George is shot at Waterloo, and then come fifteen years of widowhood,--fifteen years during which Becky is carrying on her manoeuvres,--fifteen years during which Amelia cannot bring herself to accept the devotion of the old captain, who becomes at last a colonel. But at the end she is won. "The vessel is in port. He has got the prize he has been trying for all his life. The bird has come in at last. There it is, with its head on its shoulder, billing and cooing clean up to his heart, with soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he has asked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he has pined after. Here it is,--the summit, the end, the last page of the third volume." The reader as he closes the book has on his mind a strong conviction, the strongest possible conviction, that among men George is as weak and Dobbin as noble as any that he has met in literature; and that among women Amelia is as true and Becky as vile as any he has encountered. Of so much he will be conscious. In addition to this he will unconsciously have found that every page he has read will have been of interest to him. There has been no padding, no longueurs; every bit will have had its weight with him. And he will find too at the end, if he will think of it--though readers, I fear, seldom think much of this in regard to books they have read--that the lesson taught in every page has been good. There may be details of evil painted so as to disgust,--painted almost too plainly,--but none painted so as to allure. CHAPTER IV. PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES.