's replies that
she was yet in utter darkness, put into her hands three
little penny books with pictures, viz., the "Howling
Wilderness," the "Washerwoman of Wandsworth Common,"
and the "British Soldier's best Bayonet," which, bent upon
awakening her before she slept, Mrs. Kirk begged Amelia
to read that night ere she went to bed.

But all the men, like good fellows as they were, rallied
round their comrade's pretty wife, and paid her their
court with soldierly gallantry.  She had a little triumph,
which flushed her spirits and made her eyes sparkle.
George was proud of her popularity, and pleased with the
manner (which was very gay and graceful, though naive
and a little timid) with which she received the gentlemen's attentions, and answered their compliments.  And
he in his uniform--how much handsomer he was than
any man in the room!  She felt that he was affectionately
watching her, and glowed with pleasure at his kindness.  "I
will make all his friends welcome," she resolved in her
heart.  "I will love all as I love him.  I will always try and
be gay and good-humoured and make his home happy."

The regiment indeed adopted her with acclamation.
The Captains approved, the Lieutenants applauded, the
Ensigns admired.  Old Cutler, the Doctor, made one or
two jokes, which, being professional, need not be repeated;
and Cackle, the Assistant M.D. of Edinburgh, condescended
to examine her upon leeterature, and tried her
with his three best French quotations.  Young Stubble went
about from man to man whispering, "Jove, isn't she a
pretty gal?" and never took his eyes off her except when
the negus came in.

As for Captain Dobbin, he never so much as spoke to
her during the whole evening.  But he and Captain Porter
of the l50th took home Jos to the hotel, who was in a
very maudlin state, and had told his tiger-hunt story with
great effect, both at the mess-table and at the soiree, to
Mrs. O'Dowd in her turban and bird of paradise.  Having
put the Collector into the hands of his servant, Dobbin
loitered about, smoking his cigar before the inn door.
George had meanwhile very carefully shawled his wife,
and brought her away from Mrs. O'Dowd's after a general
handshaking from the young officers, who accompanied
her to the fly, and cheered that vehicle as it drove off.  So
Amelia gave Dobbin her little hand as she got out of the
carriage, and rebuked him smilingly for not having taken
any notice of her all night.

The Captain continued that deleterious amusement of
smoking, long after the inn and the street were gone to
bed.  He watched the lights vanish from George's sitting-
room windows, and shine out in the bedroom close at
hand.  It was almost morning when he returned to his own
quarters.  He could hear the cheering from the ships in
the river, where the transports were already taking in
their cargoes preparatory to dropping down the Thames.





CHAPTER XVIII


In Which Amelia Invades the Low Countries

The regiment with its officers was to be transported in
ships provided by His Majesty's government for the
occasion:  and in two days after the festive assembly at Mrs.
O'Dowd's apartments, in the midst of cheering from all
the East India ships in the river, and the military on shore,
the band playing "God Save the King," the officers waving
their hats, and the crews hurrahing gallantly, the transports
went down the river and proceeded under convoy to
Ostend.  Meanwhile the gallant Jos had agreed to escort
his sister and the Major's wife, the bulk of whose goods
and chattels, including the famous bird of paradise and
turban, were with the regimental baggage: so that our
two heroines drove pretty much unencumbered to
Ramsgate, where there were plenty of packets plying, in
one of which they had a speedy passage to Ostend.

That period of Jos's life which now ensued was so full
of incident, that it served him for conversation for
many years after, and even the tiger-hunt story was put
aside for more stirring narratives which he had to tell
about the great campaign of Waterloo.  As soon as he
had agreed to escort his sister abroad, it was remarked
that he ceased shaving his upper lip.  At Chatham he
followed the parades and drills with great assiduity.  He
listened with the utmost attention to the conversation of
his brother officers (as he called them in after days
sometimes), and learned as many military names as he could.
In these studies the excellent Mrs. O'Dowd was of great
assistance to him; and on the day finally when they
embarked on board the Lovely Rose, which was to carry
them to their destination, he made his appearance in a
braided frock-coat and duck trousers, with a foraging
cap ornamented with a smart gold band.  Having his
carriage with him, and informing everybody on board
confidentially that he was going to join the Duke of
Wellington's army, folks mistook him for a great personage, a
commissary-general, or a government courier at the very
least.

He suffered hugely on the voyage, during which the
ladies were likewise prostrate; but Amelia was brought to
life again as the packet made Ostend, by the sight of
the transports conveying her regiment, which entered the
harbour almost at the same time with the Lovely Rose.
Jos went in a collapsed state to an inn, while Captain
Dobbin escorted the ladies, and then busied himself in
freeing Jos's carriage and luggage from the ship and the
custom-house, for Mr. Jos was at present without a
servant, Osborne's man and his own pampered menial
having conspired together at Chatham, and refused point-
blank to cross the water.  This revolt, which came very
suddenly, and on the last day, so alarmed Mr. Sedley,
junior, that he was on the point of giving up the expedition,
but Captain Dobbin (who made himself immensely
officious in the business, Jos said), rated him and
laughed at him soundly:  the mustachios were grown in
advance, and Jos finally was persuaded to embark.  In
place of the well-bred and well-fed London domestics,
who could only speak English, Dobbin procured for Jos's
party a swarthy little Belgian servant who could speak
no language at all; but who, by his bustling behaviour,
and by invariably addressing Mr. Sedley as "My lord,"
speedily acquired that gentleman's favour.  Times are
altered at Ostend now; of the Britons who go thither,
very few look like lords, or act like those members of
our hereditary aristocracy.  They seem for the most part
shabby in attire, dingy of linen, lovers of billiards and
brandy, and cigars and greasy ordinaries.

But it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman
in the Duke of Wellington's army paid his way.  The
remembrance of such a fact surely becomes a nation of
shopkeepers.  It was a blessing for a commerce-loving
country to be overrun by such an army of customers:
and to have such creditable warriors to feed.  And the
country which they came to protect is not military.  For
a long period of history they have let other people fight
there.  When the present writer went to survey with eagle
glance the field of Waterloo, we asked the conductor of
the diligence, a portly warlike-looking veteran, whether
he had been at the battle.  "Pas si bete"--such an
answer and sentiment as no Frenchman would own to--
was his reply.  But, on the other hand, the postilion
who drove us was a Viscount, a son of some bankrupt
Imperial General, who accepted a pennyworth of beer
on the road.  The moral is surely a good one.

This flat, flourishing, easy country never could have
looked more rich and prosperous than in that opening
summer of 1815, when its green fields and quiet cities
were enlivened by multiplied red-coats: when its wide
chaussees swarmed with brilliant English equipages:
when its great canal-boats, gliding by rich pastures and
pleasant quaint old villages, by old chateaux lying
amongst old trees, were all crowded with well-to-do English travellers: when the soldier who drank at the village
inn, not only drank, but paid his score; and Donald,
the Highlander, billeted in the Flemish farm-house,
rocked the baby's cradle, while Jean and Jeannette were
out getting in the hay.  As our painters are bent on military
subjects just now, I throw out this as a good subject
for the pencil, to illustrate the principle of an honest
English war.  All looked as brilliant and harmless as a
Hyde Park review.  Meanwhile, Napoleon screened behind
his curtain of frontier-fortresses, was preparing for
the outbreak which was to drive all these orderly people
into fury and blood; and lay so many of them low.

Everybody had such a perfect feeling of confidence
in the leader (for the resolute faith which the Duke of
Wellington had inspired in the whole English nation was
as intense as that more frantic enthusiasm with which
at one time the French regarded Napoleon), the country
seemed in so perfect a state of orderly defence, and the
help at hand in case of need so near and overwhelming,
that alarm was unknown, and our travellers, among
whom two were naturally of a very timid sort, were,
like all the other multiplied English tourists, entirely at
ease.  The famous regiment, with so many of whose
officers we have made acquaintance, was drafted in canal
boats to Bruges and Ghent, thence to march to Brussels.
Jos accompanied the ladies in the public boats; the which
all old travellers in Flanders must remember for the
luxury and accommodation they afforded.  So prodigiously
good was the eating and drinking on board these
sluggish but most comfortable vessels, that there are legends
extant of an English traveller, who, coming to Belgium
for a week, and travelling in one of these boats, was so
delighted with the fare there that he went backwards
and forwards from Ghent to Bruges perpetually until the
railroads were invented, when he drowned himself on the
last trip of the passage-boat.  Jos's death was not to be
of this sort, but his comfort was exceeding, and Mrs.
O'Dowd insisted that he only wanted her sister Glorvina
to make his happiness complete.  He sate on the roof
of the cabin all day drinking Flemish beer, shouting for
Isidor, his servant, and talking gallantly to the ladies.

