Mr Carker the Manager rose with the lark, and went out, walking in the
summer day. His meditations--and he meditated with contracted brows
while he strolled along--hardly seemed to soar as high as the lark, or
to mount in that direction; rather they kept close to their nest upon
the earth, and looked about, among the dust and worms. But there was not
a bird in the air, singing unseen, farther beyond the reach of human eye
than Mr Carker's thoughts. He had his face so perfectly under control,
that few could say more, in distinct terms, of its expression, than that
it smiled or that it pondered. It pondered now, intently. As the lark
rose higher, he sank deeper in thought. As the lark poured out her
melody clearer and stronger, he fell into a graver and profounder
silence. At length, when the lark came headlong down, with an
accumulating stream of song, and dropped among the green wheat near him,
rippling in the breath of the morning like a river, he sprang up from
his reverie, and looked round with a sudden smile, as courteous and
as soft as if he had had numerous observers to propitiate; nor did he
relapse, after being thus awakened; but clearing his face, like one who
bethought himself that it might otherwise wrinkle and tell tales, went
smiling on, as if for practice.

Perhaps with an eye to first impressions, Mr Carker was very carefully
and trimly dressed, that morning. Though always somewhat formal, in his
dress, in imitation of the great man whom he served, he stopped short of
the extent of Mr Dombey's stiffness: at once perhaps because he knew
it to be ludicrous, and because in doing so he found another means of
expressing his sense of the difference and distance between them. Some
people quoted him indeed, in this respect, as a pointed commentary,
and not a flattering one, on his icy patron--but the world is prone
to misconstruction, and Mr Carker was not accountable for its bad
propensity.

Clean and florid: with his light complexion, fading as it were, in the
sun, and his dainty step enhancing the softness of the turf: Mr Carker
the Manager strolled about meadows, and green lanes, and glided among
avenues of trees, until it was time to return to breakfast. Taking a
nearer way back, Mr Carker pursued it, airing his teeth, and said aloud
as he did so, 'Now to see the second Mrs Dombey!'

He had strolled beyond the town, and re-entered it by a pleasant walk,
where there was a deep shade of leafy trees, and where there were a few
benches here and there for those who chose to rest. It not being a place
of general resort at any hour, and wearing at that time of the still
morning the air of being quite deserted and retired, Mr Carker had it,
or thought he had it, all to himself. So, with the whim of an idle man,
to whom there yet remained twenty minutes for reaching a destination
easily able in ten, Mr Carker threaded the great boles of the trees,
and went passing in and out, before this one and behind that, weaving a
chain of footsteps on the dewy ground.

But he found he was mistaken in supposing there was no one in the grove,
for as he softly rounded the trunk of one large tree, on which the
obdurate bark was knotted and overlapped like the hide of a rhinoceros
or some kindred monster of the ancient days before the Flood, he saw
an unexpected figure sitting on a bench near at hand, about which, in
another moment, he would have wound the chain he was making.

It was that of a lady, elegantly dressed and very handsome, whose dark
proud eyes were fixed upon the ground, and in whom some passion or
struggle was raging. For as she sat looking down, she held a corner of
her under lip within her mouth, her bosom heaved, her nostril quivered,
her head trembled, indignant tears were on her cheek, and her foot was
set upon the moss as though she would have crushed it into nothing. And
yet almost the self-same glance that showed him this, showed him the
self-same lady rising with a scornful air of weariness and lassitude,
and turning away with nothing expressed in face or figure but careless
beauty and imperious disdain.

A withered and very ugly old woman, dressed not so much like a gipsy as
like any of that medley race of vagabonds who tramp about the country,
begging, and stealing, and tinkering, and weaving rushes, by turns, or
all together, had been observing the lady, too; for, as she rose, this
second figure strangely confronting the first, scrambled up from the
ground--out of it, it almost appeared--and stood in the way.

'Let me tell your fortune, my pretty lady,' said the old woman, munching
with her jaws, as if the Death's Head beneath her yellow skin were
impatient to get out.

'I can tell it for myself,' was the reply.

'Ay, ay, pretty lady; but not right. You didn't tell it right when you
were sitting there. I see you! Give me a piece of silver, pretty lady,
and I'll tell your fortune true. There's riches, pretty lady, in your
face.'

'I know,' returned the lady, passing her with a dark smile, and a proud
step. 'I knew it before.

'What! You won't give me nothing?' cried the old woman. 'You won't give
me nothing to tell your fortune, pretty lady? How much will you give me
to tell it, then? Give me something, or I'll call it after you!' croaked
the old woman, passionately.

Mr Carker, whom the lady was about to pass close, slinking against his
tree as she crossed to gain the path, advanced so as to meet her, and
pulling off his hat as she went by, bade the old woman hold her peace.
The lady acknowledged his interference with an inclination of the head,
and went her way.

'You give me something then, or I'll call it after her!' screamed
the old woman, throwing up her arms, and pressing forward against his
outstretched hand. 'Or come,' she added, dropping her voice suddenly,
looking at him earnestly, and seeming in a moment to forget the object
of her wrath, 'give me something, or I'll call it after you!'

'After me, old lady!' returned the Manager, putting his hand in his
pocket.

'Yes,' said the woman, steadfast in her scrutiny, and holding out her
shrivelled hand. 'I know!'

'What do you know?' demanded Carker, throwing her a shilling. 'Do you
know who the handsome lady is?'

Munching like that sailor's wife of yore, who had chestnuts in her lap,
and scowling like the witch who asked for some in vain, the old woman
picked the shilling up, and going backwards, like a crab, or like a heap
of crabs: for her alternately expanding and contracting hands might
have represented two of that species, and her creeping face, some
half-a-dozen more: crouched on the veinous root of an old tree, pulled
out a short black pipe from within the crown of her bonnet, lighted it
with a match, and smoked in silence, looking fixedly at her questioner.

Mr Carker laughed, and turned upon his heel.

'Good!' said the old woman. 'One child dead, and one child living: one
wife dead, and one wife coming. Go and meet her!'

In spite of himself, the Manager looked round again, and stopped. The
old woman, who had not removed her pipe, and was munching and mumbling
while she smoked, as if in conversation with an invisible familiar,
pointed with her finger in the direction he was going, and laughed.

'What was that you said, Bedlamite?' he demanded.

The woman mumbled, and chattered, and smoked, and still pointed
before him; but remained silent Muttering a farewell that was not
complimentary, Mr Carker pursued his way; but as he turned out of that
place, and looked over his shoulder at the root of the old tree, he
could yet see the finger pointing before him, and thought he heard the
woman screaming, 'Go and meet her!'

Preparations for a choice repast were completed, he found, at the hotel;
and Mr Dombey, and the Major, and the breakfast, were awaiting the
ladies. Individual constitution has much to do with the development of
such facts, no doubt; but in this case, appetite carried it hollow over
the tender passion; Mr Dombey being very cool and collected, and the
Major fretting and fuming in a state of violent heat and irritation.
At length the door was thrown open by the Native, and, after a pause,
occupied by her languishing along the gallery, a very blooming, but not
very youthful lady, appeared.

'My dear Mr Dombey,' said the lady, 'I am afraid we are late, but
Edith has been out already looking for a favourable point of view for a
sketch, and kept me waiting for her. Falsest of Majors,' giving him her
little finger, 'how do you do?'

'Mrs Skewton,' said Mr Dombey, 'let me gratify my friend Carker:' Mr
Dombey unconsciously emphasised the word friend, as saying "no really; I
do allow him to take credit for that distinction:" 'by presenting him to
you. You have heard me mention Mr Carker.'

'I am charmed, I am sure,' said Mrs Skewton, graciously.

Mr Carker was charmed, of course. Would he have been more charmed on Mr
Dombey's behalf, if Mrs Skewton had been (as he at first supposed her)
the Edith whom they had toasted overnight?

'Why, where, for Heaven's sake, is Edith?' exclaimed Mrs Skewton,
looking round. 'Still at the door, giving Withers orders about the
mounting of those drawings! My dear Mr Dombey, will you have the
kindness'--

Mr Dombey was already gone to seek her. Next moment he returned, bearing
on his arm the same elegantly dressed and very handsome lady whom Mr
Carker had encountered underneath the trees.

'Carker--' began Mr Dombey. But their recognition of each other was so
manifest, that Mr Dombey stopped surprised.

'I am obliged to the gentleman,' said Edith, with a stately bend, 'for
sparing me some annoyance from an importunate beggar just now.'

'I am obliged to my good fortune,' said Mr Carker, bowing low, 'for the
opportunity of rendering so slight a service to one whose servant I am
proud to be.'

As her eye rested on him for an instant, and then lighted on the ground,
he saw in its bright and searching glance a suspicion that he had not
come up at the moment of his interference, but had secretly observed
her sooner. As he saw that, she saw in his eye that her distrust was not
without foundation.

'Really,' cried Mrs Skewton, who had taken this opportunity of
inspecting Mr Carker through her glass, and satisfying herself (as she
lisped audibly to the Major) that he was all heart; 'really now, this is
one of the most enchanting coincidences that I ever heard of. The idea!
My dearest Edith, there is such an obvious destiny in it, that really
one might almost be induced to cross one's arms upon one's frock, and
say, like those wicked Turks, there is no What's-his-name but Thingummy,
and What-you-may-call-it is his prophet!'

Edith designed no revision of this extraordinary quotation from the
Koran, but Mr Dombey felt it necessary to offer a few polite remarks.

'It gives me great pleasure,' said Mr Dombey, with cumbrous gallantry,
'that a gentleman so nearly connected with myself as Carker is, should
have had the honour and happiness of rendering the least assistance to
Mrs Granger.' Mr Dombey bowed to her. 'But it gives me some pain, and
it occasions me to be really envious of Carker;' he unconsciously laid
stress on these words, as sensible that they must appear to involve a
very surprising proposition; 'envious of Carker, that I had not that
honour and that happiness myself.' Mr Dombey bowed again. Edith, saving
for a curl of her lip, was motionless.

