(being the third part of the fortune of your mother, the late Mrs. Osborne, and which reverted to you at her decease, and to Miss Jane Osborne and Miss Maria Frances Osborne); yet I am instructed by Mr. Osborne to say, that he waives all claim upon your estate, and that the sum of 2000/., 4 per cent annuities, at the value of the day (being your one-third share of the sum of 60007.), shall be paid over to yourself or your agents upon your receipt for the same, by "Your obedient servt.,

S. HIGGS.

"P. S.-Mr. Osborne desires me to say, once for all, that he declines to receive any messages, letters, or communications from you on this or any other subject."

"A pretty way you have managed the affair," said George, looking savagely at William Dobbin. Look there, Dobbin," and he flung over to the latter his parent's letter. "A beggar, by Jove, and all in consequence of my d-d sentimentality. Why couldn't we have waited? A ball might have done for me in the course of the war, and may still, and how will Emmy be bettered by being left a beggar's widow? It was all your doing. You were never easy until you had got me married and ruined. What the deuce am I to do with two thousand pounds? Such a sum won't last two years. I've lost a hundred and forty to Crawley at cards and billiards since I've been down here. A pretty manager of a man's matters you are, forsooth."

"There's no denying that the position is a hard one," Dobbin replied, after reading over the letter with a blank countenance; and as you say, it is partly of my making. There are some men who wouldn't mind changing with you," he added, with a bitter smile. "How many captains in the regiment have two thousand pounds to the fore, think you? You must live on your pay till your father relents, and if you die, you leave your wife a hundred a year."

64

Do you suppose a man of my habits can live on his pay and a hundred a year?'' George cried out in great anger. You must be a fool to talk so, Dobbin. How the deuce am I to keep up my position in the world upon such a pitiful pittance? I can't change my habits. I must have my comforts. I wasn't brought up on porridge, like MacWhirter, or on potatoes, like old O'Dowd. Do you expect my wife to take in soldiers' washing, or ride after the regiment in a baggage-wagon ?"

"Well, well," said Dobbin, still good-naturedly, "we'll get her a better conveyance. But try and remember that you are only a dethroned prince_now, George, my boy; and be quiet while the tempest lasts. It won't be for long. Let your name be mentioned in the Gazette, and I'll engage the old father relents toward you."

"Mentioned in the Gazette!" George answered. "And in what part of it? Among the killed and wounded returns, and at the top of the list, very likely."

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Psha! It will be time enough to cry out when we are hurt," Dobbin said. "And if anything happens, you know, George, I have got a little, and I am not a marrying man, and I shall not forget my godson in my will," he added, with a smile. Whereupon the dispute ended-as many scores of such conversations between Osborne and his friend had concluded previously-by the former declaring there was no possibility of being angry with Dobbin long, and forgiving him very generously after abusing him without cause.

"I say, Becky," cried Rawdon Crawley out of his dressing-room, to his lady, who was attiring herself for dinner in her own chamber.

66

"What?" said Becky's shrill voice. She was looking over her shoulder in the glass. She had put on the neatest and freshest white frock imaginable, and with bare shoulders and a little necklace, and a light blue sash, she looked the image of youthful innocence and girlish happiness.

"I say, what'll Mrs. O. do when O. goes out with the regiment?" Crawley said, coming into the room, performing a duet on his head with two huge hair-brushes, and looking out from under his hair with admiration on his pretty little wife.

"I suppose she'll cry her eyes out," Becky answered.

half a dozen times, at the very notion of it, already to me."

She has been whimpering

"You don't care, I suppose?" Rawdon said, half angry at his wife's want of feeling.

You wretch! don't you know that I intend to go with you?" Becky replied. "Besides, you're different. You go as General Tufto's aide-de-camp. We don't belong to the line," Mrs. Crawley said, throwing up her head with an air that so enchanted her husband that he stooped down and kissed it.

Rawdon dear-don't you think you'd better get that- money from Cupid, before he goes?" Becky continued, fixing on a killing bow. She called George Osborne, Cupid. She had flattered him about his good looks a score of times already. She watched over him kindly at écarté of a night when he would drop in to Rawdon's quarters for a half-hour before bedtime.