His courage was prodigious.  "Boney attack us!" he
cried.  "My dear creature, my poor Emmy, don't be
frightened.  There's no danger.  The allies will be in Paris
in two months, I tell you; when I'll take you to dine
in the Palais Royal, by Jove!  There are three hundred
thousand Rooshians, I tell you, now entering France by
Mayence and the Rhine--three hundred thousand under
Wittgenstein and Barclay de Tolly, my poor love.  You
don't know military affairs, my dear.  I do, and I tell
you there's no infantry in France can stand against
Rooshian infantry, and no general of Boney's that's fit
to hold a candle to Wittgenstein.  Then there are the
Austrians, they are five hundred thousand if a man, and
they are within ten marches of the frontier by this time,
under Schwartzenberg and Prince Charles.  Then there are
the Prooshians under the gallant Prince Marshal.  Show
me a cavalry chief like him now that Murat is gone.
Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd?  Do you think our little girl here
need be afraid?  Is there any cause for fear, Isidor?  Hey,
sir?  Get some more beer."

Mrs. O'Dowd said that her "Glorvina was not afraid
of any man alive, let alone a Frenchman," and tossed
off a glass of beer with a wink which expressed her
liking for the beverage.

Having frequently been in presence of the enemy, or,
in other words, faced the ladies at Cheltenham and Bath,
our friend, the Collector, had lost a great deal of his
pristine timidity, and was now, especially when fortified
with liquor, as talkative as might be.  He was rather a
favourite with the regiment, treating the young officers
with sumptuosity, and amusing them by his military airs.
And as there is one well-known regiment of the army
which travels with a goat heading the column, whilst
another is led by a deer, George said with respect to his
brother-in-law, that his regiment marched with an
elephant.

Since Amelia's introduction to the regiment, George
began to be rather ashamed of some of the company to
which he had been forced to present her; and determined,
as he told Dobbin (with what satisfaction to the latter
it need not be said), to exchange into some better regiment
soon, and to get his wife away from those damned
vulgar women.  But this vulgarity of being ashamed of
one's society is much more common among men than
women (except very great ladies of fashion, who, to be
sure, indulge in it); and Mrs. Amelia, a natural and
unaffected person, had none of that artificial shamefacedness
which her husband mistook for delicacy on his own
part.  Thus Mrs. O'Dowd had a cock's plume in her hat,
and a very large "repayther" on her stomach, which she
used to ring on all occasions, narrating how it had been
presented to her by her fawther, as she stipt into the
car'ge after her mar'ge; and these ornaments, with other
outward peculiarities of the Major's wife, gave excruciating
agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the
Major's came in contact; whereas Amelia was only
amused by the honest lady's eccentricities, and not in
the least ashamed of her company.

As they made that well-known journey, which almost
every Englishman of middle rank has travelled since,
there might have been more instructive, but few more
entertaining, companions than Mrs. Major O'Dowd.  "Talk
about kenal boats; my dear!  Ye should see the kenal
boats between Dublin and Ballinasloe.  It's there the rapid
travelling is; and the beautiful cattle.  Sure me fawther
got a goold medal (and his Excellency himself eat a slice
of it, and said never was finer mate in his loif) for a
four-year-old heifer, the like of which ye never saw in
this country any day." And Jos owned with a sigh, "that
for good streaky beef, really mingled with fat and lean,
there was no country like England."

"Except Ireland, where all your best mate comes from,"
said the Major's lady; proceeding, as is not unusual with
patriots of her nation, to make comparisons greatly in
favour of her own country.  The idea of comparing the
market at Bruges with those of Dublin, although she had
suggested it herself, caused immense scorn and derision
on her part.  "I'll thank ye tell me what they mean by
that old gazabo on the top of the market-place," said
she, in a burst of ridicule fit to have brought the old
tower down.  The place was full of English soldiery as
they passed.  English bugles woke them in the morning;
at nightfall they went to bed to the note of the British
fife and drum:  all the country and Europe was in arms,
and the greatest event of history pending:  and honest
Peggy O'Dowd, whom it concerned as well as another,
went on prattling about Ballinafad, and the horses in the
stables at Glenmalony, and the clar't drunk there; and
Jos Sedley interposed about curry and rice at Dumdum;
and Amelia thought about her husband, and how best
she should show her love for him; as if these were
the great topics of the world.

Those who like to lay down the History-book, and to
speculate upon what MIGHT have happened in the world,
but for the fatal occurrence of what actually did take
place (a most puzzling, amusing, ingenious, and profitable
kind of meditation), have no doubt often thought to
themselves what a specially bad time Napoleon took to
come back from Elba, and to let loose his eagle from
Gulf San Juan to Notre Dame.  The historians on our
side tell us that the armies of the allied powers were
all providentially on a war-footing, and ready to bear
down at a moment's notice upon the Elban Emperor.
The august jobbers assembled at Vienna, and carving
out the kingdoms of Europe according to their wisdom,
had such causes of quarrel among themselves as might
have set the armies which had overcome Napoleon to
fight against each other, but for the return of the object
of unanimous hatred and fear.  This monarch had an army
in full force because he had jobbed to himself Poland,
and was determined to keep it:  another had robbed half
Saxony, and was bent upon maintaining his acquisition:
Italy was the object of a third's solicitude.  Each was
protesting against the rapacity of the other; and could the
Corsican but have waited in prison until all these parties
were by the ears, he might have returned and reigned
unmolested.  But what would have become of our story
and all our friends, then?  If all the drops in it were dried
up, what would become of the sea?

In the meanwhile the business of life and living, and
the pursuits of pleasure, especially, went on as if no end
were to be expected to them, and no enemy in front.
When our travellers arrived at Brussels, in which their
regiment was quartered, a great piece of good fortune,
as all said, they found themselves in one of the gayest
and most brilliant little capitals in Europe, and where
all the Vanity Fair booths were laid out with the most
tempting liveliness and splendour.  Gambling was here in
profusion, and dancing in plenty:  feasting was there to
fill with delight that great gourmand of a Jos:  there
was a theatre where a miraculous Catalani was delighting
all hearers:  beautiful rides, all enlivened with martial
splendour; a rare old city, with strange costumes and
wonderful architecture, to delight the eyes of little Amelia,
who had never before seen a foreign country, and fill
her with charming surprises: so that now and for a few
weeks' space in a fine handsome lodging, whereof the
expenses were borne by Jos and Osborne, who was flush
of money and full of kind attentions to his wife--for
about a fortnight, I say, during which her honeymoon
ended, Mrs. Amelia was as pleased and happy as any
little bride out of England.

Every day during this happy time there was novelty
and amusement for all parties.  There was a church to
see, or a picture-gallery--there was a ride, or an opera.
The bands of the regiments were making music at all
hours.  The greatest folks of England walked in the Park
--there was a perpetual military festival.  George, taking
out his wife to a new jaunt or junket every night, was
quite pleased with himself as usual, and swore he was
becoming quite a domestic character.  And a jaunt or
a junket with HIM!  Was it not enough to set this little
heart beating with joy?  Her letters home to her mother
were filled with delight and gratitude at this season.  Her
husband bade her buy laces, millinery, jewels, and
gimcracks of all sorts.  Oh, he was the kindest, best, and
most generous of men!