'By the Lord, Sir,' cried the Major, bursting into speech at sight of
the waiter, who was come to announce breakfast, 'it's an extraordinary
thing to me that no one can have the honour and happiness of shooting
all such beggars through the head without being brought to book for
it. But here's an arm for Mrs Granger if she'll do J. B. the honour to
accept it; and the greatest service Joe can render you, Ma'am, just now,
is, to lead you into table!'

With this, the Major gave his arm to Edith; Mr Dombey led the way with
Mrs Skewton; Mrs Carker went last, smiling on the party.

'I am quite rejoiced, Mr Carker,' said the lady-mother, at breakfast,
after another approving survey of him through her glass, 'that you have
timed your visit so happily, as to go with us to-day. It is the most
enchanting expedition!'

'Any expedition would be enchanting in such society,' returned Carker;
'but I believe it is, in itself, full of interest.'

'Oh!' cried Mrs Skewton, with a faded little scream of rapture,
'the Castle is charming!--associations of the Middle Ages--and all
that--which is so truly exquisite. Don't you dote upon the Middle Ages,
Mr Carker?'

'Very much, indeed,' said Mr Carker.

'Such charming times!' cried Cleopatra. 'So full of faith! So vigorous
and forcible! So picturesque! So perfectly removed from commonplace!
Oh dear! If they would only leave us a little more of the poetry of
existence in these terrible days!'

Mrs Skewton was looking sharp after Mr Dombey all the time she said
this, who was looking at Edith: who was listening, but who never lifted
up her eyes.

'We are dreadfully real, Mr Carker,' said Mrs Skewton; 'are we not?'

Few people had less reason to complain of their reality than Cleopatra,
who had as much that was false about her as could well go to the
composition of anybody with a real individual existence. But Mr Carker
commiserated our reality nevertheless, and agreed that we were very
hardly used in that regard.

'Pictures at the Castle, quite divine!' said Cleopatra. 'I hope you dote
upon pictures?'

'I assure you, Mrs Skewton,' said Mr Dombey, with solemn encouragement
of his Manager, 'that Carker has a very good taste for pictures; quite
a natural power of appreciating them. He is a very creditable artist
himself. He will be delighted, I am sure, with Mrs Granger's taste and
skill.'

'Damme, Sir!' cried Major Bagstock, 'my opinion is, that you're the
admirable Carker, and can do anything.'

'Oh!' smiled Carker, with humility, 'you are much too sanguine, Major
Bagstock. I can do very little. But Mr Dombey is so generous in his
estimation of any trivial accomplishment a man like myself may find it
almost necessary to acquire, and to which, in his very different
sphere, he is far superior, that--' Mr Carker shrugged his shoulders,
deprecating further praise, and said no more.

All this time, Edith never raised her eyes, unless to glance towards
her mother when that lady's fervent spirit shone forth in words. But as
Carker ceased, she looked at Mr Dombey for a moment. For a moment only;
but with a transient gleam of scornful wonder on her face, not lost on
one observer, who was smiling round the board.

Mr Dombey caught the dark eyelash in its descent, and took the
opportunity of arresting it.

'You have been to Warwick often, unfortunately?' said Mr Dombey.

'Several times.'

'The visit will be tedious to you, I am afraid.'

'Oh no; not at all.'

'Ah! You are like your cousin Feenix, my dearest Edith,' said Mrs
Skewton. 'He has been to Warwick Castle fifty times, if he has been
there once; yet if he came to Leamington to-morrow--I wish he would,
dear angel!--he would make his fifty-second visit next day.'

'We are all enthusiastic, are we not, Mama?' said Edith, with a cold
smile.

'Too much so, for our peace, perhaps, my dear,' returned her mother;
'but we won't complain. Our own emotions are our recompense. If, as your
cousin Feenix says, the sword wears out the what's-its-name--'

'The scabbard, perhaps,' said Edith.

'Exactly--a little too fast, it is because it is bright and glowing, you
know, my dearest love.'

Mrs Skewton heaved a gentle sigh, supposed to cast a shadow on the
surface of that dagger of lath, whereof her susceptible bosom was the
sheath: and leaning her head on one side, in the Cleopatra manner,
looked with pensive affection on her darling child.

Edith had turned her face towards Mr Dombey when he first addressed her,
and had remained in that attitude, while speaking to her mother, and
while her mother spoke to her, as though offering him her attention, if
he had anything more to say. There was something in the manner of this
simple courtesy: almost defiant, and giving it the character of being
rendered on compulsion, or as a matter of traffic to which she was a
reluctant party again not lost upon that same observer who was smiling
round the board. It set him thinking of her as he had first seen her,
when she had believed herself to be alone among the trees.

Mr Dombey having nothing else to say, proposed--the breakfast being
now finished, and the Major gorged, like any Boa Constrictor--that they
should start. A barouche being in waiting, according to the orders of
that gentleman, the two ladies, the Major and himself, took their seats
in it; the Native and the wan page mounted the box, Mr Towlinson being
left behind; and Mr Carker, on horseback, brought up the rear.

Mr Carker cantered behind the carriage at the distance of a hundred yards
or so, and watched it, during all the ride, as if he were a cat, indeed,
and its four occupants, mice. Whether he looked to one side of the road,
or to the other--over distant landscape, with its smooth undulations,
wind-mills, corn, grass, bean fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards, hayricks,
and the spire among the wood--or upwards in the sunny air, where
butterflies were sporting round his head, and birds were pouring out
their songs--or downward, where the shadows of the branches interlaced,
and made a trembling carpet on the road--or onward, where the overhanging
trees formed aisles and arches, dim with the softened light that steeped
through leaves--one corner of his eye was ever on the formal head of Mr
Dombey, addressed towards him, and the feather in the bonnet, drooping
so neglectfully and scornfully between them; much as he had seen the
haughty eyelids droop; not least so, when the face met that now fronting
it. Once, and once only, did his wary glance release these objects; and
that was, when a leap over a low hedge, and a gallop across a field,
enabled him to anticipate the carriage coming by the road, and to be
standing ready, at the journey's end, to hand the ladies out. Then, and
but then, he met her glance for an instant in her first surprise; but
when he touched her, in alighting, with his soft white hand, it
overlooked him altogether as before.

Mrs Skewton was bent on taking charge of Mr Carker herself, and showing
him the beauties of the Castle. She was determined to have his arm, and
the Major's too. It would do that incorrigible creature: who was the
most barbarous infidel in point of poetry: good to be in such company.
This chance arrangement left Mr Dombey at liberty to escort Edith: which
he did: stalking before them through the apartments with a gentlemanly
solemnity.

'Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their
delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful
places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque
assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How
dreadfully we have degenerated!'

'Yes, we have fallen off deplorably,' said Mr Carker.

The peculiarity of their conversation was, that Mrs Skewton, in spite of
her ecstasies, and Mr Carker, in spite of his urbanity, were both
intent on watching Mr Dombey and Edith. With all their conversational
endowments, they spoke somewhat distractedly, and at random, in
consequence.

'We have no Faith left, positively,' said Mrs Skewton, advancing her
shrivelled ear; for Mr Dombey was saying something to Edith. 'We have no
Faith in the dear old Barons, who were the most delightful creatures--or
in the dear old Priests, who were the most warlike of men--or even in
the days of that inestimable Queen Bess, upon the wall there, which were
so extremely golden. Dear creature! She was all Heart And that charming
father of hers! I hope you dote on Harry the Eighth!'

'I admire him very much,' said Carker.

'So bluff!' cried Mrs Skewton, 'wasn't he? So burly. So truly English.
Such a picture, too, he makes, with his dear little peepy eyes, and his
benevolent chin!'

'Ah, Ma'am!' said Carker, stopping short; 'but if you speak of pictures,
there's a composition! What gallery in the world can produce the
counterpart of that?'

As the smiling gentleman thus spake, he pointed through a doorway to
where Mr Dombey and Edith were standing alone in the centre of another
room.

They were not interchanging a word or a look. Standing together, arm
in arm, they had the appearance of being more divided than if seas had
rolled between them. There was a difference even in the pride of the
two, that removed them farther from each other, than if one had been
the proudest and the other the humblest specimen of humanity in all
creation. He, self-important, unbending, formal, austere. She, lovely
and graceful, in an uncommon degree, but totally regardless of herself
and him and everything around, and spurning her own attractions with her
haughty brow and lip, as if they were a badge or livery she hated. So
unmatched were they, and opposed, so forced and linked together by a
chain which adverse hazard and mischance had forged: that fancy might
have imagined the pictures on the walls around them, startled by the
unnatural conjunction, and observant of it in their several expressions.
Grim knights and warriors looked scowling on them. A churchman, with his
hand upraised, denounced the mockery of such a couple coming to God's
altar. Quiet waters in landscapes, with the sun reflected in their
depths, asked, if better means of escape were not at hand, was there no
drowning left? Ruins cried, 'Look here, and see what We are, wedded to
uncongenial Time!' Animals, opposed by nature, worried one another, as a
moral to them. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had
no such torment in its painted history of suffering.

Nevertheless, Mrs Skewton was so charmed by the sight to which Mr Carker
invoked her attention, that she could not refrain from saying, half
aloud, how sweet, how very full of soul it was! Edith, overhearing,
looked round, and flushed indignant scarlet to her hair.

'My dearest Edith knows I was admiring her!' said Cleopatra, tapping
her, almost timidly, on the back with her parasol. 'Sweet pet!'

Again Mr Carker saw the strife he had witnessed so unexpectedly among
the trees. Again he saw the haughty languor and indifference come over
it, and hide it like a cloud.

She did not raise her eyes to him; but with a slight peremptory motion
of them, seemed to bid her mother come near. Mrs Skewton thought it
expedient to understand the hint, and advancing quickly, with her two
cavaliers, kept near her daughter from that time.

