child; how absurdly and foolishly, impiously indeed, she took on
when George was removed from her. Old Sedley forgot these charges
as he was making up his last account, and did justice to the 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. "Oh, 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, having
still hold of her hand. When our turn comes, friend, may we have
such company in our prayers!

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before
him - his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and
prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present
helpless condition - no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had
had the better of him - neither name nor money to bequeath - a spent-
out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here!
Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die
prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be
forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the
game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes
and we say, "To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much, and
the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work
or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil."

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
John Sedley, who was not to fight with fortune, or to hope or scheme
any more, but to go and take up a quiet and 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 Richmond, whither he retreated after the deplorable event. He
did not care to remain in the house, with the - under the
circumstances, you understand. But Emmy stayed and did her duty as
usual. She was bowed down by no especial grief, and rather solemn
than sorrowful. She 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.

Yes, I think that will be the better ending of the two, after all.
Suppose you are particularly rich and well-to-do and say on that
last day, "I am very rich; I am tolerably well known; I have lived
all my life in the best society, and thank Heaven, come of a most
respectable family. I have served my King and country with honour.
I was in Parliament for several years, where, I may say, 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; I bequeath my plate and furniture, my house in
Baker Street, with a handsome jointure, to my widow for her life;
and my landed property, besides money in the funds, and my cellar of
well-selected wine in Baker Street, to my son. I leave twenty pound
a year to my valet; and I defy any man after I have gone to find
anything against my character." Or suppose, on the other hand, your
swan sings quite a different sort of dirge and you say, "I am a poor
blighted, disappointed old fellow, and have made an utter failure
through life. I was not endowed either with brains or with good
fortune, and confess that I have committed a hundred mistakes and
blunders. I own to having forgotten my duty many a time. I can't
pay what I owe. On my last bed I lie utterly helpless and humble,
and I pray forgiveness for my weakness and throw myself, with a
contrite heart, at the feet of the Divine Mercy." Which of these two
speeches, think you, would be the best oration for your own funeral?
Old Sedley made the last; and in that humble frame of mind, and
holding by the hand of his daughter, life and disappointment and
vanity sank away from under him.

"You see," said old Osborne to George, "what comes of merit, and
industry, and judicious speculations, and that. Look at me and my
banker's account. Look at your poor Grandfather Sedley and his
failure. And yet he was a better man than I was, this day twenty
years - a better man, I should say, by ten thousand pound."

Beyond these people and Mr. Clapp's family, who came over from
Brompton to pay a visit of condolence, not a single soul alive ever
cared a penny piece about old John Sedley, or remembered the
existence of such a person.

When old Osborne first heard from his friend Colonel Buckler (as
little Georgy had already informed us) how distinguished an officer
Major Dobbin was, he exhibited a great deal of scornful incredulity
and expressed his surprise how ever such a feller as that should
possess either brains or reputation. But he heard of the Major's
fame from various members of his society. Sir William Dobbin had a
great opinion of his son and narrated many stories illustrative of
the Major's learning, valour, and estimation in the world's opinion.
Finally, his name appeared in the lists of one or two great parties
of the nobility, and this circumstance had a prodigious effect upon
the old aristocrat of Russell Square.

The Major's position, as guardian to Georgy, whose possession had
been ceded to his grandfather, rendered some meetings between the
two gentlemen inevitable; and it was in one of these that old
Osborne, a keen man of business, looking into the Major's accounts
with his ward and the boy's mother, got a hint, which staggered him
very much, and at once pained and pleased him, that it was out of
William Dobbin's own pocket that a part of the fund had been
supplied upon which the poor widow and the child had subsisted.

When pressed upon the point, Dobbin, who could not tell lies,
blushed and stammered a good deal and finally confessed. "The
marriage," he said (at which his interlocutor's face grew dark) "was
very much my doing. I thought my poor friend had gone so far that
retreat from his engagement would have been dishonour to him and
death to Mrs. Osborne, and I could do no less, when she was left
without resources, than give what money I could spare to maintain
her."

