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.