Mr Carker now, having nothing to distract his attention, began to
discourse upon the pictures and to select the best, and point them
out to Mr Dombey: speaking with his usual familiar recognition of Mr
Dombey's greatness, and rendering homage by adjusting his eye-glass for
him, or finding out the right place in his catalogue, or holding his
stick, or the like. These services did not so much originate with Mr
Carker, in truth, as with Mr Dombey himself, who was apt to assert his
chieftainship by saying, with subdued authority, and in an easy way--for
him--'Here, Carker, have the goodness to assist me, will you?' which the
smiling gentleman always did with pleasure.

They made the tour of the pictures, the walls, crow's nest, and so
forth; and as they were still one little party, and the Major was rather
in the shade: being sleepy during the process of digestion: Mr Carker
became communicative and agreeable. At first, he addressed himself for
the most part to Mrs Skewton; but as that sensitive lady was in such
ecstasies with the works of art, after the first quarter of an hour,
that she could do nothing but yawn (they were such perfect inspirations,
she observed as a reason for that mark of rapture), he transferred his
attentions to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey said little beyond an occasional
'Very true, Carker,' or 'Indeed, Carker,' but he tacitly encouraged
Carker to proceed, and inwardly approved of his behaviour very much:
deeming it as well that somebody should talk, and thinking that
his remarks, which were, as one might say, a branch of the parent
establishment, might amuse Mrs Granger. Mr Carker, who possessed an
excellent discretion, never took the liberty of addressing that lady,
direct; but she seemed to listen, though she never looked at him;
and once or twice, when he was emphatic in his peculiar humility, the
twilight smile stole over her face, not as a light, but as a deep black
shadow.

Warwick Castle being at length pretty well exhausted, and the Major very
much so: to say nothing of Mrs Skewton, whose peculiar demonstrations of
delight had become very frequent Indeed: the carriage was again put
in requisition, and they rode to several admired points of view in the
neighbourhood. Mr Dombey ceremoniously observed of one of these, that
a sketch, however slight, from the fair hand of Mrs Granger, would be a
remembrance to him of that agreeable day: though he wanted no artificial
remembrance, he was sure (here Mr Dombey made another of his bows),
which he must always highly value. Withers the lean having Edith's
sketch-book under his arm, was immediately called upon by Mrs Skewton
to produce the same: and the carriage stopped, that Edith might make the
drawing, which Mr Dombey was to put away among his treasures.

'But I am afraid I trouble you too much,' said Mr Dombey.

'By no means. Where would you wish it taken from?' she answered, turning
to him with the same enforced attention as before.

Mr Dombey, with another bow, which cracked the starch in his cravat,
would beg to leave that to the Artist.

'I would rather you chose for yourself,' said Edith.

'Suppose then,' said Mr Dombey, 'we say from here. It appears a good
spot for the purpose, or--Carker, what do you think?'

There happened to be in the foreground, at some little distance, a
grove of trees, not unlike that in which Mr Carker had made his chain
of footsteps in the morning, and with a seat under one tree, greatly
resembling, in the general character of its situation, the point where
his chain had broken.

'Might I venture to suggest to Mrs Granger,' said Carker, 'that that is
an interesting--almost a curious--point of view?'

She followed the direction of his riding-whip with her eyes, and raised
them quickly to his face. It was the second glance they had exchanged
since their introduction; and would have been exactly like the first,
but that its expression was plainer.

'Will you like that?' said Edith to Mr Dombey.

'I shall be charmed,' said Mr Dombey to Edith.

Therefore the carriage was driven to the spot where Mr Dombey was to
be charmed; and Edith, without moving from her seat, and opening her
sketch-book with her usual proud indifference, began to sketch.

'My pencils are all pointless,' she said, stopping and turning them
over.

'Pray allow me,' said Mr Dombey. 'Or Carker will do it better, as he
understands these things. Carker, have the goodness to see to these
pencils for Mrs Granger.'

Mr Carker rode up close to the carriage-door on Mrs Granger's side, and
letting the rein fall on his horse's neck, took the pencils from her
hand with a smile and a bow, and sat in the saddle leisurely mending
them. Having done so, he begged to be allowed to hold them, and to
hand them to her as they were required; and thus Mr Carker, with many
commendations of Mrs Granger's extraordinary skill--especially in
trees--remained--close at her side, looking over the drawing as she made
it. Mr Dombey in the meantime stood bolt upright in the carriage like a
highly respectable ghost, looking on too; while Cleopatra and the Major
dallied as two ancient doves might do.

'Are you satisfied with that, or shall I finish it a little more?' said
Edith, showing the sketch to Mr Dombey.

Mr Dombey begged that it might not be touched; it was perfection.

'It is most extraordinary,' said Carker, bringing every one of his
red gums to bear upon his praise. 'I was not prepared for anything so
beautiful, and so unusual altogether.'

This might have applied to the sketcher no less than to the sketch; but
Mr Carker's manner was openness itself--not as to his mouth alone, but
as to his whole spirit. So it continued to be while the drawing was laid
aside for Mr Dombey, and while the sketching materials were put up;
then he handed in the pencils (which were received with a distant
acknowledgment of his help, but without a look), and tightening his
rein, fell back, and followed the carriage again.

Thinking, perhaps, as he rode, that even this trivial sketch had been
made and delivered to its owner, as if it had been bargained for and
bought. Thinking, perhaps, that although she had assented with such
perfect readiness to his request, her haughty face, bent over the
drawing, or glancing at the distant objects represented in it, had
been the face of a proud woman, engaged in a sordid and miserable
transaction. Thinking, perhaps, of such things: but smiling certainly,
and while he seemed to look about him freely, in enjoyment of the air
and exercise, keeping always that sharp corner of his eye upon the
carriage.

A stroll among the haunted ruins of Kenilworth, and more rides to more
points of view: most of which, Mrs Skewton reminded Mr Dombey, Edith had
already sketched, as he had seen in looking over her drawings: brought
the day's expedition to a close. Mrs Skewton and Edith were driven to
their own lodgings; Mr Carker was graciously invited by Cleopatra to
return thither with Mr Dombey and the Major, in the evening, to hear
some of Edith's music; and the three gentlemen repaired to their hotel
to dinner.

The dinner was the counterpart of yesterday's, except that the Major was
twenty-four hours more triumphant and less mysterious. Edith was toasted
again. Mr Dombey was again agreeably embarrassed. And Mr Carker was full
of interest and praise.

There were no other visitors at Mrs Skewton's. Edith's drawings were
strewn about the room, a little more abundantly than usual perhaps; and
Withers, the wan page, handed round a little stronger tea. The harp
was there; the piano was there; and Edith sang and played. But even the
music was played by Edith to Mr Dombey's order, as it were, in the same
uncompromising way. As thus.

'Edith, my dearest love,' said Mrs Skewton, half an hour after tea, 'Mr
Dombey is dying to hear you, I know.'

'Mr Dombey has life enough left to say so for himself, Mama, I have no
doubt.'

'I shall be immensely obliged,' said Mr Dombey.

'What do you wish?'

'Piano?' hesitated Mr Dombey.

'Whatever you please. You have only to choose.'

Accordingly, she began with the piano. It was the same with the harp;
the same with her singing; the same with the selection of the pieces
that she sang and played. Such frigid and constrained, yet prompt and
pointed acquiescence with the wishes he imposed upon her, and on no one
else, was sufficiently remarkable to penetrate through all the mysteries
of picquet, and impress itself on Mr Carker's keen attention. Nor did he
lose sight of the fact that Mr Dombey was evidently proud of his power,
and liked to show it.

Nevertheless, Mr Carker played so well--some games with the Major, and
some with Cleopatra, whose vigilance of eye in respect of Mr Dombey and
Edith no lynx could have surpassed--that he even heightened his position
in the lady-mother's good graces; and when on taking leave he regretted
that he would be obliged to return to London next morning, Cleopatra
trusted: community of feeling not being met with every day: that it was
far from being the last time they would meet.

'I hope so,' said Mr Carker, with an expressive look at the couple in
the distance, as he drew towards the door, following the Major. 'I think
so.'

Mr Dombey, who had taken a stately leave of Edith, bent, or made some
approach to a bend, over Cleopatra's couch, and said, in a low voice:

'I have requested Mrs Granger's permission to call on her to-morrow
morning--for a purpose--and she has appointed twelve o'clock. May I hope
to have the pleasure of finding you at home, Madam, afterwards?'

Cleopatra was so much fluttered and moved, by hearing this, of course,
incomprehensible speech, that she could only shut her eyes, and shake
her head, and give Mr Dombey her hand; which Mr Dombey, not exactly
knowing what to do with, dropped.

'Dombey, come along!' cried the Major, looking in at the door. 'Damme,
Sir, old Joe has a great mind to propose an alteration in the name of
the Royal Hotel, and that it should be called the Three Jolly Bachelors,
in honour of ourselves and Carker.' With this, the Major slapped Mr
Dombey on the back, and winking over his shoulder at the ladies, with a
frightful tendency of blood to the head, carried him off.

Mrs Skewton reposed on her sofa, and Edith sat apart, by her harp, in
silence. The mother, trifling with her fan, looked stealthily at the
daughter more than once, but the daughter, brooding gloomily with
downcast eyes, was not to be disturbed.

Thus they remained for a long hour, without a word, until Mrs Skewton's
maid appeared, according to custom, to prepare her gradually for night.
At night, she should have been a skeleton, with dart and hour-glass,
rather than a woman, this attendant; for her touch was as the touch
of Death. The painted object shrivelled underneath her hand; the form
collapsed, the hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows changed to
scanty tufts of grey; the pale lips shrunk, the skin became cadaverous
and loose; an old, worn, yellow, nodding woman, with red eyes, alone
remained in Cleopatra's place, huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a
greasy flannel gown.

The very voice was changed, as it addressed Edith, when they were alone
again.

'Why don't you tell me,' it said sharply, 'that he is coming here
to-morrow by appointment?'

'Because you know it,' returned Edith, 'Mother.'

The mocking emphasis she laid on that one word!