She had often called him a horrid dissipated wretch, and threatened to tell Emmy of his wicked ways and naughty, extravagant habits. She brought his cigar and lighted

it for him; she knew the effect of that manoeuvre, having practised it in former days upon Rawdon Crawley. He thought her gay, brisk, arch, distinguée, delightful. În their little drives and dinners, Becky, of course, quite outshone poor Emmy, who remained very mute and timid

while Mrs. Crawley and her husband rattled away together, and Captain Crawley (and Jos after he joined the young married people) gobbled in silence.

Emmy's mind somehow misgave her about her friend. Rebecca's wit, spirits, and accomplishments troubled her with a rueful disquiet. They were only a week married, and here was George already suffering ennui, and eager for others' society! She trembled for the future. How shall I be a companion for him, she thought-so clever and so brilliant, and I such a humble, foolish creature? How noble it was of him to marry me-to give up everything and stoop down to me! I ought to have refused him, only I had not the heart. I ought to have stopped at home and taken care of poor papa. And her neglect of her parents (and, indeed, there was some foundation for this charge which the poor child's uneasy

conscience brought against her) was now remembered for the first time, and caused her to blush with humiliation. Oh, thought she, I have been very wicked and selfishselfish in forgetting them in their sorrows-selfish in forcing George to marry me. I know I'm not worthy of him-I know he would have been happy without me-and yet-I tried, I tried to give him up.

It is hard when, before seven days of marriage are over, such thoughts and confessions as these force themselves on a little bride's mind. But so it was, and the night before Dobbin came to join these young people-on a fine, brilliant moonlight night of May-so warm and balmy that the windows were flung open to the balcony, from which George and Mrs. Crawley were gazing upon the calm ocean spread shining before them, while Rawdon and Jos were engaged at backgammon within-Amelia, couched in a great chair quite neglected, and watching both these parties, felt a despair and remorse such as were bitter companions for that tender, lonely soul. Scarce a week was past, and it was come to this! The future, had she regarded it, offered a dismal prospect; but Emmy was too shy, so to speak, to look to that, and embark alone on that wide sea, and unfit to navigate it without a guide and protector. I know Miss Smith has a mean opinion of her. But how many, my dear madam, are endowed with your prodigious strength of mind?

Gad, what a fine night, and how bright the moon is!" George said, with a puff of his cigar, which went soaring up skyward.

66

How delicious they smell in the open air! I adore them. Who'd think the moon was two hundred and thirty-six thousand eight hundred and forty-seven miles off?" Becky added, gazing at that orb with a smile. "Isn't it clever of me to remember that? Pooh! we learned it all at Miss Pinkerton's! How calm the sea is, and how clear everything! I declare I can almost see the coast of France!" and her bright green eyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if they could see through it.

"Do you know what I intend to do one morning?" she said; "I find I can swim beautifully, and some day, when my Aunt Crawley's companion-old Briggs, you know-you remember her-that hook-nosed woman, with the long wisps of hair-when Briggs goes out to bathe, I intend to dive under her awning, and insist on a reconciliation in the water. Isn't that a stratagem ?"

George burst out laughing at the idea of this aquatic meeting. "What's the row there, you two?" Rawdon shouted out, rattling the box. Amelia was making a fool of

herself in an absurd, hysterical manner, and retired to her own room to whimper in private.

Our history is destined in this chapter to go backward and forward in a very irresolute manner seemingly, and having conducted our story to to-morrow presently, we shall immediately again have occasion to step back to yesterday, so that the whole of the talc

may get a hearing. As you bchold at her Majesty's drawingroom, the ambassadors' and high dignitaries' carriages whisk off from a private door, while Captain Jones's ladies are waiting for their fly; as you see in the Secretary of the Treasury's antechamber, a halfdozen of petitioners waiting patiently for their audience, and called out one by one, when suddenly an Irish member or some cminent personage enters the apartment, and instantly walks into Mr. UnderSecretary over the heads of all the people present; so in the conduct of a tale, the romancer is obliged to exercise this most partial sort cf justice. Although all the little incidents must be heard, yet they must be put off when the great events make their appearance; and surely such a circumstance as that which brought Dobbin to Brighton, viz., the ordering out of the Guards and the line to Belgium, and the mustering of the allied armies in that country under the command of his Grace the Duke of Wellington -such a dignified circumstance as that, I say, was entitled to the pas over all minor occurrences whereof this history is composed mainly, and hence a little trifling disarrangement and disorder was excusable and far beyond Chapter XXII. as to have got our various characters up into their dressing-rooms before the dinner, which took place as usual on the day of Dobbin's arrival.

becoming. We have only now advanced in time so

George was too humane or too much occupied with the tie of his neckcloth to convey at once all the news to Amelia which his comrade had brought with him from London. He came into her room, however, holding the attorney's letter in his hand, and with so solemn and important an air that his wife, always ingeniously on the watch for calamity, thought the worst about to befall, and running up to her husband, besought her dearest George to tell her everything-he was ordered abroad; there would be a battle next week-she knew there would.

