wonderfully small cottage in a street leading house, where she had met with no small from the Fulham Road-one of those streets kindness, ransacked by brokers and bargainwhich have the finest romantic names-(this ers, and its quiet family treasures given up was called St. Adelaide Villas, Anna-Maria to public desecration and plunder. A month Road, West)-where the houses look like after her flight, she had bethought her of baby-houses; where the people, looking out Amelia, and Rawdon, with a horse laugh, of the first-floor windows, must infallibly, as had expressed a perfect willingness to see you think, sit with their feet in the parlors; young George Osborne again. "He's a where the shrubs in the little gardens in very agreeable acquaintance, Beck," the front, bloom with a perennial display of little wag added. "I'd like to sell him another children's pinafores, little red socks, caps, horse, Beck. I'd like to play a few more &c. (polyandria polygynia); whence you games at billiards with him. He'd be what hear the sound of jingling spinets and wom- I call useful just now, Mrs. C.-ha, ha!" by en singing; where little porter pots hang on which sort of speech it is not to be supposed the railings sunning themselves; whither of that Rawdon Crawley had a deliberate deevenings you see city clerks padding wear- sire to cheat M.. Osborne at play, but only ily here it was that Mr. Clapp, the clerk wished to take that fair advantage of him of Mr. Sedley, had his domicile, and in this which almost every sporting gentleman in asylum the good old gentleman hid his head, Vanity Fair considers to be his due from with his wife and daughter, when the crash his neighbor. came. Jos Sedley had acted as a man of his disposition would, when the announcement of the family-misfortune reached him. He did not come to London, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatever money was wanted, so that his kind, broken-spirited old parents had no present poverty to fear. This done, Jos went on at the boarding-house at Cheltenham pretty much as before. He drove his curricle; he drank his claret; he played his rubber; he told his Indian stories, and the Irish widow consoled and flattered him as usual. His present of money, needful as it was, made little impression on his parents; and I have heard Amelia say, that the first day on which she saw her father lift up his head after the failure, was on the receipt of the packet of forks and spoons with the young stockbrokers' love, over which he burst out, crying like a child, being greatly more affected than even his wife, to whom the present was addressed. Edward Dale, the junior of the house, who purchased the spoons for the firm, was, in fact, very sweet upon Amelia, and offered for her in spite of all. He married Miss Louisa Cutts (daughter of Higham and Cutts, the eminent cornfactors), with a handsome fortune, in 1820; and is now living in splendor, and with a numerous family, at his elegant villa, Muswell Hill. But we must not let the recollections of this good fellow cause us to diverge from the plain and principal history. I hope the reader has much too good an opinion of Captain and Mrs. Crawley, to suppose that they ever would have dreamed of paying a visit to so remote a district as Bloomsbury, if they thought the family whom they proposed to honor with a visit were not merely out of fashion, but out of money, and could be serviceable to them in no possible manner. Rebecca was entirely surprised at the sight of the comfortable old The old aunt was long in "coming-to." A month had elapsed. Rawdon was denied the door by Mr. Bowls; his servants could not get a lodgment in the house at Park Lane; his letters were sent back unopened. Miss Crawley never stirred out-she was unwell-and Mrs. Bute remained still and never left her. Crawley and his wife both of them augured evil from the continued presence of Mrs. Bute. "Gad, I begin to perceive now why she was always bringing us together at Queen's Crawley," Rawdon said. "What an artful little woman!" ejaculated Rebecca. 66 Well, I don't regret it, if you don't," the captain cried, still in an amorous rapture with his wife, who rewarded him with a kiss by way of reply, and was indeed not a little gratified by the generous confidence of her husband. "If he had but a little more brains," she thought to herself, "I might make something of him ;" but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listeneg with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes; felt the greatest interest in Jack Spatterdash, whose cab-horse had come down, and Bob Martingale, who had been taken up in a gambling-house, and Tom Cinqbars, who was going to ride the steeplechase. When he came home, she was alert and happy: when he went out she pressed him to go when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort. The best of women (I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smiles which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole, or elude, or disarm-I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models, and paragons of female virtue. Who streets, but can point out a half-dozen of men riding by him splendidly, while he is on foot, courted by fashion, bowed into their carriages by tradesmen, denying themselves nothing, and living on who knows what? We see Jack Thriftless prancing in the park, or darting in his brougham down Pall Mall: we eat his dinners served on his miraculous plate. "How did this begin, we By these attentions, that veteran rake, say, or where will it end?" "My dear felRawdon Crawley, found himself converted low," I heard Jack once say, "I owe money into a very happy and submissive married in every capital in Europe." The end must man. His former haunts knew him not. come some day, but in the mean time Jack They asked about him once or twice at his thrives as much as