'You know he has bought me,' she resumed. 'Or that he will, to-morrow.
He has considered of his bargain; he has shown it to his friend; he is
even rather proud of it; he thinks that it will suit him, and may be had
sufficiently cheap; and he will buy to-morrow. God, that I have lived
for this, and that I feel it!'

Compress into one handsome face the conscious self-abasement, and the
burning indignation of a hundred women, strong in passion and in pride;
and there it hid itself with two white shuddering arms.

'What do you mean?' returned the angry mother. 'Haven't you from a
child--'

'A child!' said Edith, looking at her, 'when was I a child? What
childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman--artful, designing,
mercenary, laying snares for men--before I knew myself, or you, or even
understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt You
gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight.'

And as she spoke, she struck her hand upon her beautiful bosom, as
though she would have beaten down herself.

'Look at me,' she said, 'who have never known what it is to have an
honest heart, and love. Look at me, taught to scheme and plot when
children play; and married in my youth--an old age of design--to one
for whom I had no feeling but indifference. Look at me, whom he left a
widow, dying before his inheritance descended to him--a judgment on you!
well deserved!--and tell me what has been my life for ten years since.'

'We have been making every effort to endeavour to secure to you a good
establishment,' rejoined her mother. 'That has been your life. And now
you have got it.'

'There is no slave in a market: there is no horse in a fair: so shown
and offered and examined and paraded, Mother, as I have been, for ten
shameful years,' cried Edith, with a burning brow, and the same bitter
emphasis on the one word. 'Is it not so? Have I been made the bye-word
of all kinds of men? Have fools, have profligates, have boys, have
dotards, dangled after me, and one by one rejected me, and fallen off,
because you were too plain with all your cunning: yes, and too true,
with all those false pretences: until we have almost come to be
notorious? The licence of look and touch,' she said, with flashing eyes,
'have I submitted to it, in half the places of resort upon the map of
England? Have I been hawked and vended here and there, until the last
grain of self-respect is dead within me, and I loathe myself? Has been
my late childhood? I had none before. Do not tell me that I had, tonight
of all nights in my life!'

'You might have been well married,' said her mother, 'twenty times at
least, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.'

'No! Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be,' she
answered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame and
stormy pride, 'shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine put
forth to lure him. He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well to
buy me. Let him! When he came to view me--perhaps to bid--he required to
see the roll of my accomplishments. I gave it to him. When he would have
me show one of them, to justify his purchase to his men, I require of
him to say which he demands, and I exhibit it. I will do no more. He
makes the purchase of his own will, and with his own sense of its worth,
and the power of his money; and I hope it may never disappoint him. I
have not vaunted and pressed the bargain; neither have you, so far as I
have been able to prevent you.

'You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own Mother.'

'It seems so to me; stranger to me than you,' said Edith. 'But my
education was completed long ago. I am too old now, and have fallen too
low, by degrees, to take a new course, and to stop yours, and to help
myself. The germ of all that purifies a woman's breast, and makes it
true and good, has never stirred in mine, and I have nothing else to
sustain me when I despise myself.' There had been a touching sadness in
her voice, but it was gone, when she went on to say, with a curled lip,
'So, as we are genteel and poor, I am content that we should be made
rich by these means; all I say is, I have kept the only purpose I have
had the strength to form--I had almost said the power, with you at my
side, Mother--and have not tempted this man on.'

'This man! You speak,' said her mother, 'as if you hated him.'

'And you thought I loved him, did you not?' she answered, stopping on
her way across the room, and looking round. 'Shall I tell you,' she
continued, with her eyes fixed on her mother, 'who already knows us
thoroughly, and reads us right, and before whom I have even less of
self-respect or confidence than before my own inward self; being so much
degraded by his knowledge of me?'

'This is an attack, I suppose,' returned her mother coldly, 'on poor,
unfortunate what's-his-name--Mr Carker! Your want of self-respect and
confidence, my dear, in reference to that person (who is very agreeable,
it strikes me), is not likely to have much effect on your establishment.
Why do you look at me so hard? Are you ill?'

Edith suddenly let fall her face, as if it had been stung, and while
she pressed her hands upon it, a terrible tremble crept over her whole
frame. It was quickly gone; and with her usual step, she passed out of
the room.

The maid who should have been a skeleton, then reappeared, and giving
one arm to her mistress, who appeared to have taken off her manner
with her charms, and to have put on paralysis with her flannel gown,
collected the ashes of Cleopatra, and carried them away in the other,
ready for tomorrow's revivification.

The next morning, Carker goes for a walk and finds Edith in a state of distress. An old woman is trying to get her to pay to have her fortune told, but Edith refuses. Carker dismisses the woman and returns to the hotel, where he joins Bagstock, Dombey, and Mrs. Skewton for breakfast. Edith arrives a few moments later and expresses her gratitude for his assistance. The group travels to Warwick Castle together and then spends the day visiting local landmarks while Edith sketches. That night, before he leaves the women, Dombey tells Mrs. Skewton that he will be coming to see Edith at a particular time the following day. When they are left alone, Mrs. Skewton asks why she wasn't told about the planned visit. Edith says that she know she is going to be "purchased" the next day, and accuses her mother of having manipulated her throughout her life in hopes of securing an advantageous marriage. She also says that she thinks Carker can see through to her motivations and schemes, and she feels ashamed of the knowledge he has of her


'So the day has come at length, Susan,' said Florence to the excellent
Nipper, 'when we are going back to our quiet home!'

Susan drew in her breath with an amount of expression not easily
described, further relieving her feelings with a smart cough, answered,
'Very quiet indeed, Miss Floy, no doubt. Excessive so.'

'When I was a child,' said Florence, thoughtfully, and after musing for
some moments, 'did you ever see that gentleman who has taken the trouble
to ride down here to speak to me, now three times--three times, I think,
Susan?'

'Three times, Miss,' returned the Nipper. 'Once when you was out a
walking with them Sket--'

Florence gently looked at her, and Miss Nipper checked herself.

'With Sir Barnet and his lady, I mean to say, Miss, and the young
gentleman. And two evenings since then.'

'When I was a child, and when company used to come to visit Papa, did
you ever see that gentleman at home, Susan?' asked Florence.

'Well, Miss,' returned her maid, after considering, 'I really couldn't
say I ever did. When your poor dear Ma died, Miss Floy, I was very new
in the family, you see, and my element:' the Nipper bridled, as opining
that her merits had been always designedly extinguished by Mr Dombey:
'was the floor below the attics.'

'To be sure,' said Florence, still thoughtfully; 'you are not likely to
have known who came to the house. I quite forgot.'

'Not, Miss, but what we talked about the family and visitors,' said
Susan, 'and but what I heard much said, although the nurse before Mrs
Richards make unpleasant remarks when I was in company, and hint
at little Pitchers, but that could only be attributed, poor thing,'
observed Susan, with composed forbearance, 'to habits of intoxication,
for which she was required to leave, and did.'

Florence, who was seated at her chamber window, with her face resting
on her hand, sat looking out, and hardly seemed to hear what Susan said,
she was so lost in thought.

'At all events, Miss,' said Susan, 'I remember very well that this same
gentleman, Mr Carker, was almost, if not quite, as great a gentleman
with your Papa then, as he is now. It used to be said in the house then,
Miss, that he was at the head of all your Pa's affairs in the City, and
managed the whole, and that your Pa minded him more than anybody, which,
begging your pardon, Miss Floy, he might easy do, for he never minded
anybody else. I knew that, Pitcher as I might have been.'

Susan Nipper, with an injured remembrance of the nurse before Mrs
Richards, emphasised 'Pitcher' strongly.

'And that Mr Carker has not fallen off, Miss,' she pursued, 'but has
stood his ground, and kept his credit with your Pa, I know from what
is always said among our people by that Perch, whenever he comes to the
house; and though he's the weakest weed in the world, Miss Floy, and no
one can have a moment's patience with the man, he knows what goes on in
the City tolerable well, and says that your Pa does nothing without Mr
Carker, and leaves all to Mr Carker, and acts according to Mr Carker,
and has Mr Carker always at his elbow, and I do believe that he believes
(that washiest of Perches!) that after your Pa, the Emperor of India is
the child unborn to Mr Carker.'

Not a word of this was lost on Florence, who, with an awakened interest
in Susan's speech, no longer gazed abstractedly on the prospect without,
but looked at her, and listened with attention.

'Yes, Susan,' she said, when that young lady had concluded. 'He is in
Papa's confidence, and is his friend, I am sure.'

Florence's mind ran high on this theme, and had done for some days. Mr
Carker, in the two visits with which he had followed up his first one,
had assumed a confidence between himself and her--a right on his part
to be mysterious and stealthy, in telling her that the ship was still
unheard of--a kind of mildly restrained power and authority over
her--that made her wonder, and caused her great uneasiness. She had
no means of repelling it, or of freeing herself from the web he was
gradually winding about her; for that would have required some art and
knowledge of the world, opposed to such address as his; and Florence had
none. True, he had said no more to her than that there was no news of
the ship, and that he feared the worst; but how he came to know that
she was interested in the ship, and why he had the right to signify
his knowledge to her, so insidiously and darkly, troubled Florence very
much.

This conduct on the part of Mr Carker, and her habit of often
considering it with wonder and uneasiness, began to invest him with
an uncomfortable fascination in Florence's thoughts. A more distinct
remembrance of his features, voice, and manner: which she sometimes
courted, as a means of reducing him to the level of a real personage,
capable of exerting no greater charm over her than another: did not
remove the vague impression. And yet he never frowned, or looked upon
her with an air of dislike or animosity, but was always smiling and
serene.

Again, Florence, in pursuit of her strong purpose with reference to
her father, and her steady resolution to believe that she was herself
unwittingly to blame for their so cold and distant relations, would
recall to mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, and
would think, with an anxious heart, could her struggling tendency to
dislike and fear him be a part of that misfortune in her, which had
turned her father's love adrift, and left her so alone? She dreaded that
it might be; sometimes believed it was: then she resolved that she
would try to conquer this wrong feeling; persuaded herself that she was
honoured and encouraged by the notice of her father's friend; and hoped
that patient observation of him and trust in him would lead her bleeding
feet along that stony road which ended in her father's heart.