Dearest George parried the question about foreign service, and with a melancholy shake of the head said, "No, Emmy; it isn't that it's not myself I care about; it's I have had bad news from my father. He refuses any communication with me; he has flung us off; and leaves us to poverty. I can rough it well enough; but you, my dear, how will you bear it? read here. And he handed her over the letter.

you.

Amelia, with a look of tender alarm in her eyes, listened to her noble hero as he uttered the above generous sentiments, and sitting down on the bed, read the letter which George gave her with such a pompous, martyr-like air. Her face cleared up as she read the document, however. The idea of sharing poverty and privation in company with the beloved object is, as we have before said, far from being disagreeable to

a warm-hearted woman.

The notion was actually pleasant to little Amelia. Then, as usual, she was ashamed of herself for feeling happy at such an indecorous moment, and checked her pleasure, saying demurely, "Oh, George, how your poor heart must bleed at the idea of being separated from your papa!"

"It does," said George, with an agonized countenance.

"But he can't be angry with you long," she continued. "Nobody could, I'm He must forgive you, my dearest, kindest husband. Oh, I shall never forgive myself if he does not.'

sure.

"What vexes me, my poor Emmy, is not my misfortune, but yours,' George said. "I don't care for a little poverty; and I think, without vanity, I've talents enough to make my own way."

That you have," interposed his wife, who thought that war should cease, and her husband should be made a general instantly.

"Yes, I shall make my way as well as another," Osborne went on; but you, my dear girl, how can I bear your being deprived of the comforts and station in society which my wife had a right to expect? My dearest girl in barracks; the wife of a soldier in a marching regiment; subject to all sorts of annoyance and privation! It makes me miserable.'

Emmy, quite at ease, as this was her husband's only cause of disquiet, took his hand, and with a radiant face and smile began to warble that stanza from the favorite song of "Wapping Old Stairs," in which the heroine, after rebuking her Tom for inattention, promises his trowsers to mend, and his grog too to make," if he will be constant and kind, and not forsake her. "Besides," she said, after a pause, during which she looked as pretty and happy as any young woman need, “isn't two thousand pounds an immense deal of money, George?"

George laughed at her naïveté; and finally they went down to dinner, Amelia clinging to George's arm, still warbling the tune of "Wapping Old Stairs," and more pleased and light of mind than she had been for some days past.

Thus the repast, which at length came off, instead of being dismal, was an exceedingly brisk and merry one. The excitement of the campaign counteracted in George's mind the depression occasioned by the disinheriting letter. Dobbin still kept up his character of rattle. He amused the company with accounts of the army in Belgium, where nothing but fêtes and gayety and fashion were going on. Then, having a particular end in view, this dexterous captain proceeded to describe Mrs. Major O'Dowd packing her own and her major's wardrobe, and how his best epaulets had been stowed into a tea-canister, while her own famous yellow turban, with the bird of paradise wrapped in brown paper, was locked up in the major's tin cocked-hat case, and wondered what effect it would have at the French king's court at Ghent, or the great military balls at Brussels.

"Ghent Brussels!"' cried out Amelia with a sudden shock and start. "Is the regiment ordered away, George-is it ordered away?" A look of terror came over the sweet, smiling face, and she clung to George as by an instinct.

'Don't be afraid, dear," he said good-naturedly; "it is but a twelve hours' passage. It won't hurt you. You shall go, too, Emmy.

"I intend to go," said Becky. "I'm on the staff.

mine. Isn't he, Rawdon ?''

General Tufto is a great flirt of

Rawdon laughed out with his usual roar. William Dobbin flushed up quite red. "She can't go," he said; "think of the-of the danger," he was going to add ; but had not all his conversation during dinner-time tended to prove there was none? He became very confused and silent.

