Had there been some kind gentle soul near at hand who could read and

appreciate this silent generous heart, who knows but that the reign of

Amelia might have been over, and that friend William's love might have

flowed into a kinder channel? But there was only Glorvina of the jetty

ringlets with whom his intercourse was familiar, and this dashing young

woman was not bent upon loving the Major, but rather on making the

Major admire HER--a most vain and hopeless task, too, at least

considering the means that the poor girl possessed to carry it out.

She curled her hair and showed her shoulders at him, as much as to say,

did ye ever see such jet ringlets and such a complexion? She grinned at

him so that he might see that every tooth in her head was sound--and he

never heeded all these charms. Very soon after the arrival of the box

of millinery, and perhaps indeed in honour of it, Lady O'Dowd and the

ladies of the King's Regiment gave a ball to the Company's Regiments

and the civilians at the station. Glorvina sported the killing pink

frock, and the Major, who attended the party and walked very ruefully

up and down the rooms, never so much as perceived the pink garment.

Glorvina danced past him in a fury with all the young subalterns of the

station, and the Major was not in the least jealous of her performance,

or angry because Captain Bangles of the Cavalry handed her to supper.

It was not jealousy, or frocks, or shoulders that could move him, and

Glorvina had nothing more.

So these two were each exemplifying the Vanity of this life, and each

longing for what he or she could not get. Glorvina cried with rage at

the failure. She had set her mind on the Major "more than on any of

the others," she owned, sobbing. "He'll break my heart, he will,

Peggy," she would whimper to her sister-in-law when they were good

friends; "sure every one of me frocks must be taken in--it's such a

skeleton I'm growing." Fat or thin, laughing or melancholy, on

horseback or the music-stool, it was all the same to the Major. And

the Colonel, puffing his pipe and listening to these complaints, would

suggest that Glory should have some black frocks out in the next box

from London, and told a mysterious story of a lady in Ireland who died

of grief for the loss of her husband before she got ere a one.

While the Major was going on in this tantalizing way, not proposing,

and declining to fall in love, there came another ship from Europe

bringing letters on board, and amongst them some more for the heartless

man. These were home letters bearing an earlier postmark than that of

the former packets, and as Major Dobbin recognized among his the

handwriting of his sister, who always crossed and recrossed her letters

to her brother--gathered together all the possible bad news which she

could collect, abused him and read him lectures with sisterly

frankness, and always left him miserable for the day after "dearest

William" had achieved the perusal of one of her epistles--the truth

must be told that dearest William did not hurry himself to break the

seal of Miss Dobbin's letter, but waited for a particularly favourable

day and mood for doing so. A fortnight before, moreover, he had

written to scold her for telling those absurd stories to Mrs. Osborne,

and had despatched a letter in reply to that lady, undeceiving her with

respect to the reports concerning him and assuring her that "he had no

sort of present intention of altering his condition."




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