Thus, with no one to advise her--for she could advise with no one
without seeming to complain against him--gentle Florence tossed on an
uneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr Carker, like a scaly monster of the
deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her.

Florence had a new reason in all this for wishing to be at home again.
Her lonely life was better suited to her course of timid hope and doubt;
and she feared sometimes, that in her absence she might miss some
hopeful chance of testifying her affection for her father. Heaven knows,
she might have set her mind at rest, poor child! on this last point; but
her slighted love was fluttering within her, and, even in her sleep, it
flew away in dreams, and nestled, like a wandering bird come home, upon
her father's neck.

Of Walter she thought often. Ah! how often, when the night was gloomy,
and the wind was blowing round the house! But hope was strong in her
breast. It is so difficult for the young and ardent, even with such
experience as hers, to imagine youth and ardour quenched like a weak
flame, and the bright day of life merging into night, at noon, that hope
was strong yet. Her tears fell frequently for Walter's sufferings; but
rarely for his supposed death, and never long.

She had written to the old Instrument-maker, but had received no
answer to her note: which indeed required none. Thus matters stood with
Florence on the morning when she was going home, gladly, to her old
secluded life.

Doctor and Mrs Blimber, accompanied (much against his will) by their
valued charge, Master Barnet, were already gone back to Brighton, where
that young gentleman and his fellow-pilgrims to Parnassus were then, no
doubt, in the continual resumption of their studies. The holiday time
was past and over; most of the juvenile guests at the villa had taken
their departure; and Florence's long visit was come to an end.

There was one guest, however, albeit not resident within the house, who
had been very constant in his attentions to the family, and who still
remained devoted to them. This was Mr Toots, who after renewing, some
weeks ago, the acquaintance he had had the happiness of forming with
Skettles Junior, on the night when he burst the Blimberian bonds and
soared into freedom with his ring on, called regularly every other day,
and left a perfect pack of cards at the hall-door; so many indeed, that
the ceremony was quite a deal on the part of Mr Toots, and a hand at
whist on the part of the servant.

Mr Toots, likewise, with the bold and happy idea of preventing the
family from forgetting him (but there is reason to suppose that
this expedient originated in the teeming brain of the Chicken), had
established a six-oared cutter, manned by aquatic friends of the
Chicken's and steered by that illustrious character in person, who wore
a bright red fireman's coat for the purpose, and concealed the perpetual
black eye with which he was afflicted, beneath a green shade. Previous
to the institution of this equipage, Mr Toots sounded the Chicken on a
hypothetical case, as, supposing the Chicken to be enamoured of a young
lady named Mary, and to have conceived the intention of starting a boat
of his own, what would he call that boat? The Chicken replied, with
divers strong asseverations, that he would either christen it Poll or
The Chicken's Delight. Improving on this idea, Mr Toots, after deep
study and the exercise of much invention, resolved to call his boat
The Toots's Joy, as a delicate compliment to Florence, of which no man
knowing the parties, could possibly miss the appreciation.

Stretched on a crimson cushion in his gallant bark, with his shoes
in the air, Mr Toots, in the exercise of his project, had come up the
river, day after day, and week after week, and had flitted to and fro,
near Sir Barnet's garden, and had caused his crew to cut across and
across the river at sharp angles, for his better exhibition to any
lookers-out from Sir Barnet's windows, and had had such evolutions
performed by the Toots's Joy as had filled all the neighbouring part
of the water-side with astonishment. But whenever he saw anyone in Sir
Barnet's garden on the brink of the river, Mr Toots always feigned to be
passing there, by a combination of coincidences of the most singular and
unlikely description.

'How are you, Toots?' Sir Barnet would say, waving his hand from the
lawn, while the artful Chicken steered close in shore.

'How de do, Sir Barnet?' Mr Toots would answer, 'What a surprising thing
that I should see you here!'

Mr Toots, in his sagacity, always said this, as if, instead of that
being Sir Barnet's house, it were some deserted edifice on the banks of
the Nile, or Ganges.

'I never was so surprised!' Mr Toots would exclaim.--'Is Miss Dombey
there?'

Whereupon Florence would appear, perhaps.

'Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey,' Toots would cry. 'I called to
ask this morning.'

'Thank you very much!' the pleasant voice of Florence would reply.

'Won't you come ashore, Toots?' Sir Barnet would say then. 'Come! you're
in no hurry. Come and see us.'

'Oh, it's of no consequence, thank you!' Mr Toots would blushingly
rejoin. 'I thought Miss Dombey might like to know, that's all.
Good-bye!' And poor Mr Toots, who was dying to accept the invitation,
but hadn't the courage to do it, signed to the Chicken, with an aching
heart, and away went the Joy, cleaving the water like an arrow.

The Joy was lying in a state of extraordinary splendour, at the garden
steps, on the morning of Florence's departure. When she went downstairs
to take leave, after her talk with Susan, she found Mr Toots awaiting
her in the drawing-room.

'Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey?' said the stricken Toots, always dreadfully
disconcerted when the desire of his heart was gained, and he was
speaking to her; 'thank you, I'm very well indeed, I hope you're the
same, so was Diogenes yesterday.'

'You are very kind,' said Florence.

'Thank you, it's of no consequence,' retorted Mr Toots. 'I thought
perhaps you wouldn't mind, in this fine weather, coming home by water,
Miss Dombey. There's plenty of room in the boat for your maid.'

'I am very much obliged to you,' said Florence, hesitating. 'I really
am--but I would rather not.'

'Oh, it's of no consequence,' retorted Mr Toots. 'Good morning.'

'Won't you wait and see Lady Skettles?' asked Florence, kindly.

'Oh no, thank you,' returned Mr Toots, 'it's of no consequence at all.'

So shy was Mr Toots on such occasions, and so flurried! But Lady
Skettles entering at the moment, Mr Toots was suddenly seized with a
passion for asking her how she did, and hoping she was very well; nor
could Mr Toots by any possibility leave off shaking hands with her,
until Sir Barnet appeared: to whom he immediately clung with the
tenacity of desperation.

'We are losing, today, Toots,' said Sir Barnet, turning towards
Florence, 'the light of our house, I assure you'

'Oh, it's of no conseq--I mean yes, to be sure,' faltered the
embarrassed Mr Toots. 'Good morning!'

Notwithstanding the emphatic nature of this farewell, Mr Toots, instead
of going away, stood leering about him, vacantly. Florence, to relieve
him, bade adieu, with many thanks, to Lady Skettles, and gave her arm to
Sir Barnet.

'May I beg of you, my dear Miss Dombey,' said her host, as he conducted
her to the carriage, 'to present my best compliments to your dear Papa?'

It was distressing to Florence to receive the commission, for she felt
as if she were imposing on Sir Barnet by allowing him to believe that a
kindness rendered to her, was rendered to her father. As she could not
explain, however, she bowed her head and thanked him; and again she
thought that the dull home, free from such embarrassments, and such
reminders of her sorrow, was her natural and best retreat.

Such of her late friends and companions as were yet remaining at the
villa, came running from within, and from the garden, to say good-bye.
They were all attached to her, and very earnest in taking leave of
her. Even the household were sorry for her going, and the servants came
nodding and curtseying round the carriage door. As Florence looked round
on the kind faces, and saw among them those of Sir Barnet and his lady,
and of Mr Toots, who was chuckling and staring at her from a distance,
she was reminded of the night when Paul and she had come from Doctor
Blimber's: and when the carriage drove away, her face was wet with
tears.

Sorrowful tears, but tears of consolation, too; for all the softer
memories connected with the dull old house to which she was returning
made it dear to her, as they rose up. How long it seemed since she had
wandered through the silent rooms: since she had last crept, softly and
afraid, into those her father occupied: since she had felt the solemn
but yet soothing influence of the beloved dead in every action of her
daily life! This new farewell reminded her, besides, of her parting
with poor Walter: of his looks and words that night: and of the gracious
blending she had noticed in him, of tenderness for those he left behind,
with courage and high spirit. His little history was associated with
the old house too, and gave it a new claim and hold upon her heart.

Even Susan Nipper softened towards the home of so many years, as they
were on their way towards it. Gloomy as it was, and rigid justice as she
rendered to its gloom, she forgave it a great deal. 'I shall be glad to
see it again, I don't deny, Miss,' said the Nipper. 'There ain't much in
it to boast of, but I wouldn't have it burnt or pulled down, neither!'

'You'll be glad to go through the old rooms, won't you, Susan?' said
Florence, smiling.

'Well, Miss,' returned the Nipper, softening more and more towards the
house, as they approached it nearer, 'I won't deny but what I shall,
though I shall hate 'em again, to-morrow, very likely.'

Florence felt that, for her, there was greater peace within it than
elsewhere. It was better and easier to keep her secret shut up there,
among the tall dark walls, than to carry it abroad into the light, and
try to hide it from a crowd of happy eyes. It was better to pursue the
study of her loving heart, alone, and find no new discouragements in
loving hearts about her. It was easier to hope, and pray, and love
on, all uncared for, yet with constancy and patience, in the tranquil
sanctuary of such remembrances: although it mouldered, rusted, and
decayed about her: than in a new scene, let its gaiety be what it would.
She welcomed back her old enchanted dream of life, and longed for the
old dark door to close upon her, once again.

Full of such thoughts, they turned into the long and sombre street.
Florence was not on that side of the carriage which was nearest to her
home, and as the distance lessened between them and it, she looked out
of her window for the children over the way.

She was thus engaged, when an exclamation from Susan caused her to turn
quickly round.

'Why, Gracious me!' cried Susan, breathless, 'where's our house!'

'Our house!' said Florence.

Susan, drawing in her head from the window, thrust it out again, drew
it in again as the carriage stopped, and stared at her mistress in
amazement.

