ALL YOUR AFFECTION, but that, although such ties must of course
be the strongest and most sacred, and supersede ALL OTHERS, yet that I
am sure the widow and the child whom you have ever protected and loved
will always HAVE A CORNER IN YOUR HEART" The letter, which has been
before alluded to, went on in this strain, protesting throughout as to
the extreme satisfaction of the writer.

This letter, which arrived by the very same ship which brought out
Lady O'Dowd's box of millinery from London (and which you may be sure
Dobbin opened before any one of the other packets which the mail
brought him), put the receiver into such a state of mind that Glorvina,
and her pink satin, and everything belonging to her became perfectly
odious to him. The Major cursed the talk of women, and the sex in
general. Everything annoyed him that day--the parade was insufferably
hot and wearisome. Good heavens! was a man of intellect to waste his
life, day after day, inspecting cross-belts and putting fools through
their manoeuvres? The senseless chatter of the young men at mess was
more than ever jarring. What cared he, a man on the high road to forty,
to know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or what were the
performances of Ensign Brown's mare? The jokes about the table filled
him with shame. He was too old to listen to the banter of the
assistant surgeon and the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd,
with his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily. The old man had
listened to those jokes any time these thirty years--Dobbin himself had
been fifteen years hearing them. And after the boisterous dulness of
the mess-table, the quarrels and scandal of the ladies of the regiment!
It was unbearable, shameful. "O Amelia, Amelia," he thought, "you to
whom I have been so faithful--you reproach me! It is because you
cannot feel for me that I drag on this wearisome life. And you reward
me after years of devotion by giving me your blessing upon my marriage,
forsooth, with this flaunting Irish girl!" Sick and sorry felt poor
William; more than ever wretched and lonely. He would like to have
done with life and its vanity altogether--so bootless and
unsatisfactory the struggle, so cheerless and dreary the prospect
seemed to him. He lay all that night sleepless, and yearning to go
home. Amelia's letter had fallen as a blank upon him. No fidelity, no
constant truth and passion, could move her into warmth. She would not
see t