The sight of the very great company of lords and ladies
and fashionable persons who thronged the town, and
appeared in every public place, filled George's truly British
soul with intense delight.  They flung off that happy
frigidity and insolence of demeanour which occasionally
characterises the great at home, and appearing in
numberless public places, condescended to mingle with the
rest of the company whom they met there.  One night
at a party given by the general of the division to which
George's regiment belonged, he had the honour of dancing
with Lady Blanche Thistlewood, Lord Bareacres'
daughter; he bustled for ices and refreshments for the
two noble ladies; he pushed and squeezed for Lady
Bareacres' carriage; he bragged about the Countess when
he got home, in a way which his own father could not
have surpassed.  He called upon the ladies the next day;
he rode by their side in the Park; he asked their party
to a great dinner at a restaurateur's, and was quite
wild with exultation when they agreed to come.  Old
Bareacres, who had not much pride and a large appetite,
would go for a dinner anywhere.

"I.hope there will be no women besides our own
party," Lady Bareacres said, after reflecting upon the
invitation which had been made, and accepted with too
much precipitancy.

"Gracious Heaven, Mamma--you don't suppose the
man would bring his wife," shrieked Lady Blanche, who
had been languishing in George's arms in the newly
imported waltz for hours the night before.  "The men are
bearable, but their women--"

"Wife, just married, dev'lish pretty woman, I hear,"
the old Earl said.

"Well, my dear Blanche," said the mother, "I suppose,
as Papa wants to go, we must go; but we needn't know
them in England, you know." And so, determined to cut
their new acquaintance in Bond Street, these great folks
went to eat his dinner at Brussels, and condescending to
make him pay for their pleasure, showed their dignity
by making his wife uncomfortable, and carefully excluding
her from the conversation.  This is a species of dignity
in which the high-bred British female reigns supreme.  To
watch the behaviour of a fine lady to other and humbler
women, is a very good sport for a philosophical frequenter
of Vanity Fair.

This festival, on which honest George spent a great
deal of money, was the very dismallest of all the
entertainments which Amelia had in her honeymoon.  She
wrote the most piteous accounts of the feast home to
her mamma:  how the Countess of Bareacres would not
answer when spoken to; how Lady Blanche stared at her
with her eye-glass; and what a rage Captain Dobbin was
in at their behaviour; and how my lord, as they came
away from the feast, asked to see the bill, and pronounced
it a d-- bad dinner, and d-- dear.  But though Amelia
told all these stories, and wrote home regarding
her guests' rudeness, and her own discomfiture,
old Mrs. Sedley was mightily pleased nevertheless,
and talked about Emmy's friend, the Countess of
Bareacres, with such assiduity that the news how his son
was entertaining peers and peeresses actually came to
Osborne's ears in the City.

Those who know the present Lieutenant-General Sir
George Tufto, K.C.B., and have seen him, as they may
on most days in the season, padded and in stays, strutting
down Pall Mall with a rickety swagger on his high-heeled
lacquered boots, leering under the bonnets of passers-
by, or riding a showy chestnut, and ogling broughams in
the Parks--those who know the present Sir George Tufto
would hardly recognise the daring Peninsular and Waterloo
officer.  He has thick curling brown hair and black
eyebrows now, and his whiskers are of the deepest
purple.  He was light-haired and bald in 1815, and stouter
in the person and in the limbs, which especially have
shrunk very much of late.  When he was about seventy
years of age (he is now nearly eighty), his hair, which
was very scarce and quite white, suddenly grew thick,
and brown, and curly, and his whiskers and eyebrows
took their present colour.  Ill-natured people say that
his chest is all wool, and that his hair, because it never
grows, is a wig.  Tom Tufto, with whose father he quarrelled
ever so many years ago, declares that Mademoiselle
de Jaisey, of the French theatre, pulled his
grandpapa's hair off in the green-room; but Tom is
notoriously spiteful and jealous; and the General's wig has
nothing to do with our story.

One day, as some of our friends of the --th were
sauntering in the flower-market of Brussels, having been
to see the Hotel de Ville, which Mrs. Major O'Dowd
declared was not near so large or handsome as her
fawther's mansion of Glenmalony, an officer of rank, with
an orderly behind him, rode up to the market, and
descending from his horse, came amongst the flowers, and
selected the very finest bouquet which money could buy.
The beautiful bundle being tied up in a paper, the officer
remounted, giving the nosegay into the charge of his
military groom, who carried it with a grin, following his
chief, who rode away in great state and self-satisfaction.

"You should see the flowers at Glenmalony," Mrs.
O'Dowd was remarking.  "Me fawther has three Scotch
garners with nine helpers.  We have an acre of hot-houses,
and pines as common as pays in the sayson.  Our greeps
weighs six pounds every bunch of 'em, and upon me
honour and conscience I think our magnolias is as big
as taykettles."

Dobbin, who never used to "draw out" Mrs. O'Dowd
as that wicked Osborne delighted in doing (much to
Amelia's terror, who implored him to spare her), fell
back in the crowd, crowing and sputtering until he
reached a safe distance, when he exploded amongst the
astonished market-people with shrieks of yelling laughter.

"Hwhat's that gawky guggling about?" said Mrs.
O'Dowd.  "Is it his nose bleedn?  He always used to say
'twas his nose bleedn, till he must have pomped all the
blood out of 'um.  An't the magnolias at Glenmalony
as big as taykettles, O'Dowd?"

"'Deed then they are, and bigger, Peggy," the Major
said.  When the conversation was interrupted in the
manner stated by the arrival of the officer who purchased
the bouquet.

"Devlish fine horse--who is it?" George asked.

"You should see me brother Molloy Malony's horse,
Molasses, that won the cop at the Curragh," the Major's
wife was exclaiming, and was continuing the family
history, when her husband interrupted her by saying--

"It's General Tufto, who commands the ---- cavalry
division"; adding quietly, "he and I were both shot in
the same leg at Talavera."

"Where you got your step," said George with a laugh.
"General Tufto! Then, my dear, the Crawleys are come."

Amelia's heart fell--she knew not why.  The sun did
not seem to shine so bright.  The tall old roofs and
gables looked less picturesque all of a sudden, though
it was a brilliant sunset, and one of the brightest and
most beautiful days at the end of May.





CHAPTER XXIX


Brussels

Mr. Jos had hired a pair of horses for his open carriage,
with which cattle, and the smart London vehicle, he made
a very tolerable figure in the drives about Brussels.
George purchased a horse for his private riding, and
he and Captain Dobbin would often accompany the
carriage in which Jos and his sister took daily excursions
of pleasure.  They went out that day in the park for their
accustomed diversion, and there, sure enough, George's
remark with regard to the arrival of Rawdon Crawley and
his wife proved to be correct.  In the midst of a little
troop of horsemen, consisting of some of the very greatest
persons in Brussels, Rebecca was seen in the prettiest
and tightest of riding-habits, mounted on a beautiful
little Arab, which she rode to perfection (having acquired
the art at Queen's Crawley, where the Baronet, Mr.
Pitt, and Rawdon himself had given her many lessons),
and by the side of the gallant General Tufto.

"Sure it's the Juke himself," cried Mrs. Major O'Dowd
to Jos, who began to blush violently; "and that's Lord
Uxbridge on the bay.  How elegant he looks!  Me brother,
Molloy Malony, is as like him as two pays."

Rebecca did not make for the carriage; but as soon
as she perceived her old acquaintance Amelia seated in
it, acknowledged her presence by a gracious nod and
smile, and by kissing and shaking her fingers playfully
in the direction of the vehicle.  Then she resumed her
conversation with General Tufto, who asked "who the
fat officer was in the gold-laced cap?" on which Becky
replied, "that he was an officer in the East Indian service."
But Rawdon Crawley rode out of the ranks of his
company, and came up and shook hands heartily with
Amelia, and said to Jos, "Well, old boy, how are you?"
and stared in Mrs. O'Dowd's face and at.the black cock's
feathers until she began to think she had made a
conquest of him.

George, who had been delayed behind, rode up almost
immediately with Dobbin, and they touched their caps to
the august personages, among whom Osborne at once
perceived Mrs. Crawley.  He was delighted to see Rawdon
leaning over his carriage familiarly and talking to Amelia,
and met the aide-de-camp's cordial greeting with more
than corresponding warmth.  The nods between Rawdon
and Dobbin were of the very faintest specimens of
politeness.