There was a labyrinth of scaffolding raised all round the house, from
the basement to the roof. Loads of bricks and stones, and heaps of
mortar, and piles of wood, blocked up half the width and length of
the broad street at the side. Ladders were raised against the walls;
labourers were climbing up and down; men were at work upon the steps of
the scaffolding; painters and decorators were busy inside; great rolls
of ornamental paper were being delivered from a cart at the door; an
upholsterer's waggon also stopped the way; no furniture was to be seen
through the gaping and broken windows in any of the rooms; nothing but
workmen, and the implements of their several trades, swarming from
the kitchens to the garrets. Inside and outside alike: bricklayers,
painters, carpenters, masons: hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, and
trowel: all at work together, in full chorus!

Florence descended from the coach, half doubting if it were, or could be
the right house, until she recognised Towlinson, with a sun-burnt face,
standing at the door to receive her.

'There is nothing the matter?' inquired Florence.

'Oh no, Miss.'

'There are great alterations going on.'

'Yes, Miss, great alterations,' said Towlinson.

Florence passed him as if she were in a dream, and hurried upstairs. The
garish light was in the long-darkened drawing-room and there were steps
and platforms, and men in paper caps, in the high places. Her mother's
picture was gone with the rest of the moveables, and on the mark where
it had been, was scrawled in chalk, 'this room in panel. Green and
gold.' The staircase was a labyrinth of posts and planks like the
outside of the house, and a whole Olympus of plumbers and glaziers was
reclining in various attitudes, on the skylight. Her own room was not
yet touched within, but there were beams and boards raised against
it without, baulking the daylight. She went up swiftly to that other
bedroom, where the little bed was; and a dark giant of a man with a pipe
in his mouth, and his head tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, was staring
in at the window.

It was here that Susan Nipper, who had been in quest of Florence, found
her, and said, would she go downstairs to her Papa, who wished to speak
to her.

'At home! and wishing to speak to me!' cried Florence, trembling.

Susan, who was infinitely more distraught than Florence herself,
repeated her errand; and Florence, pale and agitated, hurried down
again, without a moment's hesitation. She thought upon the way down,
would she dare to kiss him? The longing of her heart resolved her, and
she thought she would.

Her father might have heard that heart beat, when it came into his
presence. One instant, and it would have beat against his breast.

But he was not alone. There were two ladies there; and Florence stopped.
Striving so hard with her emotion, that if her brute friend Di had not
burst in and overwhelmed her with his caresses as a welcome home--at
which one of the ladies gave a little scream, and that diverted her
attention from herself--she would have swooned upon the floor.

'Florence,' said her father, putting out his hand: so stiffly that it
held her off: 'how do you do?'

Florence took the hand between her own, and putting it timidly to her
lips, yielded to its withdrawal. It touched the door in shutting it,
with quite as much endearment as it had touched her.

'What dog is that?' said Mr Dombey, displeased.

'It is a dog, Papa--from Brighton.'

'Well!' said Mr Dombey; and a cloud passed over his face, for he
understood her.

'He is very good-tempered,' said Florence, addressing herself with her
natural grace and sweetness to the two lady strangers. 'He is only glad
to see me. Pray forgive him.'

She saw in the glance they interchanged, that the lady who had screamed,
and who was seated, was old; and that the other lady, who stood near her
Papa, was very beautiful, and of an elegant figure.

'Mrs Skewton,' said her father, turning to the first, and holding out
his hand, 'this is my daughter Florence.'

'Charming, I am sure,' observed the lady, putting up her glass. 'So
natural! My darling Florence, you must kiss me, if you please.'

Florence having done so, turned towards the other lady, by whom her
father stood waiting.

'Edith,' said Mr Dombey, 'this is my daughter Florence. Florence, this
lady will soon be your Mama.'

Florence started, and looked up at the beautiful face in a conflict
of emotions, among which the tears that name awakened, struggled for a
moment with surprise, interest, admiration, and an indefinable sort of
fear. Then she cried out, 'Oh, Papa, may you be happy! may you be very,
very happy all your life!' and then fell weeping on the lady's bosom.

There was a short silence. The beautiful lady, who at first had seemed
to hesitate whether or no she should advance to Florence, held her to
her breast, and pressed the hand with which she clasped her, close about
her waist, as if to reassure her and comfort her. Not one word passed
the lady's lips. She bent her head down over Florence, and she kissed
her on the cheek, but she said no word.

'Shall we go on through the rooms,' said Mr Dombey, 'and see how our
workmen are doing? Pray allow me, my dear madam.'

He said this in offering his arm to Mrs Skewton, who had been looking
at Florence through her glass, as though picturing to herself what she
might be made, by the infusion--from her own copious storehouse, no
doubt--of a little more Heart and Nature. Florence was still sobbing on
the lady's breast, and holding to her, when Mr Dombey was heard to say
from the Conservatory:

'Let us ask Edith. Dear me, where is she?'

'Edith, my dear!' cried Mrs Skewton, 'where are you? Looking for Mr
Dombey somewhere, I know. We are here, my love.'

The beautiful lady released her hold of Florence, and pressing her lips
once more upon her face, withdrew hurriedly, and joined them. Florence
remained standing in the same place: happy, sorry, joyful, and in tears,
she knew not how, or how long, but all at once: when her new Mama came
back, and took her in her arms again.

'Florence,' said the lady, hurriedly, and looking into her face with
great earnestness. 'You will not begin by hating me?'

'By hating you, Mama?' cried Florence, winding her arm round her neck,
and returning the look.

'Hush! Begin by thinking well of me,' said the beautiful lady. 'Begin by
believing that I will try to make you happy, and that I am prepared to
love you, Florence. Good-bye. We shall meet again soon. Good-bye! Don't
stay here, now.'

Again she pressed her to her breast she had spoken in a rapid manner,
but firmly--and Florence saw her rejoin them in the other room.

And now Florence began to hope that she would learn from her new and
beautiful Mama, how to gain her father's love; and in her sleep that
night, in her lost old home, her own Mama smiled radiantly upon the
hope, and blessed it. Dreaming Florence!

Florence is getting ready to leave the Skettles house, and asks Nipper if Carker regularly visited the Dombey house during her childhood. Nipper says that Carker has always had a reputation for being a close confidante of Mr. Dombey and having lots of authority at the firm. Florence is troubled by the extent of knowledge Carker seems to have, as well as a menacing impression she gets from him. While she has been at the Skettles', Toots has called on her regularly, and on the day of her departure he offers to take her home by boat; Florence politely declines. She leaves everyone very sad to see her go, and travels with Nipper back to the house. They are shocked to find, upon their arrival, that the Dombey house is in the midst of renovations. Before she can determine what is happening, Florence is summoned to see her father. He is accompanied by Mrs. Skewton and Edith, to whom he is now engaged. Florence is hopeful that this change will bring her closer to her father, and Edith seems to show kindness to her

This section revolves around Dombey's engagement and marriage and the impact it has on a far-flung cast of characters. The idea of the Dombey household as the nucleus of action that spreads far beyond it is perhaps most evident in the chapter describing the events of the wedding, which reverberates through a number of social rankings. Dombey's actions and choices carry significance for many people around him because of his economic impact and his status as a public figure. This should place him in a position of responsibility, although it rarely seems to impact his choices. At the same time, these scenes make it clear that there is a gossipy, voyeuristic interest in the lives of the Dombey family. They occupy a kind of celebrity position and this exerts a kind of pressure, especially since celebrity does not always ensure popularity. Illustrated most extremely by Carker, but also displayed by other characters like the Dombey servants, there is often a tinge of resentment, and a sense that a downfall would be welcomed by those envious of his power and privilege. The cynicism around what should be a joyous event is developed most strongly by the insight the reader is given into Mrs. Skewton and Edith's feelings about the marriage. Mrs. Skewton acts as a kind of parallel to Dombey in that her parenting is preoccupied with how she can gain from her daughter's beauty and desirability. She believes Edith should welcome the chance to marry Dombey, whether or not she feels affection for him. Edith occupies a much more ambivalent position in that she expresses disgust and self-loathing with the feeling that she is selling herself. However, she also seems resigned to this fate. She does not believe that there is any possibility of happiness left for her, and seems to think that her mother's education has corrupted her perspective so much that she can indeed only aspire to money-driven marriages, even if she resists at the same time. In this way, Edith's perspective shows the damaging effects of bad parenting, perhaps prefiguring what could have become of Paul had he not died with his childhood innocence intact. By having been taught that money is the most important thing, and that her beauty is a tool for achieving it, Edith has been irreparably damaged. At the same time, Florence's innocence, innate goodness, and willingness to love, pierce through even Edith's cynicism. She quickly warms to her stepdaughter and feels ferociously protective of her, especially when it becomes clear that Florence's beauty has caught Mrs. Skewton's attention. Edith knows that her mother will try to warp Florence's perspective, values, and sense of modesty, and is determined to prevent her own unhappy fate from being passed onto the next generation. In this way, Edith does function as a kind of surrogate parent to Florence. At the same time, however, her sense of shame is so deep that Edith fears a kind of moral contamination and tries to draw boundaries between herself and Florence. This reflects the way in which, although she has not yet committed any sexual transgression, Edith thinks of herself already as a kind of fallen woman, and her marriage to Dombey is revealed as a form of legalized and socially sanctioned prostitution. The reaction of characters to Dombey's marriage functions as a kind of test for their true feelings and intentions. Florence is immediately hopeful and optimistic: she is eager to forge a relationship with her stepmother and wonders if this is the occasion that will finally allow her to bond with her father. Miss Tox is deeply hurt by the news-so hurt that her long hidden emotions come to the surface, and Mrs. Chick finally realizes her friend's long-standing affection for her brother. While Mrs. Chick has been unimpressed with the news of the wedding, resenting the idea that anyone would be good enough for her brother, but she is so outraged by what she considers a betrayal from her friend that she ends the relationship. This signals the Dombey family pride, as well as the perception that those outside the family circle are inherently inferior, and should be viewed as threats.


