married. I thought somebody else had given it. Thank you, William." She held out her hand; but the poor little woman's heart was bleeding; and as for her eyes, of course they were at their work. But William Dobbin could hold no more, “Amelia, Amelia," he said, "I did buy it for you. I loved you then as I do now. I must tell you. I think I loved you from the first minute that I saw you, when George brought me to your house, to show me the Amelia whom he was engaged to. You were but a girl in white, with large ringlets; you came down singing-do you remember? --and we went to Vauxhall. Since then, I have thought of but one woman in the world, and that was you. I think there is no hour of the day has passed for twelve years that I haven't thought of you. I came to tell you this before I went to India, but you did not care, and I hadn't the heart to speak. You did not care whether I staid or went." "I was very ungrateful," Amelia said. "No; only indifferent," Dobbin continued, desperately. "I have nothing to make a woman be otherwise. I know what you are feeling now. You are hurt in your heart at that discovery about the piano; and that it came from me and not from George. I forgot, or I should never have spoken of it so. It is for me to ask your pardon for being a fool for a moment, and thinking that years of constancy and devotion might have pleaded with you." "It is you who are cruel now," Amelia said, with some spirit. "George is my husband, here and in heaven. How could I love any other but him? I am his now as when you first saw me, dear William. It was he who told me how good and generous you were, and who taught me to love you as a brother. Have you not been every thing to me and my boy? Our dearest, truest, kindest friend and protector? Had you come a few months sooner, perhaps you might have spared me that-that dreadful parting. Oh, it nearly killed me, Williambut you didn't come, though I wished and prayed for you to come, and they took him too away from me. Isn't he a noble boy, William ? Be his friend still and mine"and here her voice broke, and she hid her face on his shoulder. The major folded his arms round her, holding her to him as if she was a child, and kissed her head. "I will not change, dear Amelia," he said. "I ask for no more than your love. I think I would not have it otherwise. Only let me stay near you, and see you often." "Yes, often," Amelia said. And so William was at liberty to look and long as the poor boy at school who has no money may sigh after the contents of the tart-woman's tray. CHAPTER LX. RETURNS TO THE GENTEEL WORLD. GOOD fortune now begins to smile upon Amelia. We are glad to get her out of that low sphere in which she has been creeping hitherto, and introduce her into a polite circle; not so grand and refined as that in which our other female friend, Mrs. Becky, has appeared, but still having no small pretensions to gentility and fashion. Jos's friends were all from the three presidencies, and his new house was in the comfortable Anglo-Indian district of which Moira Place is the center. Minto-square, Great Clive-street, Warren-street, Hastings-street, Ochterlony Place, Plassy-square, Assaye Terrace, (" Gardens" was a felicitous word not applied to stucco houses with asphalte terraces in front, so early as 1827)-who does not know these respectable abodes of the retired Indian aristocracy, and the quarter which Mr. Wenham calls the Black Hole, in a word? Jos's position in life was not grand enough to entitle him to a house in Moira Place, where none can live but retired Members of Council, and partners of Indian firms (who break after having settled a hundred thousand pounds on their wives, and retire into comparative penury to a country place and four thousand a year): he engaged a comfortable house of a second or third-rate order in Gillespie street, purchasing the carpets, costly mirrors, and handsome and appropriate planned furniture by Seddons, from the assignees of Mr. Scape, lately admitted partner into the great Calcutta house of Fogle, Fake, and Cracksman, in which poor Scape had embarked seventy thousand pounds, the earnings of a long and honorable life, taking Fake's place, who retired to a princely park in Sussex, (the Fogles have been long out of the firm, and Sir Horace Fogle is about to be raised to the peerage as Baron Bandanna)—admitted, I say, partner into the great agency house of Fogle and Fake two years before it failed for a million, and plunged half the Indian public into misery and ruin. Scape, ruined, honest, and broken-hearted, at sixty-five years of age, went out to Calcutta to wind up the affairs of the house. Walter Scape was withdrawn from Eton, and put into a merchant's house. Florence Scape, Fanny Scape, and their mother faded away to Boulogne, and will be heard of no more. To be brief, Jos stepped in and bought their carpets and sideboards, and admired himself in the mirrors which had reflected their kind, handsome faces. The Scape tradesmen, all honorably paid, left their cards, and were eager to supply the new household. The large men in white waistcoats, who waited at Scape's dinners, green-grocers, bank-porters, and milkmen in their private capacity, left their