perfect truth that it must be delightful to
have a brother, and easily got the pity of the tender-hearted Amelia for
being alone in the world. A series of queries, addressed to her friend,
brought Rebecca, who was but nineteen, to the following conclusion:--"As
Mr. Joseph Sedley is rich and unmarried, why should I not marry him? I
have only a fortnight, to be sure, but there is no harm in trying." I
don't think we have any right to blame her, if Rebecca did not set her
heart upon the conquest of this beau, for she had no kind parents to
arrange these delicate matters for her.

But Mr. Joseph Sedley, greedy, vain, and cowardly, would not be brought
up to the sticking point. Young George Osborne, Captain of the --th, old
Sedley's godson, and the accepted lover of Amelia, thought Joseph was a
milksop. He turned over in his mind, as the Sedleys did, the possibility
of marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased
that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going to
marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody--a little upstart
governess. "Hang it, the family's low enough already without _her_,"
Osborne said to his friend Captain Dobbin. "A governess is all very
well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal
man; but I've proper pride, and know my own station: let her know hers.
And I'll take down that hectoring Nabob, and prevent him from being made
a greater fool than he is. That's why I told him to look out, lest she
brought an action against him."

Joseph Sedley fled to Cheltenham, and Rebecca said in her heart, "It was
George Osborne who prevented my marriage." And she loved George Osborne
accordingly.

Miss Amelia would have been delighted that Joseph should carry back a
wife to India. Old Mr. Sedley was neutral. "Let Joseph marry whom he
likes," he said to his wife. "It's no affair of mine. This girl has no
fortune; no more had Mrs. Sedley. She seems good-humoured and clever,
and will keep him in order, perhaps. Better she, my dear, than a black
Mrs. Sedley, and a dozen of mahogany grandchildren. As I am perfectly
sure that if you and I and his sister were to die to-morrow, he would
say 'Good Gad!' and eat his dinner just as well as usual, I am not going
to make myself anxious about him. Let him marry whom he likes. It's no
affair of mine."

If he had had the courage, Joseph Sedley's bachelorhood would have been
at an end. He did not lie awake a