ever; people are glad clubs, but did not miss him much in those enough to shake him by the hand, ignore the booths of Vanity Fair people seldom do miss | little, dark stories that are whispered every each other. His secluded wife ever smiling now and then against him, and pronounce and cheerful, his little comfortable lodgings, him a good-natured, jovial, reckless fellow. snug meals, and homely evenings, had all the charms of novelty and secrecy. The marriage was not yet declared to the world, or published in the Morning Post. All his creditors would have come rushing on him in a body, had they known that he was united to a woman without fortune. "My relations won't cry fie upon me," Becky said, with rather a bitter laugh; and she was quite contented to wait until the old aunt should be reconciled, before she claimed her place in society. So she lived at Brompton, and meanwhile saw no one, or only those few of her husband's male companions who were admitted into her little dining-room. These were all charmed with her. The little dinners, the laughing and chatting, the music afterward, delighted all who participated in these enjoyments. Major Martingale never thought Look at them with their hooked beaks," about asking to see the marriage license. Becky said, getting into the buggy, her picCaptain Cinqbars was perfectly enchanted ture under her arm in great glee. "They're with her skill in making punch. Young like vultures after the battle." Cornet and Lieutenant Spatterdash (who "Don't know. Never was in action, my was fond of piquet, and whom Crawley dear. Ask Martingale, he was in Spain, would often invite) was evidently and quick-aid-de-camp to General Blazes." ly smitten by Mrs. Crawley; but her own circumspection and modesty never forsook her for a moment, and Crawley's reputation as a fire-eating and jealous warrior, was a further and complete defense to his little wife. Truth obliges us to confess that Rebecca had married a gentleman of this order. Every thing was plentiful in his house but ready money, of which their ménage pretty early felt the want; and reading the Gazetteone day, and coming upon the announcement of "Lieutenant G. Osborne to be captain by purchase, vice Smith, who exchanges," Rawdon uttered that sentiment regarding Amelia's lover, which ended in the visit to Russell-square. There are gentlemen of very good blood and fashion in this city, who never have entered a lady's drawing-room; so that though Rawdon Crawley's marriage might be talked about in his county, where, of course, Mrs. Bute had spread the news, in London it was doubted, or not heeded, or not talked about at all. He lived comfortably on credit. He had a large capital of debts, which, laid out judiciously, will carry a man along for many years, and on which certain men about town contrive to live a hundred times better than even men with ready money can do. Indeed who is there that walks London When Rawdon and his wife wished to communicate with Captain Dobbin at the sale, and to know particulars of the catastrophe which had befallen Rebecca's old acquaintances, the captain had vanished; and such information as they got, was from a stray porter or broker at the auction. "He was a very kind old man, Mr. Sedley," Rebecca said; "I'm really sorry he 's gone wrong." "O, stockbrokers-bankrupts-used to it you know!" Rawdon replied, cutting a fly off the horse's ear. 46 "I wish we could have afforded some of the plate, Rawdon,” the wife continued sentimentally. Five-and-twenty guineas was monstrously dear for that little piano. We chose it at Broadwood's for Amelia, when she came from school. It only cost fiveand-thirty then." 66 What-d'ye-call'em Osborne, will cry off now, I suppose, since the family is smashed. How cut up your pretty little friend will be; hey, Becky?" "I dare say she'll recover it;" Becky said, with a smile-and they drove on and talked about something else. CHAPTER XVIII. WHO PLAYED ON THE PIANO CAPTAIN DOBBIN BOUGHT? OUR surprised story now finds itself for a moment among very famous events and personages, and hanging on the skirts of history. When the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying from Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba, and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Nôtre Dame, I wonder whether the imperial birds had any eye for a little corner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have thought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty wings would pass unobserved there? 66 Napoleon has landed at Cannes." Such news might create a panic at Vienna, and cause Russia to drop his cards, and take Prussia into a corner, and Talleyrand and Metternich to wag their heads together, while Prince Hardenberg, and even the present Marquis of Londonderry, were puzzled; but how was this intelligence to affect a young lady in Russell-square, before whose door the watchman sang the hours when she was asleep who, if she strolled in the square, was guarded there by the 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, every body knows how quick and easy ruin is. Old Sedley had kept his own sad counsel. Every thing 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 this 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, sat silent at the chimney side, while his wife was prattling to him; Emmy had gone up to her room ailing and lowspirited. "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 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 honest, kind hand, and kissed it, and put it round her neck; she called him her John-her dear Johnher 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 kind heart up to an inexpressible delight and anguish, and cheered and solaced his overburdened 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 confessiononly 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 |