addresses, and ingratiated themselves with the butler. Mr. Chummy, the chimney-purifier, who had swept the last three families, tried to coax the butler and the boy under him, whose duty it was to go out, covered with buttons and with stripes down his trowsers, for the protection of Mrs. Amelia whenever she chose to walk abroad. It was a modest establishment. The butler was Jos's valet also, and never was more drunk than a butler in a small family should be who has a proper regard for his master's wine. Emmy was supplied with a maid, grown on Sir William Dobbin's suburban estate a good girl, whose kindness and humility disarmed Mrs. Osborne, who was at first terrified at the idea of having a servant to wait upon herself, who did not in the least know how to use one, and who always spoke to domestics with the most reverential politeness. But this maid was very useful in the family, in dexterously tending old Mr. Sedley, who kept almost entirely to his own quarter of the house, and never mixed in any of the gay doings which took place there. Numbers of people came to see Mrs. Osborne. Lady Dobbin and her daughters were delighted at her change of fortune, and waited upon her. Miss Osborne from Russell-square came in her grand chariot with the flaming hammercloth emblazoned with the Leeds arms. Jos was reported to be immensely rich. Old Osborne had no objection that Georgy should inherit his uncle's property as well as his own. "Damn it, we will make a man of the feller," he said; and I'll see him in parliament before I die. You may go and see his mother, Miss O., though I'll never set eyes on her :" and Miss Osborne came. Emmy, you may be sure, was very glad to see her, and so be brought nearer to George. That young fellow was allowed to come much more frequently than before to visit his mother. He dined once or twice a week in Gillespiestreet, and bullied the servants and his relations there, just as he did in Russell-square. He was always respectful to Major Dobbin, however, and more modest in his demeanor when that gentleman was present. He was a clever lad, and afraid of the major. George could not help admiring his friend's simplicity, his good humor, his various learning, quietly imparted, his general love of truth and justice. He had met no such man as yet in the course of his experience, and he had an instinctive liking for a gentleman. He hung fondly by his godfather's side; and it was his delight to walk in the Parks and hear Dobbin talk. William told George about his father, about India and Waterloo, about every thing but himself. When George was more than usually pert and conceited. the major made jokes at him, which Mrs. Osborne thought very cruel. One day, taking him to the play, T and the boy declining to go into the pit because it was vulgar, the major took him to the boxes, left him there, and went down himself to the pit. He had not been seated there very long, before he felt an arm thrust under his, and a dandy little hand in a kid glove squeezing his arm. George had seen the absurdity of his ways, and come down from the upper region. A tender laugh of benevolence lighted up old Dobbin's face and eyes as he looked at the repentant little prodigal. He loved the boy, as he did every thing that belonged to Amelia. How charmed she was when she heard of this instance of George's goodness! Her eyes looked more kindly on Dobbin than they ever had done. She blushed, he thought, after looking at him so. Georgy never tired of his praises of the major to his mother. "I like him, mamma, because he knows such lots of things; and he ain't like old Veal, who is always bragging and using such long words, don't you know? The chaps call him Longtail' at school. I gave him the name; ain't it capital? But Dob reads Latin like English, and French, and that; and when we go out together he tells me stories about my papa, and never about himself; though I heard Colonel Buckler, at grandpapa's, say that he was one of the bravest officers in the army, and had distinguished himself ever so much. Grandpapa was quite surprised, and said, That feller! why I didn't think he could say Bo to a goose; but I know he could, couldn't he, mamma?" Emmy laughed; she thought it was very likely the major could do thus much. If there was a sincere liking between George and the major, it must be confessed that between the boy and his uncle no great love existed. George had got a way of blowing out his cheeks, and putting his hands in his waistcoat pockets, and saying, God bless my soul, you don't say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos, that it was impossible to restrain from laughter. The servants would explode at dinner, if the lad, asking for something which wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that favorite phrase. Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic his uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and Amelia's terrified entreaties that the little scapegrace was induced to desist. And the worthy civilian, being haunted by a dim consciousness that the lad thought him an ass, and was inclined to turn him into ridicule, used to be extremely timorous, and, of course, doubly pompous and dignified in the presence of Master Georgy. When it was announced that the young gentleman was expected in Gillespie-street to dine with his mother, Mr. Jos commonly found that he had an engagement at the club. Perhaps nobody was much grieved at his absence. On those Joseph Sedley then led a life of dignified otiosity such as became a person of his eminence. His very first point, of course, was to become a member of the Oriental Club: where he spent his mornings in the company of his brother Indians, where he dined, or whence he brought home men to dine. Huff, Bombay ditto; Mrs. Pice, the lady of Pice the director, &c. We are not long in using ourselves to changes in life. That carriage came round to Gillespie-street every day: that buttony boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy's and Jos's visiting cards; at stated hours Emmy and the carriage went for Jos to the club, and took him an airing; or, putting old Sedley into the vehicle, she drove the old man round the Regent's Park. The lady's-maid and the chariot, the visiting-book and the buttony page, became soon as familiar to Amelia as the humble routine of Brompton. She accommodated herself to one as to the other. If Fate had ordained that she should be a duchess, she would even have done that duty too. She was voted, in Jos's female society, rather a pleasing young personnot much in her, but pleasing, and that sort of thing. liked to bow to her carriage in the Park, and to be admitted to have the honor of paying her a morning visit. Swankey of the Body Guard himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all the Indian army, now on leave, was one day discovered by Major Dobbin téte-à-tête with Amelia, and describing the sport of pigsticking to her, with great humor and eloquence: and he spoke afterward of a “d—d king's officer that's always hanging about the house-a long, thin, queer-looking oldish fellow-a dry fellow though, that took the shine out of a man in the talking line." Amelia had to receive and entertain these The men, as usual, liked her artless gentlemen and their ladies. From these kindness and simple, refined demeanor. she heard how soon Smith would be in The gallant young Indian dandy at home on Council, how many lacs Jones had brought furlough-immense dandies these-chained home with him: how Thomson's House in and mustached-driving in tearing cabsLondon had refused the bills drawn by the pillars of the theaters, living at West End Thomson, Kibobjee, and Co., the Bombay hotels—nevertheless admired Mrs. Osborne, House, and how it was thought the Calcutta House must go too; how very imprudent, to say the least of it, Mrs. Brown's conduct (wife of Brown of the Ahmednuggar Irregulars) had been with young Swankey of the Body Guard, sitting up with him on deck until all hours, and losing themselves as they were riding out at the Cape: how Mrs. Hardyman had had out her thirteen sisters, daughters of a country curate, the Rev. Felix Rabbits, and married eleven of them, seven high up in the service: how Hornby was wild because his wife would stay in Europe; and Trotter was appointed collector at Ummerapoora. This and similar talk took place, at the grand dinners all round. They had the same conversation, the same silver dishes; the same saddles of mutton, boiled turkeys, and entrées. Politics set in a short time after dessert, when the ladies retired up-stairs, and talked about their complaints and their children. Mutato nomine, it is all the same. Don't the barristers' wives talk about circuit? don't the soldiers' ladies gossip about the regiment?-don't the clergymen's ladies discourse about Sunday schools, and who takes whose duty?-don't the very greatest ladies of all talk about that small clique of persons to whom they belong, and why shall our Indian friends not have their own conversation? only I admit it is slow for the laymen whose fate it sometimes is to sit by and listen. Before long Emmy had a visiting-book, and was driving about regularly in a carriage, calling upon Lady Bludyer, wife of Major general Sir Roger Bludyer, K.C.B., Bengal Army; Lady Huff, wife of Sir G. Had the major possessed a little more personal vanity, he would have been jealous of so dangerous a young buck, as that fascinating Bengal captain. But Dobbin was of too simple and generous a nature to have any doubts about Amelia. He was glad that the young men should pay her respect; and that others should admire her. Ever since womanhood, almost, had she not been persecuted and undervalued? It pleased him to see how kindness brought out her good qualities, and how her spirits gently rose with her prosperity. Any person who appreciated her, paid a compliment to the major's good judgment—that is, if a man may be said to have good judgment who is under the influence of Love's delusion. After Jos went to court, which we may be sure he did as a loyal subject of his sovereign (showing himself in his full court suit at the club, whither Dobbin came to fetch him in a very shabby, old uniform), he who had always been a stanch Loyalist and admirer of George IV., became such a the doctor to the sick-room, and the untremendous Tory and pillar of the state, dertaker's men to the upper floor-what a that