Crawley told George where they were stopping with
General Tufto at the Hotel du Parc, and George made
his friend promise to come speedily to Osborne's own
residence.  "Sorry I hadn't seen you three days ago,"
George said.  "Had a dinner at the Restaurateur's--rather a
nice thing.  Lord Bareacres, and the Countess, and Lady
Blanche, were good enough to dine with us--wish we'd
had you." Having thus let his friend know his claims to be
a man of fashion, Osborne parted from Rawdon, who
followed the august squadron down an alley into which
they cantered, while George and Dobbin resumed their
places, one on each side of Amelia's carriage.

"How well the Juke looked," Mrs. O'Dowd remarked.
"The Wellesleys and Malonys are related; but, of course,
poor I would never dream of introjuicing myself unless
his Grace thought proper to remember our family-tie."

"He's a great soldier," Jos said, much more at ease
now the great man was gone.  "Was there ever a battle
won like Salamanca?  Hey, Dobbin?  But where was it he
learnt his art?  In India, my boy!  The jungle's the school
for a general, mark me that.  I knew him myself, too,
Mrs. O'Dowd:  we both of us danced the same evening
with Miss Cutler, daughter of Cutler of the Artillery, and
a devilish fine girl, at Dumdum."

The apparition of the great personages held them
all in talk during the drive; and at dinner; and until the
hour came when they were all to go to the Opera.

It was almost like Old England.  The house was filled
with familiar British faces, and those toilettes for which
the British female has long been celebrated.  Mrs.
O'Dowd's was not the least splendid amongst these, and
she had a curl on her forehead, and a set of Irish diamonds
and Cairngorms, which outshone all the decorations
in the house, in her notion.  Her presence used to
excruciate Osborne; but go she would upon all parties of
pleasure on which she heard her young friends were bent.
It never entered into her thought but that they must be
charmed with her company.

"She's been useful to you, my dear," George said to
his wife, whom he could leave alone with less scruple
when she had this society.  "But what a comfort it is that
Rebecca's come:  you will have her for a friend, and we
may get rid now of this damn'd Irishwoman."  To this
Amelia did not answer, yes or no:  and how do we know
what her thoughts were?

The coup d'oeil of the Brussels opera-house did not
strike Mrs. O'Dowd as being so fine as the theatre in
Fishamble Street, Dublin, nor was French music at all
equal, in her opinion, to the melodies of her native country.
She favoured her friends with these and other opinions
in a very loud tone of voice, and tossed about a
great clattering fan she sported, with the most splendid
complacency.

"Who is that wonderful woman with Amelia, Rawdon,
love?" said a lady in an opposite box (who, almost always
civil to her husband in private, was more fond than
ever of him in company).

"Don't you see that creature with a yellow thing in
her turban, and a red satin gown, and a great watch?"

"Near the pretty little woman in white?" asked a
middle-aged gentleman seated by the querist's side, with
orders in his button, and several under-waistcoats, and
a great, choky, white stock.

"That pretty woman in white is Amelia, General:  you
are remarking all the pretty women, you naughty man."

"Only one, begad, in the world!" said the General, delighted,
and the lady gave him a tap with a large bouquet
which she had.

"Bedad it's him," said Mrs. O'Dowd; "and that's the
very bokay he bought in the Marshy aux Flures!" and
when Rebecca, having caught her friend's eye, performed
the little hand-kissing operation once more, Mrs. Major
O'D., taking the compliment to herself, returned the salute
with a gracious smile, which sent that unfortunate
Dobbin shrieking out of the box again.

At the end of the act, George was out of the box in a
moment, and he was even going to pay his respects to
Rebecca in her loge.  He met Crawley in the lobby, however,
where they exchanged a few sentences upon the
occurrences of the last fortnight.

"You found my cheque all right at the agent's?
George said, with a knowing air.

"All right, my boy," Rawdon answered.  "Happy to give
you your revenge.  Governor come round?"

"Not yet," said George, "but he will; and you know I've
some private fortune through my mother.  Has Aunty
relented?"

"Sent me twenty pound, damned old screw.  When shall
we have a meet?  The General dines out on Tuesday.
Can't you come Tuesday?  I say, make Sedley cut off his
moustache.  What the devil does a civilian mean with a
moustache and those infernal frogs to his coat!  By-bye.
Try and come on Tuesday"; and Rawdon was going-off
with two brilliant young gentlemen of fashion, who were,
like himself, on the staff of a general officer.

George was only half pleased to be asked to dinner on
that particular day when the General was not to dine.  "I
will go in and pay my respects to your wife," said he; at
which Rawdon said, "Hm, as you please," looking very
glum, and at which the two young officers exchanged
knowing glances.  George parted from them and strutted
down the lobby to the General's box, the number of which
he had carefully counted.

"Entrez," said a clear little voice, and our friend found
himself in Rebecca's presence; who jumped up, clapped
her hands together, and held out both of them to George,
so charmed was she to see him.  The General, with the
orders in his button, stared at the newcomer with a sulky
scowl, as much as to say, who the devil are you?

"My dear Captain George!" cried little Rebecca in an
ecstasy.  "How good of you to come.  The General and I
were moping together tete-a-tete.  General, this is my
Captain George of whom you heard me talk."

"Indeed," said the General, with a very small bow; "of
what regiment is Captain George?"

George mentioned the --th:  how he wished he could
have said it was a crack cavalry corps.

"Come home lately from the West Indies, I believe.
Not seen much service in the late war.  Quartered here,
Captain George?"--the General went on with killing
haughtiness.

"Not Captain George, you stupid man; Captain Osborne,"
Rebecca said.  The General all the while was looking
savagely from one to the other.

"Captain Osborne, indeed! Any relation to the L--
Osbornes?"

"We bear the same arms," George said, as indeed was
the fact; Mr. Osborne having consulted with a herald in
Long Acre, and picked the L-- arms out of the peerage,
when he set up his carriage fifteen years before.  The
General made no reply to this announcement; but took
up his opera-glass--the double-barrelled lorgnon was not
invented in those days--and pretended to examine the
house; but Rebecca saw that his disengaged eye was
working round in her direction, and shooting out
bloodshot glances at her and George.

She redoubled in cordiality.  "How is dearest Amelia?
But I needn't ask: how pretty she looks!  And who is that
nice good-natured looking creature with her--a flame of
yours?  O, you wicked men!  And there is Mr. Sedley
eating ice, I declare: how he seems to enjoy it!  General, why
have we not had any ices?"

"Shall I go and fetch you some?" said the General,
bursting with wrath.

"Let ME go, I entreat you," George said.

"No, I will go to Amelia's box.  Dear, sweet girl!  Give
me your arm, Captain George"; and so saying, and with a
nod to the General, she tripped into the lobby.  She gave
George the queerest, knowingest look, when they were
together, a look which might have been interpreted,
"Don't you see the state of affairs, and what a fool I'm
making of him?"  But he did not perceive it.  He was
thinking of his own plans, and lost in pompous admiration
of his own irresistible powers of pleasing.

The curses to which the General gave a low utterance,
as soon as Rebecca and her conqueror had quitted him,
were so deep, that I am sure no compositor would
venture to print them were they written down.  They came
from the General's heart; and a wonderful thing it is to
think that the human heart is capable of generating such
produce, and can throw out, as occasion demands, such
a supply of lust and fury, rage and hatred.

Amelia's gentle eyes, too, had been fixed anxiously on
the pair, whose conduct had so chafed the jealous General;
but when Rebecca entered her box, she flew to her
friend with an affectionate rapture which showed itself, in
spite of the publicity of the place; for she embraced her
dearest friend in the presence of the whole house, at least
in full view of the General's glass, now brought to bear
upon the Osborne party.  Mrs. Rawdon saluted Jos, too,
with the kindliest greeting: she admired Mrs. O'Dowd's
large Cairngorm brooch and superb Irish diamonds, and
wouldn't believe that they were not from Golconda direct.
She bustled, she chattered, she turned and twisted,
and smiled upon one, and smirked on another, all in full
view of the jealous opera-glass opposite.  And when the
time for the ballet came (in which there was no dancer
that went through her grimaces or performed her comedy
of action better), she skipped back to her own box, leaning
on Captain Dobbin's arm this time.  No, she would
not have George's: he must stay and talk to his dearest,
best, little Amelia.

