"It's all over," said he, with a groan of sickening
remorse. "Look, Will, you may read it if you like."

There was a little letter of a few lines, to which he pointed, which
said:

My papa has ordered me to return to you these presents, which you made
in happier days to me; and I am to write to you for the last time. I
think, I know you feel as much as I do the blow which has come upon us.
It is I that absolve you from an engagement which is impossible in our
present misery. I am sure you had no share in it, or in the cruel
suspicions of Mr. Osborne, which are the hardest of all our griefs to
bear. Farewell. Farewell. I pray God to strengthen me to bear this
and other calamities, and to bless you always. A.

I shall often play upon the piano--your piano. It was like you to send
it.

Dobbin was very soft-hearted. The sight of women and children in pain
always used to melt him. The idea of Amelia broken-hearted and lonely
tore that good-natured soul with anguish. And he broke out into an
emotion, which anybody who likes may consider unmanly. He swore that
Amelia was an angel, to which Osborne said aye with all his heart. He,
too, had been reviewing the history of their lives--and had seen her
from her childhood to her present age, so sweet, so innocent, so
charmingly simple, and artlessly fond and tender.

What a pang it was to lose all that: to have had it and not prized it!
A thousand homely scenes and recollections crowded on him--in which he
always saw her good and beautiful. And for himself, he blushed with
remorse and shame, as the remembrance of his own selfishness and
indifference contrasted with that perfect purity. For a while, glory,
war, everything was forgotten, and the pair of friends talked about her
only.

"Where are they?" Osborne asked, after a long talk, and a long
pause--and, in truth, with no little shame at thinking that he had
taken no steps to follow her. "Where are they? There's no address to
the note."

Dobbin knew. He had not merely sent the piano; but had written a note
to Mrs. Sedley, and asked permission to come and see her--and he had
seen her, and Amelia too, yesterday, before he came down to Chatham;
and, what is more, he had brought that farewell letter and packet which
had so moved them.

The good-natured fellow had found Mrs. Sedley only too willing to
receive him, and greatly agitated by the arrival of the piano, which,
as she conjectured, MUST have come fro