he was for having Amelia to go to the memento of Life, Death, and Vanity it drawing-room too. He somehow had work-is-that arch and stair-if you choose to ed himself up to believe that he was implicat- consider it, and sit on the landing, looking ed in the maintenance of the public welfare, up and down the well! The doctor will and that the sovereign would not be happy come up to us too for the last time there, unless Jos Sedley and his family appeared my friend in motley. The nurse will look to rally round him at St. James's. Emmy laughed. "Shall I wear family diamonds, Jos?" she said. "I wish you would let me buy you some," thought the major. "I should like to see any that were too good for you." CHAPTER LXI. IN WHICH TWO LIGHTS ARE PUT OUT. in at the curtains, and you take no notice the-and then she will fling open the windows for a little, and let in the air. Then they will pull down all the front blinds of the house and live in the back rooms-then they will send for the lawyer and other men in black, &c. Your comedy and mine will have been played then, and we shall be removed. O how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting, and the posture-making. If we are gentlefolks they will put hatchments over our late domicile, with gilt cherubim, and mottos stating that there is "Quiet in Heaven." Your son will new furnish the house, or perhaps let it, and go into a more modern quarter; your name will be among the "Members Deceased," in the lists of your clubs next year. However much you may be mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly made-the cook will send or come up to ask about dinner-the survivors will soon bear to look at your picture over the mantel-piece, which will presently be deposed from the place of honor, to make way for the portrait of the son who reigns. THERE came a day when the round of decorous pleasures and solemn gayeties in which Mr. Jos Sedley's family indulged, was interrupted by an event which happens in most houses. As you ascend the staircase of your house from the drawing to ward the bed-room floors, you may have remarked a little arch in the wall right before you, which at once gives light to the stair which leads from the second story to the third (where the nursery and servants' chambers commonly are), and serves for another purpose of utility, of which the undertaker's men can give you a notion. They rest the coffins upon that arch, or pass them through it so as not to disturb in any unseemly manner the cold tenant slumbering within the black arch. Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I believe. The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and That second-floor arch in a London frantic tears, such as your end, brother house, looking up and down the well of the reader, will never inspire. The death of staircase, and commanding the main tho- an infant which scarce knew you, which a roughfare by which the inhabitants are pass-week's absence from you would have caused ing; by which cook lurks down before day- to forget you, will strike you down more light to scour her pots and pans in the than the loss of your closest friend, or your kitchen; by which young master stealthily first-born son-a man grown like yourself, ascends, having left his boots in the hall, with children of his own. We may be and let himself in after dawn from a jolly harsh and stern with Judah and Simeonnight at the club; down which miss comes our love and pity gushes out for Benjamin, rustling in fresh ribbons and spreading mus- the little one. And if you are old, as some lins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared for reader of this may be, or shall be-old and conquest and ball; or master Tommy slides, rich, or old and poor-you may one day be preferring the bannisters for a mode of con- thinking for yourself These people are veyance, and disdaining danger and the very good round about me; but they won't stair; down which the mother is fondly grieve too much when I am gone. I am very carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, rich, and they want my inheritance—or ve as he steps steadily step by step, and fol- poor, and they are tired of supporting me." lowed by the monthly nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced that the charming patient may go down stairs; up which John lurks to bed, yawning with a sputtering tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in the passages; that stair, up or down which babies are carried, old people are helped, guests are marshaled to the ball, the parson walks to the christening, The period of mourning for Mrs. Sedley's death was only just concluded, and Jos scarcely had had time to cast off his black, and appear in the splendid waistcoats which he loved, when it became evident to those about Mr. Sedley, that another event was at hand, and that the old man was about to go seek for his wife in the dark land whither she had preceded him. "The state of my father's health," Jos Sedley solemnly remarked at the club, "prevents having still hold of her hand. When our me from giving my large parties this season: turn comes, friend, may we have such combut if you will come in quietly at half-past pany in