"What a humbug that woman is!" honest old Dobbin
mumbled to George, when he came back from Rebecca's
box, whither he had conducted her in perfect silence, and
with a countenance as glum as an undertaker's.  "She
writhes and twists about like a snake.  All the time she
was here, didn't you see, George, how she was acting at
the General over the way?"

"Humbug--acting!  Hang it, she's the nicest little
woman in England," George replied, showing his white
teeth, and giving his ambrosial whiskers a twirl.  "You
ain't a man of the world, Dobbin.  Dammy, look at her
now, she's talked over Tufto in no time.  Look how he's
laughing!  Gad, what a shoulder she has!  Emmy, why
didn't you have a bouquet?  Everybody has a bouquet."

"Faith, then, why didn't you BOY one?" Mrs. O'Dowd
said; and both Amelia and William Dobbin thanked her
for this timely observation.  But beyond this neither of
the ladies rallied.  Amelia was overpowered by the flash
and the dazzle and the fashionable talk of her worldly rival.
Even the O'Dowd was silent and subdued after Becky's
brilliant apparition, and scarcely said a word more about
Glenmalony all the evening.

"When do you intend to give up play, George, as you
have promised me, any time these hundred years?" Dobbin
said to his friend a few days after the night at the
Opera.  "When do you intend to give up sermonising?"
was the other's reply.  "What the deuce, man, are you
alarmed about?  We play low; I won last night.  You
don't suppose Crawley cheats?  With fair play it comes
to pretty much the same thing at the year's end."

"But I don't think he could pay if he lost," Dobbin
said; and his advice met with the success which advice
usually commands.  Osborne and Crawley were repeatedly
together now.  General Tufto dined abroad almost constantly.
George was always welcome in the apartments
(very close indeed to those of the General) which the
aide-de-camp and his wife occupied in the hotel.

Amelia's manners were such when she and George visited
Crawley and his wife at these quarters, that they had
very nearly come to their first quarrel; that is, George
scolded his wife violently for her evident unwillingness to
go, and the high and mighty manner in which she comported
herself towards Mrs. Crawley, her old friend; and
Amelia did not say one single word in reply; but with her
husband's eye upon her, and Rebecca scanning her as she
felt, was, if possible, more bashful and awkward on the
second visit which she paid to Mrs. Rawdon, than on her
first call.

Rebecca was doubly affectionate, of course, and would
not take notice, in the least, of her friend's coolness.  "I
think Emmy has become prouder since her father's name
was in the--since Mr. Sedley's MISFORTUNES," Rebecca
said, softening the phrase charitably for George's ear.

"Upon my word, I thought when we were at Brighton
she was doing me the honour to be jealous of me; and
now I suppose she is scandalised because Rawdon, and I,
and the General live together.  Why, my dear creature,
how could we, with our means, live at all, but for a friend
to share expenses?  And do you suppose that Rawdon is
not big enough to take care of my honour?  But I'm very
much obliged to Emmy, very," Mrs. Rawdon said.

"Pooh, jealousy!" answered George, "all women are
jealous."

"And all men too.  Weren't you jealous of General
Tufto, and the General of you, on the night of the Opera?
Why, he was ready to eat me for going with you to visit
that foolish little wife of yours; as if I care a pin for
either of you," Crawley's wife said, with a pert toss of
her head.  "Will you dine here?  The dragon dines with the
Commander-in-Chief.  Great news is stirring.  They say
the French have crossed the frontier.  We shall have a
quiet dinner."

George accepted the invitation, although his wife was a
little ailing.  They were now not quite six weeks married.
Another woman was laughing or sneering at her expense,
and he not angry.  He was not even angry with himself,
this good-natured fellow.  It is a shame, he owned to himself;
but hang it, if a pretty woman WILL throw herself in
your way, why, what can a fellow do, you know?  I AM
rather free about women, he had often said, smiling and
nodding knowingly to Stubble and Spooney, and other
comrades of the mess-table; and they rather respected
him than otherwise for this prowess.  Next to conquering
in war, conquering in love has been a source of pride,
time out of mind, amongst men in Vanity Fair, or how
should schoolboys brag of their amours, or Don Juan be
popular?

So Mr. Osborne, having a firm conviction in his own
mind that he was a woman-killer and destined to conquer,
did not run counter to his fate, but yielded himself
up to it quite complacently.  And as Emmy did not say
much or plague him with her jealousy, but merely became
unhappy and pined over it miserably in secret, he chose
to fancy that she was not suspicious of what all his
acquaintance were perfectly aware--namely, that he was
carrying on a desperate flirtation with Mrs. Crawley.  He
rode with her whenever she was free.  He pretended
regimental business to Amelia (by which falsehood she was
not in the least deceived), and consigning his wife to
solitude or her brother's society, passed his evenings in
the Crawleys' company; losing money to the husband and
flattering himself that the wife was dying of love for him.
It is very likely that this worthy couple never absolutely
conspired and agreed together in so many words:  the one
to cajole the young gentleman, whilst the other won his
money at cards: but they understood each other perfectly
well, and Rawdon let Osborne come and go with entire
good humour.

George was so occupied with his new acquaintances
that he and William Dobbin were by no means so much
together as formerly.  George avoided him in public and
in the regiment, and, as we see, did not like those
sermons which his senior was disposed to inflict upon him.
If some parts of his conduct made Captain Dobbin
exceedingly grave and cool; of what use was it to tell George
that, though his whiskers were large, and his own
opinion of his knowingness great, he was as green as a
schoolboy? that Rawdon was making a victim of him as he had
done of many before, and as soon as he had used him
would fling him off with scorn?  He would not listen:  and
so, as Dobbin, upon those days when he visited the
0sborne house, seldom had the advantage of meeting his
old friend, much painful and unavailing talk between
them was spared.  Our friend George was in the full career
of the pleasures of Vanity Fair.

There never was, since the days of Darius, such a brilliant
train of camp-followers as hung round the Duke of
Wellington's army in the Low Countries, in 1815; and
led it dancing and feasting, as it were, up to the very
brink of battle.  A certain ball which a noble Duchess
gave at Brussels on the 15th of June in the above-named
year is historical.  All Brussels had been in a state of
excitement about it, and I have heard from ladies who
were in that town at the period, that the talk and interest
of persons of their own sex regarding the ball was much
greater even than in respect of the enemy in their front.
The struggles, intrigues, and prayers to get tickets were
such as only English ladies will employ, in order to gain
admission to the society of the great of their own nation.

Jos and Mrs. O'Dowd, who were panting to be asked,
strove in vain to procure tickets; but others of our friends
were more lucky.  For instance, through the interest of
my Lord Bareacres, and as a set-off for the dinner at the
restaurateur's, George got a card for Captain and Mrs.
Osborne; which circumstance greatly elated him.  Dobbin,
who was a friend of the General commanding the division
in which their regiment was, came laughing one
day to Mrs. Osborne, and displayed a similar invitation,
which made Jos envious, and George wonder how the
deuce he should be getting into society.  Mr. and Mrs.
Rawdon, finally, were of course invited; as became the
friends of a General commanding a cavalry brigade.

On the appointed night, George, having commanded
new dresses and ornaments of all sorts for Amelia, drove
to the famous ball, where his wife did not know a single
soul.  After looking about for Lady Bareacres, who cut
him, thinking the card was quite enough--and after
placing Amelia on a bench, he left her to her own
cogitations there, thinking, on his own part, that he had
behaved very handsomely in getting her new clothes, and
bringing her to the ball, where she was free to amuse
herself as she liked.  Her thoughts were not of the
pleasantest, and nobody except honest Dobbin came to
disturb them.

