he house. I implore you don't."

"Pooh," said Jos.

"You who are always good and kind--always used to be at any rate--I'm
astonished at you, Major William," Amelia cried. "Why, what is the
moment to help her but when she is so miserable? Now is the time to be
of service to her. The oldest friend I ever had, and not--"

"She was not always your friend, Amelia," the Major said, for he was
quite angry. This allusion was too much for Emmy, who, looking the
Major almost fiercely in the face, said, "For shame, Major Dobbin!" and
after having fired this shot, she walked out of the room with a most
majestic air and shut her own door briskly on herself and her outraged
dignity.

"To allude to THAT!" she said, when the door was closed. "Oh, it was
cruel of him to remind me of it," and she looked up at George's
picture, which hung there as usual, with the portrait of the boy
underneath. "It was cruel of him. If I had forgiven it, ought he to
have spoken? No. And it is from his own lips that I know how wicked
and groundless my jealousy was; and that you were pure--oh, yes, you
were pure, my saint in heaven!"

She paced the room, trembling and indignant. She went and leaned on
the chest of drawers over which the picture hung, and gazed and gazed
at it. Its eyes seemed to look down on her with a reproach that
deepened as she looked. The early dear, dear memories of that brief
prime of love rushed back upon her. The wound which years had scarcely
cicatrized bled afresh, and oh, how bitterly! She could not bear the
reproaches of the husband there before her. It couldn't be. Never,
never.

Poor Dobbin; poor old William! That unlucky word had undone the work
of many a year--the long laborious edifice of a life of love and
constancy--raised too upon what secret and hidden foundations, wherein
lay buried passions, uncounted struggles, unknown sacrifices--a little
word was spoken, and down fell the fair palace of hope--one word, and
away flew the bird which he had been trying all his life to lure!

William, though he saw by Amelia's looks that a great crisis had come,
nevertheless continued to implore Sedley, in the most energetic terms,
to beware of Rebecca; and he eagerly, almost frantically, adjured Jos
not to receive her. He besought Mr. Sedley to inquire at least
regarding her; told him how he had heard that she was in the company of
gamblers and people of ill repute; pointed out what evil she had done
in forme