ld would live entirely
with his grandfather in Russell Square, and that he would be
occasionally permitted to see Mrs. George Osborne at her own residence.

At first Amelia rejected the offer with indignation. It was only on the
knowledge that her father, in his speculations, had made away with the
annuity from Joseph that poverty and misery made her capitulate. Her
own, pittance would barely enable her to support her parents, and would
not suffice for her son.

"What! Mrs. Pride has come down, has she?" old Osborne said when with a
tremulous, eager voice, Miss Osborne, the only unmarried daughter, read
him Amelia's letter.

"Regular starve out, hey? ha, ha! I knew she would." He tried to keep
his dignity, as he chuckled and swore to himself behind his paper.

"Get the room over mine--his room that was--ready. And you had better
send that woman some money," Mr. Osborne said before he went out. "She
shan't want for nothing. Send her a hundred pound. But she don't come in
here, mind. No, not for all the money in London."

A few days are past, and the great event of Amelia's life is
consummated. The child is sacrificed and offered up to fate, and the
widow is quite alone.

It was about this time when the Rawdon Crawleys, after contriving to
live well on nothing a year, for a considerable period, came to smash.
Rawdon retired to the Governorship of Coventry Island, a post procured
for him by the influence of that great nobleman the Marquis of Steyne,
and who cared what became of Becky? It was said she went to Naples.
Rawdon certainly declined to be reconciled to her, because of the money
she had received from Lord Steyne and which she had concealed from her
husband. "If she's not guilty, she's as bad as guilty; and I'll never
see her again--never," he said.

_IV.--Colonel Dobbin Leaves the Army_

Good fortune began to smile upon Amelia when Joseph Sedley, once more
came back to England, a rich man, and with him Major Dobbin. But the
round of decorous pleasure in which the Sedley family now indulged was
soon broken by Mrs. Sedley's death, and old Sedley was not long in
following his wife whither she had preceded him.

A change was coming over old Osborne's mind. He found that Major Dobbin
was a distinguished officer, and one day looking into his grandson's
accounts he learnt that it was out of William Dobbin's own pocket the
fund had been supplied upon which the poor widow and the child had
subsisted.

Then