Whilst her appearance was an utter failure (as her
husband felt with a sort of rage), Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's
debut was, on the contrary, very brilliant.  She arrived
very late.  Her face was radiant; her dress perfection.  In
the midst of the great persons assembled, and the eye-
glasses directed to her, Rebecca seemed to be as cool
and collected as when she used to marshal Miss Pinkerton's
little girls to church.  Numbers of the men she knew
already, and the dandies thronged round her.  As for the
ladies, it was whispered among them that Rawdon had
run away with her from out of a convent, and that she
was a relation of the Montmorency family.  She spoke
French so perfectly that there might be some truth in
this report, and it was agreed that her manners were
fine, and her air distingue.  Fifty would-be partners
thronged round her at once, and pressed to have the
honour to dance with her.  But she said she was engaged,
and only going to dance very little; and made her way at
once to the place where Emmy sate quite unnoticed, and
dismally unhappy.  And so, to finish the poor child at
once, Mrs. Rawdon ran and greeted affectionately her
dearest Amelia, and began forthwith to patronise her.
She found fault with her friend's dress, and her
hairdresser, and wondered how she could be so chaussee,
and vowed that she must send her corsetiere the next
morning.  She vowed that it was a delightful ball; that
there was everybody that every one knew, and only a
VERY few nobodies in the whole room.  It is a fact, that
in a fortnight, and after three dinners in general society,
this young woman had got up the genteel jargon so well,
that a native could not speak it better; and it was only
from her French being so good, that you could know she
was not a born woman of fashion.

George, who had left Emmy on her bench on entering
the ball-room, very soon found his way back when
Rebecca was by her dear friend's side.  Becky was just
lecturing Mrs. Osborne upon the follies which her
husband was committing.  "For God's sake, stop him from
gambling, my dear," she said, "or he will ruin himself.
He and Rawdon are playing at cards every night, and you
know he is very poor, and Rawdon will win every shilling
from him if he does not take care.  Why don't you prevent
him, you little careless creature?  Why don't you
come to us of an evening, instead of moping at home
with that Captain Dobbin?  I dare say he is tres aimable;
but how could one love a man with feet of such size?
Your husband's feet are darlings--Here he comes.  Where
have you been, wretch?  Here is Emmy crying her eyes
out for you.  Are you coming to fetch me for the quadrille?"
And she left her bouquet and shawl by Amelia's
side, and tripped off with George to dance.  Women only
know how to wound so.  There is a poison on the tips of
their little shafts, which stings a thousand times more
than a man's blunter weapon.  Our poor Emmy, who had
never hated, never sneered all her life, was powerless in
the hands of her remorseless little enemy.

George danced with Rebecca twice or thrice--how many
times Amelia scarcely knew.  She sat quite unnoticed in
her corner, except when Rawdon came up with some
words of clumsy conversation:  and later in the evening,
when Captain Dobbin made so bold as to bring her
refreshments and sit beside her.  He did not like to ask her
why she was so sad; but as a pretext for the tears which
were filling in her eyes, she told him that Mrs. Crawley
had alarmed her by telling her that George would go on
playing.

"It is curious, when a man is bent upon play, by what
clumsy rogues he will allow himself to be cheated,"
Dobbin said; and Emmy said, "Indeed." She was thinking of
something else.  It was not the loss of the money that
grieved her.

At last George came back for Rebecca's shawl and
flowers.  She was going away.  She did not even
condescend to come back and say good-bye to Amelia.  The
poor girl let her husband come and go without saying a
word, and her head fell on her breast.  Dobbin had been
called away, and was whispering deep in conversation
with the General of the division, his friend, and had not
seen this last parting.  George went away then with the
bouquet; but when he gave it to the owner, there lay a
note, coiled like a snake among the flowers.  Rebecca's
eye caught it at once.  She had been used to deal with
notes in early life.  She put out her hand and took the
nosegay.  He saw by her eyes as they met, that she was
aware what she should find there.  Her husband hurried her
away, still too intent upon his own thoughts, seemingly,
to take note of any marks of recognition which might
pass between his friend and his wife.  These were,
however, but trifling.  Rebecca gave George her hand with one
of her usual quick knowing glances, and made a curtsey
and walked away.  George bowed over the hand, said
nothing in reply to a remark of Crawley's, did not hear it
even, his brain was so throbbing with triumph and
excitement, and allowed them to go away without a word.

His wife saw the one part at least of the bouquet-scene.
It was quite natural that George should come at Rebecca's
request to get her her scarf and flowers:  it was no
more than he had done twenty times before in the course
of the last few days; but now it was too much for her.
"William," she said, suddenly clinging to Dobbin, who was
near her, "you've always been very kind to me--I'm--
I'm not well.  Take me home."  She did not know she called
him by his Christian name, as George was accustomed to
do.  He went away with her quickly.  Her lodgings were
hard by; and they threaded through the crowd without,
where everything seemed to be more astir than even in the
ball-room within.

George had been angry twice or thrice at finding his
wife up on his return from the parties which he
frequented:  so she went straight to bed now; but although
she did not sleep, and although the din and clatter, and
the galloping of horsemen were incessant, she never heard
any of these noises, having quite other disturbances to
keep her awake.

Osborne meanwhile, wild with elation, went off to a
play-table, and began to bet frantically.  He won repeatedly. "Everything succeeds with me to-night," he said.
But his luck at play even did not cure him of his restlessness,
and he started up after awhile, pocketing his winnings,
and went to a buffet, where he drank off many
bumpers of wine.

Here, as he was rattling away to the people around,
laughing loudly and wild with spirits, Dobbin found him.
He had been to the card-tables to look there for his
friend.  Dobbin looked as pale and grave as his comrade
was flushed and jovial.

''Hullo, Dob!  Come and drink, old Dob!  The Duke's
wine is famous.  Give me some more, you sir"; and he
held out a trembling glass for the liquor.

"Come out, George," said Dobbin, still gravely; "don't
drink."

"Drink!  there's nothing like it.  Drink yourself, and
light up your lantern jaws, old boy.  Here's to you."

Dobbin went up and whispered something to him, at
which George, giving a start and a wild hurray, tossed off
his glass, clapped it on the table, and walked away
speedily on his friend's arm.  "The enemy has passed the
Sambre," William said, "and our left is already engaged.
Come away.  We are to march in three hours."

Away went George, his nerves quivering with excitement
at the news so long looked for, so sudden when it
came.  What were love and intrigue now?  He thought
about a thousand things but these in his rapid walk to his
quarters--his past life and future chances--the fate which
might be before him--the wife, the child perhaps, from
whom unseen he might be about to part.  Oh, how he
wished that night's work undone!  and that with a clear
conscience at least he might say farewell to the tender
and guileless being by whose love he had set such little
store!

He thought over his brief married life.  In those few
weeks he had frightfully dissipated his little capital.  How
wild and reckless he had been!  Should any mischance
befall him:  what was then left for her?  How unworthy he
was of her.  Why had he married her?  He was not fit for
marriage.  Why had he disobeyed his father, who had been
always so generous to him?  Hope, remorse, ambition,
tenderness, and selfish regret filled his heart.  He sate
down and wrote to his father, remembering what he had
said once before, when he was engaged to fight a duel.
Dawn faintly streaked the sky as he closed this farewell
letter.  He sealed it, and kissed the superscription.  He
thought how he had deserted that generous father, and of
the thousand kindnesses which the stern old man had
done him.

He had looked into Amelia's bedroom when he entered;
she lay quiet, and her eyes seemed closed, and he
was glad that she was asleep.  On arriving at his quarters
from the ball, he had found his regimental servant already
making preparations for his departure:  the man
had understood his signal to be still, and these arrangements
were very quickly and silently made.  Should he go
in and wake Amelia, he thought, or leave a note for her
brother to break the news of departure to her?  He went
in to look at her once again.

She had been awake when he first entered her room,
but had kept her eyes closed, so that even her wakefulness
should not seem to reproach him.  But when he had
returned, so soon after herself, too, this timid little heart
had felt more at ease, and turning towards him as he
stept softly out of the room, she had fallen into a light
sleep.  George came in and looked at her again, entering
still more softly.  By the pale night-lamp he could see her
sweet, pale face--the purple eyelids were fringed and
closed, and one round arm, smooth and white, lay outside
of the coverlet.  Good God!  how pure she was; how
gentle, how tender, and how friendless!  and he, how
selfish, brutal, and black with crime!  Heart-stained, and
shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's foot, and looked at
the sleeping girl.  How dared he--who was he, to pray for
one so spotless!  God bless her!  God bless her!  He came to
the bedside, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand,
lying asleep; and he bent over the pillow noiselessly
towards the gentle pale face.