"I must and will go," Amelia cried with the greatest spirit; and George, applauding her resolution, patted her under the chin, and asked all the persons present if they ever saw such a termagant of a wife, and agreed that the lady should bear him company. "We'll have Mrs. O'Dowd to chaperon you," he said. What cared she so long as her husband was near her? Thus somehow the bitterness of a parting was juggled away. Though war and danger were in store, war and danger might not befall for months to come. There was a respite at any rate, which made the timid little Amelia almost as happy as a full reprieve would have done, and which even Dobbin owned in his heart was very welcome. For to be permitted to see her was now the greatest privilege and hope of his life, and he thought with himself secretly how he would watch and protect her. I wouldn't have let her go if I had been married to her, he thought. But George was the master, and his friend did not think fit to remonstrate.

Putting her arm round her friend's waist, Rebecca at length carried Amelia off from the dinner-table, where so much business of importance had been discussed, and left the gentlemen in a highly exhilarated state, drinking and talking very gayly.

Get

In the course of the evening Rawdon got a little family note from his wife, which, although he crumpled it up and burnt it instantly in the candle, we had the good luck to read over Rebecca's shoulder. "Great news," she wrote. "Mrs. Bute is gone. the money from Cupid to-night, as he'll be off to-morrow most likely. Mind this.-R." So when the little company was about adjourning to coffee in the women's apartment, Rawdon touched Osborne on the elbow, and said gracefully, "I say, Osborne, my boy, if quite convenient, I'll trouble you for that 'ere small trifle." It was not quite convenient, but nevertheless George gave him a considerable present instalment in banknotes from his pocketbook, and a bill on his agents at a week's date for the remaining sum.

This matter arranged, George, and Jos, and Dobbin held a council of war over their cigars, and agreed that a general move should be made for London in Jos's open carriage the next day. Jos, I think, would have preferred staying until Rawdon Crawley quitted Brighton, but Dobbin and George overruled him, and he agreed to carry the party to town, and ordered four horses, as became his dignity. With these they set off in state, after breakfast, the next day. Amelia had risen very early in the morning, and packed her little trunks with the greatest alacrity, while Osborne lay in bed deploring that she had not a maid to help her. She was only too glad, however, to perform this office for herself. A dim, uneasy sentiment about Rebecca filled her mind already; and although they kissed each other most tenderly at parting, yet we know what jealousy is; and Mrs. Amelia possessed that among other virtues of her sex.

Besides these characters who are coming and going away, we must remember that there were some other old friends of ours at Brighton-Miss Crawley, namely, and the suite in attendance upon her. Now, although Rebecca and her husband were but a few stones' throw of the lodgings which the invalid Miss Crawley occupied, the old lady's door remained as pitilessly closed to them as it had been heretofore in London. As long as she remained by the side of her sister-in-law, Mrs. Bute Crawley took care that her beloved Matilda should not be agitated by a meeting with her nephew. When the spinster took her drive, the faithful Mrs. Bute sat beside her in the carriage. When Miss Crawley took the air in a chair, Mrs. Bute marched on one side of the vehicle, while honest Briggs occupied the other wing. And if they met Rawdon and his wife by chance, although the former constantly and obsequiously took off his hat, the Miss

Crawley party passed him by with such a frigid and killing indifference that Rawdon began to despair.

We might as well be in London as here," Captain Rawdon often said, with a downcast air.

"A comfortable inn in Brighton is better than a sponging-house in Chancery Lane," his wife answered, who was of a more cheerful temperament. "Think of those two aides-de-camp of Mr. Moses, the sheriff's officer, who watched our lodging for a week. Our friends here are very stupid, but Mr. Jos and Captain Cupid are better companions than Mr. Moses's men, Rawdon, my love."

"I wonder the writs haven't followed me down here," Rawdon continued, still desponding.

46

When they do, we'll find means to give them the slip," said dauntless little Becky, and further pointed out to her husband the great comfort and advantage of meeting Jos and Osborne, whose acquaintance had brought to Rawdon Crawley a most timely little supply of ready money. "It will hardly be enough to pay the inn bill," grumbled the guardsman.

"Why need we pay it?" said the lady, who had an answer for everything. Through Rawdon's valet, who still kept up a trifling acquaintance with the male inhabitants of Miss Crawley's servants' hall, and was instructed to treat the coachman to drink whenever they met, old Miss Crawley's movements were pretty well known by