Vanity Fair - Page 567/573

This information astonished and horrified the Major not a little. It

had been agreed in the morning (before meeting with Rebecca) that

Amelia should go to the Court ball that night. There would be the

place where he should tell her. The Major went home, and dressed

himself in his uniform, and repaired to Court, in hopes to see Mrs.

Osborne. She never came. When he returned to his lodgings all the

lights in the Sedley tenement were put out. He could not see her till

the morning. I don't know what sort of a night's rest he had with this

frightful secret in bed with him.

At the earliest convenient hour in the morning he sent his servant

across the way with a note, saying that he wished very particularly to

speak with her. A message came back to say that Mrs. Osborne was

exceedingly unwell and was keeping her room.

She, too, had been awake all that night. She had been thinking of a

thing which had agitated her mind a hundred times before. A hundred

times on the point of yielding, she had shrunk back from a sacrifice

which she felt was too much for her. She couldn't, in spite of his

love and constancy and her own acknowledged regard, respect, and

gratitude. What are benefits, what is constancy, or merit? One curl of

a girl's ringlet, one hair of a whisker, will turn the scale against

them all in a minute. They did not weigh with Emmy more than with other

women. She had tried them; wanted to make them pass; could not; and

the pitiless little woman had found a pretext, and determined to be

free.

When at length, in the afternoon, the Major gained admission to Amelia,

instead of the cordial and affectionate greeting, to which he had been

accustomed now for many a long day, he received the salutation of a

curtsey, and of a little gloved hand, retracted the moment after it was

accorded to him.

Rebecca, too, was in the room, and advanced to meet him with a smile

and an extended hand. Dobbin drew back rather confusedly, "I--I beg

your pardon, m'am," he said; "but I am bound to tell you that it is not

as your friend that I am come here now."

"Pooh! damn; don't let us have this sort of thing!" Jos cried out,

alarmed, and anxious to get rid of a scene.

"I wonder what Major Dobbin has to say against Rebecca?" Amelia said in

a low, clear voice with a slight quiver in it, and a very determined

look about the eyes.

"I will not have this sort of thing in my house," Jos again interposed.

"I say I will not have it; and Dobbin, I beg, sir, you'll stop it." And

he looked round, trembling and turning very red, and gave a great puff,

and made for his door.