"Major D.," Mr. Osborne said, looking hard at him and turning very
red too - "you did me a great injury; but give me leave to tell you,
sir, you are an honest feller. There's my hand, sir, though I little
thought that my flesh and blood was living on you - " and the pair
shook hands, with great confusion on Major Dobbin's part, thus found
out in his act of charitable hypocrisy.

He strove to soften the old man and reconcile him towards his son's
memory. "He was such a noble fellow," he said, "that all of us
loved him, and would have done anything for him. I, as a young man
in those days, was flattered beyond measure by his preference for
me, and was more pleased to be seen in his company than in that of
the Commander-in-Chief. I never saw his equal for pluck and daring
and all the qualities of a soldier"; and Dobbin told the old father
as many stories as he could remember regarding the gallantry and
achievements of his son. "And Georgy is so like him," the Major
added.

"He's so like him that he makes me tremble sometimes," the
grandfather said.

On one or two evenings the Major came to dine with Mr. Osborne (it
was during the time of the sickness of Mr. Sedley), and as the two
sat together in the evening after dinner, all their talk was about
the departed hero. The father boasted about him according to his
wont, glorifying himself in recounting his son's feats and
gallantry, but his mood was at any rate better and more charitable
than that in which he had been disposed until now to regard the poor
fellow; and the Christian heart of the kind Major was pleased at
these symptoms of returning peace and good-will. On the second
evening old Osborne called Dobbin William, just as he used to do at
the time when Dobbin and George were boys together, and the honest
gentleman was pleased by that mark of reconciliation.

On the next day at breakfast, when Miss Osborne, with the asperity
of her age and character, ventured to make some remark reflecting
slightingly upon the Major's appearance or behaviour - the master of
the house interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him
for yourself, Miss O. But them grapes are sour. Ha! ha! Major
William is a fine feller."

"That he is, Grandpapa," said Georgy approvingly; and going up close
to the old gentleman, he took a hold of his large grey whiskers, and
laughed in his face good-humouredly, and kissed him. And he told
the story at night to his mother, who fully agreed with the boy.
"Indeed he is," she said. "Your dear father always said so. He is
one of the best and most upright of men." Dobbin happened to drop in
very soon after this conversation, which made Amelia blush perhaps,
and the young scapegrace increased the confusion by telling Dobbin
the other part of the story. "I say, Dob," he said, "there's such
an uncommon nice girl wants to marry you. She's plenty of tin; she
wears a front; and she scolds the servants from morning till night."
"Who is it?" asked Dobbin. "It's Aunt O.," the boy answered.
"Grandpapa said so. And I say, Dob, how prime it would be to have
you for my uncle." Old Sedley's quavering voice from the next room
at this moment weakly called for Amelia, and the laughing ended.

That old Osborne's mind was changing was pretty clear. He asked
George about his uncle sometimes, and laughed at the boy's imitation
of the way in which Jos said "God-bless-my-soul" and gobbled his
soup. Then he said, "It's not respectful, sir, of you younkers to
be imitating of your relations. Miss O., when you go out adriving
to-day, leave my card upon Mr. Sedley, do you hear? There's no
quarrel betwigst me and him anyhow."

The card was returned, and Jos and the Major were asked to dinner -
to a dinner the most splendid and stupid that perhaps ever Mr.
Osborne gave; every inch of the family plate was exhibited, and the
best company was asked. Mr. Sedley took down Miss O. to dinner,
and she was very gracious to him; whereas she hardly spoke to the
Major, who sat apart from her, and by the side of Mr. Osborne, very
timid. Jos said, with great solemnity, it was the best turtle soup
he had ever tasted in his life, and asked Mr. Osborne where he got
his Madeira.