our prayers. six, Chutney, my boy, and take a homely Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his dinner with one or two of the old set-I life may have passed before him-his early shall be always glad to see you?" So Jos hopeful struggles, his manly successes and and his acquaintances dined and drank their prosperity, his downfall in his declining claret among themselves in silence; while years, and his present helpless conditionthe sands of life were running out in the no chance of revenge against Fortune, old man's glass up-stairs. The velvet-footed which had had the better of him-neither butler brought them their wine; and they name nor money to bequeath-a spent-out composed themselves to a rubber after din- bootless life of defeat and disappointment, ner: at which Major Dobbin would some- and the end here! Which, I wonder, times come and take a hand: and Mrs. Os- brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosborne would occasionally descend, when her perous and famous, or poor and disappointpatient above was settled for the night, and ed? To have, and to be forced to yield; had commenced one of those lightly troubled or to sink out of life, having played and lost slumbers which visit the pillow of old age. the game? That must be a strange feeling, The old man clung to his daughter during when a day of our life comes and we say, this sickness. He would take his broths and To-morrow, success or failure won't matmedicines from scarcely any other hand. ter much and the sun will rise, and all the To tend him became almost the sole busi-myriads of maukind go to their work or ness of her life. Her bed was placed close their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out by the door which opened into his chamber, of the turmoil." and she was alive at the slightest noise or disturbance from the couch of the querulous invalid. Though, to do him justice, he lay awake many an hour, silent and without stirring, unwilling to awaken his kind and vigilant nurse. He loved his daughter with more fondness now, perhaps, than ever he had done since the days of her childhood. In the discharge of gentle offices and kind filial duties, this simple creature shone most es pecially. "She walks into the room as silently as a sunbeam," Mr. Dobbin thought, as he saw her passing in and out from her father's room: a cheerful sweetness lighting up her face as she moved to and fro, graceful and noiseless. When women are brooding over their children, or busied in a sick room, who has not seen in their faces those sweet angelic beams of love and pity? So there came one morning and sunrise, when all the world got up and set about its various works and pleasures, with the exception of old Joseph Sedley, who was not to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme any more but to go and take up a quiet aud utterly unknown residence in a churchyard at Brompton by the side of his old wife. Major Dobbin, Jos, and Georgy followed his remains to the grave, in a black cloth coach. Jos came on purpose from the Star and Garter at Richmoud, whither he retreated after the deplorable event. He did not care to remain in the house, with theunder the circumstances, you understand. But Emmy staid and did her duty as usual. She was bowed down by no especial grief, and rather solemn than sorrowful. prayed that her own end might be as calm and painless, and thought with trust and reverence of the words which she had heard from her father during his illness, indicative of his faith, his resignation, and his future hope. She A secret feud of some years' standing was thus healed and with a tacit reconciliation. In these last hours and touched by her love and goodness, the old man forgot all his grief against her, and wrongs which he and his wife had many a long night debated: Yes, I think that will be the better ending how she had given up every thing for her of the two, after all. Suppose you are parboy how she was careless of her parents ticularly rich, and well to do, and say, on that in their old age and misfortune, and only last day, "I am very rich; I am tolerably thought of the child: how absurdly and fool- well known; I have lived all my life in the ishly, impiously indeed, she took on, when best society, and, thank Heaven, come of a George was removed from her. Old Sed-most respectable family. I have served my ley forgot these charges as he was making king and country with honor. I was in Parup his last account, and did justice to the liament for several years, where, I may say, gentle and uncomplaining little martyr. One night, when she stole into his room, she found him awake, when the broken old man made his confession. 66 O, Emmy, I've been thinking we were very unkind and unjust to you," he said, and put out his cold and feeble hand to her. She knelt down and prayed by his bedside, as he did, too, my speeches were listened to, and pretty well received. I don't owe any man a shilling: on the contrary, I lent my old college friend, Jack Lazarus, fifty pounds, for which my executors will not press him. I leave my daughters with ten thousand pounds apiece-very good portions for girls: 1 bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in |