"There is that in woman's
tenderness which induces her to believe too easily. I'm afraid you
are cruel, cruel deceivers,"--and Dobbin certainly thought he felt a
pressure of the hand which Miss Osborne had extended to him.
He dropped it in some alarm. "Deceivers!" said he. "No, dear Miss
Osborne, all men are not; your brother is not; George has loved
Amelia Sedley ever since they were children; no wealth would make
him marry any but her. Ought he to forsake her? Would you counsel
him to do so?"
What could Miss Jane say to such a question, and with her own
peculiar views? She could not answer it, so she parried it by
saying, "Well, if you are not a deceiver, at least you are very
romantic"; and Captain William let this observation pass without
challenge.
At length when, by the help of farther polite speeches, he deemed
that Miss Osborne was sufficiently prepared to receive the whole
news, he poured it into her ear. "George could not give up Amelia--
George was married to her"--and then he related the circumstances of
the marriage as we know them already: how the poor girl would have
died had not her lover kept his faith: how Old Sedley had refused
all consent to the match, and a licence had been got: and Jos Sedley
had come from Cheltenham to give away the bride: how they had gone
to Brighton in Jos's chariot-and-four to pass the honeymoon: and how
George counted on his dear kind sisters to befriend him with their
father, as women--so true and tender as they were--assuredly would
do.
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