"It is some of Sedley's wine," whispered the butler to his master.
"I've had it a long time, and paid a good figure for it, too," Mr.
Osborne said aloud to his guest, and then whispered to his right-
hand neighbour how he had got it "at the old chap's sale."

More than once he asked the Major about - about Mrs. George Osborne -
a theme on which the Major could be very eloquent when he chose. He
told Mr. Osborne of her sufferings - of her passionate attachment to
her husband, whose memory she worshipped still - of the tender and
dutiful manner in which she had supported her parents, and given up
her boy, when it seemed to her her duty to do so. "You don't know
what she endured, sir," said honest Dobbin with a tremor in his
voice, "and I hope and trust you will be reconciled to her. If she
took your son away from you, she gave hers to you; and however much
you loved your George, depend on it, she loved hers ten times more."

"By God, you are a good feller, sir," was all Mr. Osborne said. It
had never struck him that the widow would feel any pain at parting
from the boy, or that his having a fine fortune could grieve her. A
reconciliation was announced as speedy and inevitable, and Amelia's
heart already began to beat at the notion of the awful meeting with
George's father.

It was never, however, destined to take place. Old Sedley's
lingering illness and death supervened, after which a meeting was
for some time impossible. That catastrophe and other events may
have worked upon Mr. Osborne. He was much shaken of late, and aged,
and his mind was working inwardly. He had sent for his lawyers, and
probably changed something in his will. The medical man who looked
in pronounced him shaky, agitated, and talked of a little blood and
the seaside; but he took neither of these remedies.

One day when he should have come down to breakfast, his servant
missing him, went into his dressing-room and found him lying at the
foot of the dressing-table in a fit. Miss Osborne was apprised; the
doctors were sent for; Georgy stopped away from school; the bleeders
and cuppers came. Osborne partially regained cognizance, but never
could speak again, though he tried dreadfully once or twice, and in
four days he died. The doctors went down, and the undertaker's men
went up the stairs, and all the shutters were shut towards the
garden in Russell Square. Bullock rushed from the City in a hurry.
"How much money had he left to that boy? Not half, surely? Surely
share and share alike between the three?" It was an agitating
moment.

What was it that poor old man tried once or twice in vain to say? I
hope it was that he wanted to see Amelia and be reconciled before he
left the world to one dear and faithful wife of his son: it was
most likely that, for his will showed that the hatred which he had
so long cherished had gone out of his heart.

They found in the pocket of his dressing-gown the letter with the
great red seal which George had written him from Waterloo. He had
looked at the other papers too, relative to his son, for the key of
the box in which he kept them was also in his pocket, and it was
found the seals and envelopes had been broken - very likely on the
night before the seizure - when the butler had taken him tea into his
study, and found him reading in the great red family Bible.

When the will was opened, it was found that half the property was
left to George, and the remainder between the two sisters. Mr.
Bullock to continue, for their joint benefit, the affairs of the
commercial house, or to go out, as he thought fit. An annuity of
five hundred pounds, chargeable on George's property, was left to
his mother, "the widow of my beloved son, George Osborne," who was
to resume the guardianship of the boy.

"Major William Dobbin, my beloved son's friend," was appointed
executor; "and as out of his kindness and bounty, and with his own
private funds, he maintained my grandson and my son's widow, when
they were otherwise without means of support" (the testator went on
to say) "I hereby thank him heartily for his love and regard for
them, and beseech him to accept such a sum as may be sufficient to
purchase his commission as a Lieutenant-Colonel, or to be disposed
of in any way he may think fit."

When Amelia heard that her father-in-law was reconciled to her, her
heart melted, and she was grateful for the fortune left to her. But
when she heard how Georgy was restored to her, and knew how and by
whom, and how it was William's bounty that supported her in poverty,
how it was William who gave her her husband and her son - oh, then
she sank on her knees, and prayed for blessings on that constant and
kind heart; she bowed down and humbled herself, and kissed the feet,
as it were, of that beautiful and generous affection.

And gratitude was all that she had to pay back for such admirable
devotion and benefits - only gratitude! If she thought of any other
return, the image of George stood up out of the grave and said, "You
are mine, and mine only, now and forever."

William knew her feelings: had he not passed his whole life in
divining them?

When the nature of Mr. Osborne's will became known to the world, it
was edifying to remark how Mrs. George Osborne rose in the
estimation of the people forming her circle of acquaintance. The
servants of Jos's establishment, who used to question her humble
orders and say they would "ask Master" whether or not they could
obey, never thought now of that sort of appeal. The cook forgot to
sneer at her shabby old gowns (which, indeed, were quite eclipsed by
that lady's finery when she was dressed to go to church of a Sunday
evening), the others no longer grumbled at the sound of her bell, or
delayed to answer that summons. The coachman, who grumbled that his
'osses should be brought out and his carriage made into an hospital
for that old feller and Mrs. O., drove her with the utmost alacrity
now, and trembling lest he should be superseded by Mr. Osborne's
coachman, asked "what them there Russell Square coachmen knew about
town, and whether they was fit to sit on a box before a lady?" Jos's
friends, male and female, suddenly became interested about Emmy, and
cards of condolence multiplied on her hall table. Jos himself, who
had looked on her as a good-natured harmless pauper, to whom it was
his duty to give victuals and shelter, paid her and the rich little
boy, his nephew, the greatest respect - was anxious that she should
have change and amusement after her troubles and trials, "poor dear
girl" - and began to appear at the breakfast-table, and most
particularly to ask how she would like to dispose of the day.

In her capacity of guardian to Georgy, she, with the consent of the
Major, her fellow-trustee, begged Miss Osborne to live in the
Russell Square house as long as ever she chose to dwell there; but
that lady, with thanks, declared that she never could think of
remaining alone in that melancholy mansion, and departed in deep
mourning to Cheltenham, with a couple of her old domestics. The rest
were liberally paid and dismissed, the faithful old butler, whom
Mrs. Osborne proposed to retain, resigning and preferring to invest
his savings in a public-house, where, let us hope, he was not
unprosperous. Miss Osborne not choosing to live in Russell Square,
Mrs. Osborne also, after consultation, declined to occupy the gloomy
old mansion there. The house was dismantled; the rich furniture and
effects, the awful chandeliers and dreary blank mirrors packed away
and hidden, the rich rosewood drawing-room suite was muffled in
straw, the carpets were rolled up and corded, the small select
library of well-bound books was stowed into two wine-chests, and the
whole paraphernalia rolled away in several enormous vans to the
Pantechnicon, where they were to lie until Georgy's majority. And
the great heavy dark plate-chests went off to Messrs. Stumpy and
Rowdy, to lie in the cellars of those eminent bankers until the same
period should arrive.

One day Emmy, with George in her hand and clad in deep sables, went
to visit the deserted mansion which she had not entered since she
was a girl. The place in front was littered with straw where the
vans had been laden and rolled off. They went into the great blank
rooms, the walls of which bore the marks where the pictures and
mirrors had hung. Then they went up the great blank stone
staircases into the upper rooms, into that where grandpapa died, as
George said in a whisper, and then higher still into George's own
room. The boy was still clinging by her side, but she thought of
another besides him. She knew that it had been his father's room as
well as his own.

She went up to one of the open windows (one of those at which she
used to gaze with a sick heart when the child was first taken from
her), and thence as she looked out she could see, over the trees of
Russell Square, the old house in which she herself was born, and
where she had passed so many happy days of sacred youth. They all
came back to her, the pleasant holidays, the kind faces, the
careless, joyful past times, and the long pains and trials that had
since cast her down. She thought of these and of the man who had
been her constant protector, her good genius, her sole benefactor,
her tender and generous friend.

"Look here, Mother," said Georgy, "here's a G.O. scratched on the
glass with a diamond, I never saw it before, I never did it."