Miss Tox, all unconscious of any such rare appearances in connexion with
Mr Dombey's house, as scaffoldings and ladders, and men with their heads
tied up in pocket-handkerchiefs, glaring in at the windows like flying
genii or strange birds,--having breakfasted one morning at about this
eventful period of time, on her customary viands; to wit, one French
roll rasped, one egg new laid (or warranted to be), and one little pot
of tea, wherein was infused one little silver scoopful of that herb
on behalf of Miss Tox, and one little silver scoopful on behalf of
the teapot--a flight of fancy in which good housekeepers delight; went
upstairs to set forth the bird waltz on the harpsichord, to water and
arrange the plants, to dust the nick-nacks, and, according to her daily
custom, to make her little drawing-room the garland of Princess's Place.

Miss Tox endued herself with a pair of ancient gloves, like dead leaves,
in which she was accustomed to perform these avocations--hidden from
human sight at other times in a table drawer--and went methodically to
work; beginning with the bird waltz; passing, by a natural association
of ideas, to her bird--a very high-shouldered canary, stricken in years,
and much rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess's Place well knew;
taking, next in order, the little china ornaments, paper fly-cages, and
so forth; and coming round, in good time, to the plants, which generally
required to be snipped here and there with a pair of scissors, for some
botanical reason that was very powerful with Miss Tox.

Miss Tox was slow in coming to the plants, this morning. The weather was
warm, the wind southerly; and there was a sigh of the summer-time in
Princess's Place, that turned Miss Tox's thoughts upon the country. The
pot-boy attached to the Princess's Arms had come out with a can and
trickled water, in a flowering pattern, all over Princess's Place, and it
gave the weedy ground a fresh scent--quite a growing scent, Miss Tox
said. There was a tiny blink of sun peeping in from the great street
round the corner, and the smoky sparrows hopped over it and back again,
brightening as they passed: or bathed in it, like a stream, and became
glorified sparrows, unconnected with chimneys. Legends in praise of
Ginger-Beer, with pictorial representations of thirsty customers
submerged in the effervescence, or stunned by the flying corks, were
conspicuous in the window of the Princess's Arms. They were making late
hay, somewhere out of town; and though the fragrance had a long way to
come, and many counter fragrances to contend with among the dwellings of
the poor (may God reward the worthy gentlemen who stickle for the Plague
as part and parcel of the wisdom of our ancestors, and who do their
little best to keep those dwellings miserable!), yet it was wafted
faintly into Princess's Place, whispering of Nature and her wholesome
air, as such things will, even unto prisoners and captives, and those who
are desolate and oppressed, in very spite of aldermen and knights to
boot: at whose sage nod--and how they nod!--the rolling world stands
still!

Miss Tox sat down upon the window-seat, and thought of her good Papa
deceased--Mr Tox, of the Customs Department of the public service; and
of her childhood, passed at a seaport, among a considerable quantity of
cold tar, and some rusticity. She fell into a softened remembrance of
meadows, in old time, gleaming with buttercups, like so many
inverted firmaments of golden stars; and how she had made chains of
dandelion-stalks for youthful vowers of eternal constancy, dressed
chiefly in nankeen; and how soon those fetters had withered and broken.

Sitting on the window-seat, and looking out upon the sparrows and
the blink of sun, Miss Tox thought likewise of her good Mama
deceased--sister to the owner of the powdered head and pigtail--of her
virtues and her rheumatism. And when a man with bulgy legs, and a rough
voice, and a heavy basket on his head that crushed his hat into a mere
black muffin, came crying flowers down Princess's Place, making his
timid little roots of daisies shudder in the vibration of every yell
he gave, as though he had been an ogre, hawking little children, summer
recollections were so strong upon Miss Tox, that she shook her head, and
murmured she would be comparatively old before she knew it--which seemed
likely.

In her pensive mood, Miss Tox's thoughts went wandering on Mr Dombey's
track; probably because the Major had returned home to his lodgings
opposite, and had just bowed to her from his window. What other reason
could Miss Tox have for connecting Mr Dombey with her summer days
and dandelion fetters? Was he more cheerful? thought Miss Tox. Was he
reconciled to the decrees of fate? Would he ever marry again? and if
yes, whom? What sort of person now!

A flush--it was warm weather--overspread Miss Tox's face, as, while
entertaining these meditations, she turned her head, and was surprised
by the reflection of her thoughtful image in the chimney-glass. Another
flush succeeded when she saw a little carriage drive into Princess's
Place, and make straight for her own door. Miss Tox arose, took up her
scissors hastily, and so coming, at last, to the plants, was very busy
with them when Mrs Chick entered the room.

'How is my sweetest friend!' exclaimed Miss Tox, with open arms.

A little stateliness was mingled with Miss Tox's sweetest friend's
demeanour, but she kissed Miss Tox, and said, 'Lucretia, thank you, I am
pretty well. I hope you are the same. Hem!'

Mrs Chick was labouring under a peculiar little monosyllabic cough; a
sort of primer, or easy introduction to the art of coughing.

'You call very early, and how kind that is, my dear!' pursued Miss Tox.
'Now, have you breakfasted?'

'Thank you, Lucretia,' said Mrs Chick, 'I have. I took an early
breakfast'--the good lady seemed curious on the subject of Princess's
Place, and looked all round it as she spoke--'with my brother, who has
come home.'

'He is better, I trust, my love,' faltered Miss Tox.

'He is greatly better, thank you. Hem!'

'My dear Louisa must be careful of that cough' remarked Miss Tox.

'It's nothing,' returned Mrs Chic 'It's merely change of weather. We
must expect change.'

'Of weather?' asked Miss Tox, in her simplicity.

'Of everything,' returned Mrs Chick. 'Of course we must. It's a world of
change. Anyone would surprise me very much, Lucretia, and would greatly
alter my opinion of their understanding, if they attempted to contradict
or evade what is so perfectly evident. Change!' exclaimed Mrs Chick,
with severe philosophy. 'Why, my gracious me, what is there that does
not change! even the silkworm, who I am sure might be supposed not to
trouble itself about such subjects, changes into all sorts of unexpected
things continually.'

'My Louisa,' said the mild Miss Tox, 'is ever happy in her
illustrations.'

'You are so kind, Lucretia,' returned Mrs Chick, a little softened, 'as
to say so, and to think so, I believe. I hope neither of us may ever
have any cause to lessen our opinion of the other, Lucretia.'

'I am sure of it,' returned Miss Tox.

Mrs Chick coughed as before, and drew lines on the carpet with the ivory
end of her parasol. Miss Tox, who had experience of her fair friend, and
knew that under the pressure of any slight fatigue or vexation she
was prone to a discursive kind of irritability, availed herself of the
pause, to change the subject.

'Pardon me, my dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'but have I caught sight of
the manly form of Mr Chick in the carriage?'

'He is there,' said Mrs Chick, 'but pray leave him there. He has his
newspaper, and would be quite contented for the next two hours. Go on
with your flowers, Lucretia, and allow me to sit here and rest.'

'My Louisa knows,' observed Miss Tox, 'that between friends like
ourselves, any approach to ceremony would be out of the question.
Therefore--' Therefore Miss Tox finished the sentence, not in words but
action; and putting on her gloves again, which she had taken off, and
arming herself once more with her scissors, began to snip and clip among
the leaves with microscopic industry.

'Florence has returned home also,' said Mrs Chick, after sitting silent
for some time, with her head on one side, and her parasol sketching on
the floor; 'and really Florence is a great deal too old now, to continue
to lead that solitary life to which she has been accustomed. Of course
she is. There can be no doubt about it. I should have very little
respect, indeed, for anybody who could advocate a different opinion.
Whatever my wishes might be, I could not respect them. We cannot command
our feelings to such an extent as that.'

Miss Tox assented, without being particular as to the intelligibility of
the proposition.

'If she's a strange girl,' said Mrs Chick, 'and if my brother Paul
cannot feel perfectly comfortable in her society, after all the sad
things that have happened, and all the terrible disappointments that
have been undergone, then, what is the reply? That he must make an
effort. That he is bound to make an effort. We have always been a family
remarkable for effort. Paul is at the head of the family; almost the
only representative of it left--for what am I--I am of no consequence--'

'My dearest love,' remonstrated Miss Tox.

Mrs Chick dried her eyes, which were, for the moment, overflowing; and
proceeded:

'And consequently he is more than ever bound to make an effort. And
though his having done so, comes upon me with a sort of shock--for mine
is a very weak and foolish nature; which is anything but a blessing I am
sure; I often wish my heart was a marble slab, or a paving-stone--'

'My sweet Louisa,' remonstrated Miss Tox again.

'Still, it is a triumph to me to know that he is so true to himself, and
to his name of Dombey; although, of course, I always knew he would be.
I only hope,' said Mrs Chick, after a pause, 'that she may be worthy of
the name too.'

Miss Tox filled a little green watering-pot from a jug, and happening
to look up when she had done so, was so surprised by the amount of
expression Mrs Chick had conveyed into her face, and was bestowing upon
her, that she put the little watering-pot on the table for the present,
and sat down near it.

'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'will it be the least satisfaction to
you, if I venture to observe in reference to that remark, that I, as a
humble individual, think your sweet niece in every way most promising?'

'What do you mean, Lucretia?' returned Mrs Chick, with increased
stateliness of manner. 'To what remark of mine, my dear, do you refer?'

'Her being worthy of her name, my love,' replied Miss Tox.

'If,' said Mrs Chick, with solemn patience, 'I have not expressed
myself with clearness, Lucretia, the fault of course is mine. There
is, perhaps, no reason why I should express myself at all, except the
intimacy that has subsisted between us, and which I very much hope,
Lucretia--confidently hope--nothing will occur to disturb. Because, why
should I do anything else? There is no reason; it would be absurd. But
I wish to express myself clearly, Lucretia; and therefore to go back
to that remark, I must beg to say that it was not intended to relate to
Florence, in any way.'