Two fair arms closed tenderly round his neck as he
stooped down.  "I am awake, George," the poor child said,
with a sob fit to break the little heart that nestled so
closely by his own.  She was awake, poor soul, and to
railings and the beadle: who, if she walked ever so short
a distance to buy a ribbon in Southampton Row, was
followed by Black Sambo with an enormous cane: who
was always cared for, dressed, put to bed, and watched
over by ever so many guardian angels, with and without
wages?  Bon Dieu, I say, is it not hard that the fateful
rush of the great Imperial struggle can't take place without
affecting a poor little harmless girl of eighteen, who
is occupied in billing and cooing, or working muslin
collars in Russell Square?  You too, kindly, homely flower!
--is the great roaring war tempest coming to sweep you
down, here, although cowering under the shelter of
Holborn?  Yes; Napoleon is flinging his last stake, and poor
little Emmy Sedley's happiness forms, somehow, part of it.

In the first place, her father's fortune was swept down
with that fatal news.  All his speculations had of late gone
wrong with the luckless old gentleman.  Ventures had
failed; merchants had broken; funds had risen when he
calculated they would fall.  What need to particularize?
If success is rare and slow, everybody knows how quick
and easy ruin is.  Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel.
Everything seemed to go on as usual in the quiet,
opulent house; the good-natured mistress pursuing, quite
unsuspiciously, her bustling idleness, and daily easy
avocations; the daughter absorbed still in one selfish, tender
thought, and quite regardless of all the world besides,
when that final crash came, under which the worthy
family fell.

One night Mrs. Sedley was writing cards for a party;
the Osbornes had given one, and she must not be
behindhand; John Sedley, who had come home very late from
the City, sate silent at the chimney side, while his wife
was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room
ailing and low-spirited.  "She's not happy," the mother
went on.  "George Osborne neglects her.  I've no patience
with the airs of those people.  The girls have not been in
the house these three weeks; and George has been twice
in town without coming.  Edward Dale saw him at the
Opera.  Edward would marry her I'm sure: and there's
Captain Dobbin who, I think, would--only I hate all
army men.  Such a dandy as George has become.  With
his military airs, indeed!  We must show some folks that
we're as good as they.  Only give Edward Dale any
encouragement, and you'll see.  We must have a party, Mr.
S.  Why don't you speak, John?  Shall I say Tuesday fortnight?
Why don't you answer? Good God, John, what has happened?"

John Sedley sprang up out of his chair to meet his
wife, who ran to him.  He seized her in his arms, and
said with a hasty voice, "We're ruined, Mary.  We've
got the world to begin over again, dear.  It's best that you
should know all, and at once."  As he spoke, he trembled
in every limb, and almost fell.  He thought the news would
have overpowered his wife--his wife, to whom he had
never said a hard word.  But it was he that was the most
moved, sudden as the shock was to her.  When he sank
back into his seat, it was the wife that took the office of
consoler.  She took his trembling hand, and kissed it, and
put it round her neck: she called him her John--her dear
John--her old man--her kind old man; she poured out a
hundred words of incoherent love and tenderness; her
faithful voice and simple caresses wrought this sad heart
up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered
and solaced his over-burdened soul.

Only once in the course of the long night as they sate
together, and poor Sedley opened his pent-up soul, and
told the story of his losses and embarrassments--the
treason of some of his oldest friends, the manly kindness
of some, from whom he never could have expected it--in
a general confession--only once did the faithful wife give
way to emotion.

"My God, my God, it will break Emmy's heart," she
said.

The father had forgotten the poor girl.  She was lying,
awake and unhappy, overhead.  In the midst of friends,
home, and kind parents, she was alone.  To how many
people can any one tell all?  Who will be open where there
is no sympathy, or has call to speak to those who never
can understand?  Our gentle Amelia was thus solitary.  She
had no confidante, so to speak, ever since she had anything
to confide.  She could not tell the old mother her
doubts and cares; the would-be sisters seemed every day
more strange to her.  And she had misgivings and fears
which she dared not acknowledge to herself, though she
was always secretly brooding over them.

Her heart tried to persist in asserting that George
Osborne was worthy and faithful to her, though she knew
otherwise.  How many a thing had she said, and got no
echo from him.  How many suspicions of selfishness and
indifference had she to encounter and obstinately
overcome.  To whom could the poor little martyr tell these
daily struggles and tortures?  Her hero himself only half
understood her.  She did not dare to own that the man she
loved was her inferior; or to feel that she had given her
heart away too soon.  Given once, the pure bashful
maiden was too modest, too tender, too trustful, too
weak, too much woman to recall it.  We are Turks with
the affections of our women; and have made them
subscribe to our doctrine too.  We let their bodies go abroad
liberally enough, with smiles and ringlets and pink
bonnets to disguise them instead of veils and yakmaks.  But
their souls must be seen by only one man, and they obey
not unwillingly, and consent to remain at home as our
slaves--ministering to us and doing drudgery for us.

So imprisoned and tortured was this gentle little heart,
when in the month of March, Anno Domini 1815,
Napoleon landed at Cannes, and Louis XVIII fled, and all
Europe was in alarm, and the funds fell, and old John
Sedley was ruined.

We are not going to follow the worthy old stockbroker
through those last pangs and agonies of ruin through
which he passed before his commercial demise befell.
They declared him at the Stock Exchange; he was
absent from his house of business: his bills were protested:
his act of bankruptcy formal.  The house and furniture of
Russell Square were seized and sold up, and he and his
family were thrust away, as we have seen, to hide their
heads where they might.

John Sedley had not the heart to review the domestic
establishment who have appeared now and anon in our
pages and of whom he was now forced by poverty to
take leave.  The wages of those worthy people were
discharged with that punctuality which men frequently show
who only owe in great sums--they were sorry to leave
good places--but they did not break their hearts at parting
from their adored master and mistress.  Amelia's maid
was profuse in condolences, but went off quite resigned
to better herself in a genteeler quarter of the town.  Black
Sambo, with the infatuation of his profession, determined
on setting up a public-house.  Honest old Mrs. Blenkinsop
indeed, who had seen the birth of Jos and Amelia, and
the wooing of John Sedley and his wife, was for staying
by them without wages, having amassed a considerable
sum in their service: and she accompanied the fallen
people into their new and humble place of refuge, where
she tended them and grumbled against them for a while.

Of all Sedley's opponents in his debates with his creditors
which now ensued, and harassed the feelings of the
humiliated old gentleman so severely, that in six weeks he
oldened more than he had done for fifteen years before--
the most determined and obstinate seemed to be John
Osborne, his old friend and neighbour--John Osborne,
whom he had set up in life--who was under a hundred
obligations to him--and whose son was to marry Sedley's
daughter.  Any one of these circumstances would account
for the bitterness of Osborne's opposition.

When one man has been under very remarkable
obligations to another, with whom he subsequently quarrels,
a common sense of decency, as it were, makes of the
former a much severer enemy than a mere stranger
would be.  To account for your own hard-heartedness and
ingratitude in such a case, you are bound to prove the
other party's crime.  It is not that you are selfish, brutal,
and angry at the failure of a speculation--no, no--it is
that your partner has led you into it by the basest treachery
and with the most sinister motives.  From a mere
sense of consistency, a persecutor is bound to show that
the fallen man is a villain--otherwise he, the persecutor,
is a wretch himself.

And as a general rule, which may make all creditors
who are inclined to be severe pretty comfortable in their
minds, no men embarrassed are altogether honest, very
likely.  They conceal something; they exaggerate chances
of good luck; hide away the real state of affairs; say that
things are flourishing when they are hopeless, keep a
smiling face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of
bankruptcy--are ready to lay hold of any pretext for
delay or of any money, so as to stave off the inevitable
ruin a few days longer.  "Down with such dishonesty,"
says the creditor in triumph, and reviles his sinking
enemy.  "You fool, why do you catch at a straw?" calm
good sense says to the man that is drowning.  "You villain,
why do you shrink from plunging into the irretrievable
Gazette?" says prosperity to the poor devil battling in
that black gulf.  Who has not remarked the readiness with
which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect
and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out
on money matters? Everybody does it.  Everybody is right,
I suppose, and the world is a rogue.