"It was your father's room long before you were born, George," she
said, and she blushed as she kissed the boy.

She was very silent as they drove back to Richmond, where they had
taken a temporary house: where the smiling lawyers used to come
bustling over to see her (and we may be sure noted the visit in the
bill): and where of course there was a room for Major Dobbin too,
who rode over frequently, having much business to transact on behalf
of his little ward.

Georgy at this time was removed from Mr. Veal's on an unlimited
holiday, and that gentleman was engaged to prepare an inscription
for a fine marble slab, to be placed up in the Foundling under the
monument of Captain George Osborne.

The female Bullock, aunt of Georgy, although despoiled by that
little monster of one-half of the sum which she expected from her
father, nevertheless showed her charitableness of spirit by being
reconciled to the mother and the boy. Roehampton is not far from
Richmond, and one day the chariot, with the golden bullocks
emblazoned on the panels, and the flaccid children within, drove to
Amelia's house at Richmond; and the Bullock family made an irruption
into the garden, where Amelia was reading a book, Jos was in an
arbour placidly dipping strawberries into wine, and the Major in one
of his Indian jackets was giving a back to Georgy, who chose to jump
over him. He went over his head and bounded into the little advance
of Bullocks, with immense black bows in their hats, and huge black
sashes, accompanying their mourning mamma.

"He is just of the age for Rosa," the fond parent thought, and
glanced towards that dear child, an unwholesome little miss of seven
years of age.

"Rosa, go and kiss your dear cousin," Mrs. Frederick said. "Don't
you know me, George? I am your aunt."

"I know you well enough," George said; "but I don't like kissing,
please"; and he retreated from the obedient caresses of his cousin.

"Take me to your dear mamma, you droll child," Mrs. Frederick said,
and those ladies accordingly met, after an absence of more than
fifteen years. During Emmy's cares and poverty the other had never
once thought about coming to see her, but now that she was decently
prosperous in the world, her sister-in-law came to her as a matter
of course.

So did numbers more. Our old friend, Miss Swartz, and her husband
came thundering over from Hampton Court, with flaming yellow
liveries, and was as impetuously fond of Amelia as ever. Miss
Swartz would have liked her always if she could have seen her. One
must do her that justice. But, que voulez vous? - in this vast town
one has not the time to go and seek one's friends; if they drop out
of the rank they disappear, and we march on without them. Who is
ever missed in Vanity Fair?

But so, in a word, and before the period of grief for Mr. Osborne's
death had subsided, Emmy found herself in the centre of a very
genteel circle indeed, the members of which could not conceive that
anybody belonging to it was not very lucky. There was scarce one of
the ladies that hadn't a relation a Peer, though the husband might
be a drysalter in the City. Some of the ladies were very blue and
well informed, reading Mrs. Somerville and frequenting the Royal
Institution; others were severe and Evangelical, and held by Exeter
Hall. Emmy, it must be owned, found herself entirely at a loss in
the midst of their clavers, and suffered woefully on the one or two
occasions on which she was compelled to accept Mrs. Frederick
Bullock's hospitalities. That lady persisted in patronizing her and
determined most graciously to form her. She found Amelia's
milliners for her and regulated her household and her manners. She
drove over constantly from Roehampton and entertained her friend
with faint fashionable fiddle-faddle and feeble Court slip-slop.
Jos liked to hear it, but the Major used to go off growling at the
appearance of this woman, with her twopenny gentility. He went to
sleep under Frederick Bullock's bald head, after dinner, at one of
the banker's best parties (Fred was still anxious that the balance
of the Osborne property should be transferred from Stumpy and
Rowdy's to them), and whilst Amelia, who did not know Latin, or who
wrote the last crack article in the Edinburgh, and did not in the
least deplore, or otherwise, Mr. Peel's late extraordinary
tergiversation on the fatal Catholic Relief Bill, sat dumb amongst