Rebecca started back a picture of consternation, “O Sir Pitt!” she said—­“O sir—­I—­I’m married already!”

* * * * *

“Suppose the old lady doesn’t come round, eh, Becky?” Rawdon said to his little wife, as they sat together in their snug Brompton lodgings, a few weeks later.

“I’ll make your fortune,” she said.

But old Miss Crawley did not come round, and Captain Rawdon Crawley and Rebecca went to Brussels in June 1815 with the flower of the British Army.

Another young married couple also went to Brussels at that time, Captain George Osborne and Amelia his wife.

The landing of Napoleon at Cannes in March, 1815, brought, amongst other things, ruin to the worthy old stockbroker John Sedley, and the most determined and obstinate of his creditors was his old friend and neighbour John Osborne—­whom he had set up in life, and whose son was to marry his daughter, and who consequently had the intolerable sense of former benefit to goad and irritate him.

Joseph Sedley acted as a man of his disposition would; when the announcement of the family misfortune reached him.  He did not come to London, but he wrote to his mother to draw upon his agents for whatever money was wanted, so that his kind broken-spirited old parents had no present poverty to fear.  This done, Joseph went on at his boarding-house at Cheltenham pretty much as before.

Amelia took the news very pale and calmly.  A brutal letter from John Osborne told her in a few curt lines that all engagements between the families were at an end, and old Joseph Sedley spoke with almost equal bitterness.  No power on earth, he swore, would induce him to marry his daughter to the son of such a villain, and he ordered Emmy to banish George from her mind.

It was Captain William Dobbin, who, having made up his mind that Miss Sedley would die of the disappointment, found himself the great promoter of the match between George Osborne and Amelia.

To old Sedley’s refusal Dobbin answered finally, “If you don’t give your daughter your consent it will be her duty to marry without it.  What better answer can there be to Osborne’s attacks on you, than that his son claims to enter your family and marry your daughter?”

George Osborne parted in anger from his father.

“I ain’t going to have any of this damn sentimental nonsense here, sir,” old Osborne cried out at the end of the interview.  “There shall be no beggar-marriages in my family.”  He pulled frantically at the cord to summon the butler and, almost black in the face, ordered that functionary to call a coach for Captain Osborne.

George told Dobbin what had passed between his father and himself.

“I’ll marry her to-morrow,” he said, with an oath.  “I love her more every day, Dobbin.”

So on a gusty, raw day at the aid of April Captain Osborne and Captain Dobbin drove down to a certain chapel near the Fulham Road.