Then Osborne had the intolerable sense of former
benefits to goad and irritate him: these are always a
cause of hostility aggravated.  Finally, he had to break off
the match between Sedley's daughter and his son; and
as it had gone very far indeed, and as the poor girl's
happiness and perhaps character were compromised, it was
necessary to show the strongest reasons for the rupture,
and for John Osborne to prove John Sedley to be a very
bad character indeed.

At the meetings of creditors, then, he comported himself
with a savageness and scorn towards Sedley, which
almost succeeded in breaking the heart of that ruined
bankrupt man.  On George's intercourse with Amelia he
put an instant veto--menacing the youth with maledictions
if he broke his commands, and vilipending the
poor innocent girl as the basest and most artful of vixens.
One of the great conditions of anger and hatred is, that
you must tell and believe lies against the hated object, in
order, as we said, to be consistent.

When the great crash came--the announcement of
ruin, and the departure from Russell Square, and the
declaration that all was over between her and George--all
over between her and love, her and happiness, her and
faith in the world--a brutal letter from John Osborne
told her in a few curt lines that her father's conduct had
been of such a nature that all engagements between the
families were at an end--when the final award came, it
did not shock her so much as her parents, as her mother
rather expected (for John Sedley himself was entirely
prostrate in the ruins of his own affairs and shattered
honour).  Amelia took the news very palely and calmly.
It was only the confirmation of the dark presages which
had long gone before.  It was the mere reading of the
sentence--of the crime she had long ago been guilty--the
crime of loving wrongly, too violently, against reason.
She told no more of her thoughts now than she had
before.  She seemed scarcely more unhappy now when
convinced all hope was over, than before when she felt but
dared not confess that it was gone.  So she changed from
the large house to the small one without any mark or
difference; remained in her little room for the most part;
pined silently; and died away day by day.  I do not mean
to say that all females are so.  My dear Miss Bullock, I
do not think your heart would break in this way.  You are
a strong-minded young woman with proper principles.
I do not venture to say that mine would; it has suffered,
and, it must be confessed, survived.  But there are some
souls thus gently constituted, thus frail, and delicate, and
tender.

Whenever old John Sedley thought of the affair
between George and Amelia, or alluded to it, it was with
bitterness almost as great as Mr. Osborne himself had
shown.  He cursed Osborne and his family as heartless,
wicked, and ungrateful.  No power on earth, he swore,
would induce him to marry his daughter to the son of
such a villain, and he ordered Emmy to banish George
from her mind, and to return all the presents and letters
which she had ever had from him.

She promised acquiescence, and tried to obey.  She put
up the two or three trinkets: and, as for the letters, she
drew them out of the place.where she kept them; and
read them over--as if she did not know them by heart
already: but she could not part with them.  That effort
was too much for her; she placed them back in her
bosom again--as you have seen a woman nurse a child
that is dead.  Young Amelia felt that she would die or lose
her senses outright, if torn away from this last consolation.
How she used to blush and lighten up when those
letters came!  How she used to trip away with a beating
heart, so that she might read unseen!  If they were cold,
yet how perversely this fond little soul interpreted them
into warmth.  If they were short or selfish, what excuses
she found for the writer!

It was over these few worthless papers that she brooded
and brooded.  She lived in her past life--every letter
seemed to recall some circumstance of it.  How well she
remembered them all!  His looks and tones, his dress,
what he said and how--these relics and remembrances
of dead affection were all that were left her in the world.
And the business of her life, was--to watch the corpse
of Love.

To death she looked with inexpressible longing.  Then,
she thought, I shall always be able to follow him.  I am not
praising her conduct or setting her up as a model for
Miss Bullock to imitate.  Miss B. knows how to regulate
her feelings better than this poor little creature.  Miss B.
would never have committed herself as that imprudent
Amelia had done; pledged her love irretrievably;
confessed her heart away, and got back nothing--only a
brittle promise which was snapt and worthless in a
moment.  A long engagement is a partnership which one
party is free to keep or to break, but which involves all
the capital of the other.

Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you
engage.  Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or
(a better way still), feel very little.  See the consequences
of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust
yourselves and everybody.  Get yourselves married as they
do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and
confidantes.  At any rate, never have any feelings which
may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises
which you cannot at any required moment command and
withdraw.  That is the way to get on, and be respected,
and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.

If Amelia could have heard the comments regarding
her which were made in the circle from which her father's
ruin had just driven her, she would have seen what her
own crimes were, and how entirely her character was
jeopardised.  Such criminal imprudence Mrs. Smith never
knew of; such horrid familiarities Mrs. Brown had
always condemned, and the end might be a warning to HER
daughters.  "Captain Osborne, of course, could not marry
a bankrupt's daughter," the Misses Dobbin said.  "It was
quite enough to have been swindled by the father.  As for
that little Amelia, her folly had really passed all--"

"All what?" Captain Dobbin roared out.  "Haven't they
been engaged ever since they were children?  Wasn't it
as good as a marriage?  Dare any soul on earth breathe a
word against the sweetest, the purest, the tenderest, the
most angelical of young women?"

"La, William, don't be so highty-tighty with US.  We're
not men.  We can't fight you," Miss Jane said.  "We've said
nothing against Miss Sedley: but that her conduct
throughout was MOST IMPRUDENT, not to call it by any
worse name; and that her parents are people who
certainly merit their misfortunes."

"Hadn't you better, now that Miss Sedley is free,
propose for her yourself, William?" Miss Ann asked
sarcastically.  "It would be a most eligible family
connection.  He!  he!"

"I marry her!" Dobbin said, blushing very much, and
talking quick.  "If you are so ready, young ladies, to chop
and change, do you suppose that she is?  Laugh and sneer
at that angel.  She can't hear it; and she's miserable and
unfortunate, and deserves to be laughed at.  Go on
joking, Ann.  You're the wit of the family, and the others
like to hear it."

"I must tell you again we're not in a barrack, William,"
Miss Ann remarked.

"In a barrack, by Jove--I wish anybody in a barrack
would say what you do," cried out this uproused British
lion.  "I should like to hear a man breathe a word against
her, by Jupiter.  But men don't talk in this way, Ann: it's
only women, who get together and hiss, and shriek, and
cackle.  There, get away--don't begin to cry.  I only said
you were a couple of geese," Will Dobbin said, perceiving
Miss Ann's pink eyes were beginning to moisten as
usual.  "Well, you're not geese, you're swans--anything
you like, only do, do leave Miss Sedley alone."

Anything like William's infatuation about that silly little
flirting, ogling thing was never known, the mamma
and sisters agreed together in thinking: and they trembled
lest, her engagement being off with Osborne, she should
take up immediately her other admirer and Captain.
In which forebodings these worthy young women no
doubt judged according to the best of their experience; or
rather (for as yet they had had no opportunities of
marrying or of jilting) according to their own notions of
right and wrong.

"It is a mercy, Mamma, that the regiment is ordered
abroad," the girls said.  "THIS danger, at any rate, is
spared our brother."

Such, indeed, was the fact; and so it is that the French
Emperor comes in to perform a part in this domestic
comedy of Vanity Fair which we are now playing, and
which would never have been enacted without the
intervention of this august mute personage.  It was he
that ruined the Bourbons and Mr. John Sedley.  It was
he whose arrival in his capital called up all France in
arms to defend him there; and all Europe to oust him.
While the French nation and army were swearing fidelity
round the eagles in the Champ de Mars, four mighty
European hosts were getting in motion for the great
chasse a l'aigle; and one of these was a British army, of
which two heroes of ours, Captain Dobbin and Captain
Osborne, formed a portion.

The news of Napoleon's escape and landing was
received by the gallant --th with a fiery delight and
enthusiasm, which everybody can understand who knows
that famous corps.  From the colonel to the smallest
drummer in the regiment, all were filled with hope and
ambition and patriotic fury; and thanked the French Emperor
as for a personal kindness in co