'Indeed!' returned Miss Tox.

'No,' said Mrs Chick shortly and decisively.

'Pardon me, my dear,' rejoined her meek friend; 'but I cannot have
understood it. I fear I am dull.'

Mrs Chick looked round the room and over the way; at the plants, at the
bird, at the watering-pot, at almost everything within view, except Miss
Tox; and finally dropping her glance upon Miss Tox, for a moment, on its
way to the ground, said, looking meanwhile with elevated eyebrows at the
carpet:

'When I speak, Lucretia, of her being worthy of the name, I speak of my
brother Paul's second wife. I believe I have already said, in effect,
if not in the very words I now use, that it is his intention to marry a
second wife.'

Miss Tox left her seat in a hurry, and returned to her plants; clipping
among the stems and leaves, with as little favour as a barber working at
so many pauper heads of hair.

'Whether she will be fully sensible of the distinction conferred upon
her,' said Mrs Chick, in a lofty tone, 'is quite another question.
I hope she may be. We are bound to think well of one another in this
world, and I hope she may be. I have not been advised with myself. If
I had been advised with, I have no doubt my advice would have been
cavalierly received, and therefore it is infinitely better as it is. I
much prefer it as it is.'

Miss Tox, with head bent down, still clipped among the plants. Mrs
Chick, with energetic shakings of her own head from time to time,
continued to hold forth, as if in defiance of somebody.

'If my brother Paul had consulted with me, which he sometimes does--or
rather, sometimes used to do; for he will naturally do that no more now,
and this is a circumstance which I regard as a relief from
responsibility,' said Mrs Chick, hysterically, 'for I thank Heaven I am
not jealous--' here Mrs Chick again shed tears: 'if my brother Paul had
come to me, and had said, "Louisa, what kind of qualities would you
advise me to look out for, in a wife?" I should certainly have answered,
"Paul, you must have family, you must have beauty, you must have dignity,
you must have connexion." Those are the words I should have used. You
might have led me to the block immediately afterwards,' said Mrs Chick,
as if that consequence were highly probable, 'but I should have used
them. I should have said, "Paul! You to marry a second time without
family! You to marry without beauty! You to marry without dignity! You
to marry without connexion! There is nobody in the world, not mad, who
could dream of daring to entertain such a preposterous idea!"'

Miss Tox stopped clipping; and with her head among the plants, listened
attentively. Perhaps Miss Tox thought there was hope in this exordium,
and the warmth of Mrs Chick.

'I should have adopted this course of argument,' pursued the discreet
lady, 'because I trust I am not a fool. I make no claim to be considered
a person of superior intellect--though I believe some people have been
extraordinary enough to consider me so; one so little humoured as I am,
would very soon be disabused of any such notion; but I trust I am not a
downright fool. And to tell ME,' said Mrs Chick with ineffable disdain,
'that my brother Paul Dombey could ever contemplate the possibility of
uniting himself to anybody--I don't care who'--she was more sharp
and emphatic in that short clause than in any other part of her
discourse--'not possessing these requisites, would be to insult what
understanding I have got, as much as if I was to be told that I was born
and bred an elephant, which I may be told next,' said Mrs Chick, with
resignation. 'It wouldn't surprise me at all. I expect it.'

In the moment's silence that ensued, Miss Tox's scissors gave a feeble
clip or two; but Miss Tox's face was still invisible, and Miss Tox's
morning gown was agitated. Mrs Chick looked sideways at her, through the
intervening plants, and went on to say, in a tone of bland conviction,
and as one dwelling on a point of fact that hardly required to be
stated:

'Therefore, of course my brother Paul has done what was to be expected
of him, and what anybody might have foreseen he would do, if he entered
the marriage state again. I confess it takes me rather by surprise,
however gratifying; because when Paul went out of town I had no idea at
all that he would form any attachment out of town, and he certainly
had no attachment when he left here. However, it seems to be extremely
desirable in every point of view. I have no doubt the mother is a most
genteel and elegant creature, and I have no right whatever to dispute
the policy of her living with them: which is Paul's affair, not
mine--and as to Paul's choice, herself, I have only seen her picture
yet, but that is beautiful indeed. Her name is beautiful too,' said Mrs
Chick, shaking her head with energy, and arranging herself in her
chair; 'Edith is at once uncommon, as it strikes me, and distinguished.
Consequently, Lucretia, I have no doubt you will be happy to hear that
the marriage is to take place immediately--of course, you will:' great
emphasis again: 'and that you are delighted with this change in the
condition of my brother, who has shown you a great deal of pleasant
attention at various times.'

Miss Tox made no verbal answer, but took up the little watering-pot
with a trembling hand, and looked vacantly round as if considering what
article of furniture would be improved by the contents. The room door
opening at this crisis of Miss Tox's feelings, she started, laughed
aloud, and fell into the arms of the person entering; happily insensible
alike of Mrs Chick's indignant countenance and of the Major at his
window over the way, who had his double-barrelled eye-glass in full
action, and whose face and figure were dilated with Mephistophelean joy.

Not so the expatriated Native, amazed supporter of Miss Tox's swooning
form, who, coming straight upstairs, with a polite inquiry touching Miss
Tox's health (in exact pursuance of the Major's malicious instructions),
had accidentally arrived in the very nick of time to catch the
delicate burden in his arms, and to receive the contents of the little
watering-pot in his shoe; both of which circumstances, coupled with his
consciousness of being closely watched by the wrathful Major, who had
threatened the usual penalty in regard of every bone in his skin in case
of any failure, combined to render him a moving spectacle of mental and
bodily distress.

For some moments, this afflicted foreigner remained clasping Miss Tox
to his heart, with an energy of action in remarkable opposition to his
disconcerted face, while that poor lady trickled slowly down upon him
the very last sprinklings of the little watering-pot, as if he were a
delicate exotic (which indeed he was), and might be almost expected to
blow while the gentle rain descended. Mrs Chick, at length recovering
sufficient presence of mind to interpose, commanded him to drop Miss Tox
upon the sofa and withdraw; and the exile promptly obeying, she applied
herself to promote Miss Tox's recovery.

But none of that gentle concern which usually characterises the
daughters of Eve in their tending of each other; none of that
freemasonry in fainting, by which they are generally bound together in
a mysterious bond of sisterhood; was visible in Mrs Chick's demeanour.
Rather like the executioner who restores the victim to sensation
previous to proceeding with the torture (or was wont to do so, in the
good old times for which all true men wear perpetual mourning), did Mrs
Chick administer the smelling-bottle, the slapping on the hands, the
dashing of cold water on the face, and the other proved remedies. And
when, at length, Miss Tox opened her eyes, and gradually became restored
to animation and consciousness, Mrs Chick drew off as from a criminal,
and reversing the precedent of the murdered king of Denmark, regarded
her more in anger than in sorrow.'

'Lucretia!' said Mrs Chick 'I will not attempt to disguise what I feel.
My eyes are opened, all at once. I wouldn't have believed this, if a
Saint had told it to me.'

'I am foolish to give way to faintness,' Miss Tox faltered. 'I shall be
better presently.'

'You will be better presently, Lucretia!' repeated Mrs Chick, with
exceeding scorn. 'Do you suppose I am blind? Do you imagine I am in my
second childhood? No, Lucretia! I am obliged to you!'

Miss Tox directed an imploring, helpless kind of look towards her
friend, and put her handkerchief before her face.

'If anyone had told me this yesterday,' said Mrs Chick, with majesty,
'or even half-an-hour ago, I should have been tempted, I almost believe,
to strike them to the earth. Lucretia Tox, my eyes are opened to you all
at once. The scales:' here Mrs Chick cast down an imaginary pair, such
as are commonly used in grocers' shops: 'have fallen from my sight. The
blindness of my confidence is past, Lucretia. It has been abused and
played, upon, and evasion is quite out of the question now, I assure
you.'

'Oh! to what do you allude so cruelly, my love?' asked Miss Tox, through
her tears.

'Lucretia,' said Mrs Chick, 'ask your own heart. I must entreat you not
to address me by any such familiar term as you have just used, if you
please. I have some self-respect left, though you may think otherwise.'

'Oh, Louisa!' cried Miss Tox. 'How can you speak to me like that?'

'How can I speak to you like that?' retorted Mrs Chick, who, in default
of having any particular argument to sustain herself upon, relied
principally on such repetitions for her most withering effects. 'Like
that! You may well say like that, indeed!'

Miss Tox sobbed pitifully.

'The idea!' said Mrs Chick, 'of your having basked at my brother's
fireside, like a serpent, and wound yourself, through me, almost into
his confidence, Lucretia, that you might, in secret, entertain designs
upon him, and dare to aspire to contemplate the possibility of his
uniting himself to you! Why, it is an idea,' said Mrs Chick, with
sarcastic dignity, 'the absurdity of which almost relieves its
treachery.'

'Pray, Louisa,' urged Miss Tox, 'do not say such dreadful things.'

'Dreadful things!' repeated Mrs Chick. 'Dreadful things! Is it not
a fact, Lucretia, that you have just now been unable to command your
feelings even before me, whose eyes you had so completely closed?'

'I have made no complaint,' sobbed Miss Tox. 'I have said nothing. If I
have been a little overpowered by your news, Louisa, and have ever
had any lingering thought that Mr Dombey was inclined to be particular
towards me, surely you will not condemn me.'

'She is going to say,' said Mrs Chick, addressing herself to the whole
of the furniture, in a comprehensive glance of resignation and appeal,
'She is going to say--I know it--that I have encouraged her!'

'I don't wish to exchange reproaches, dear Louisa,' sobbed Miss Tox. 'Nor
do I wish to complain. But, in my own defence--'

'Yes,' cried Mrs Chick, looking round the room with a prophetic smile,
'that's what she's going to say. I knew it. You had better say it.
Say it openly! Be open, Lucretia Tox,' said Mrs Chick, with desperate
sternness, 'whatever you are.'

'In my own defence,' faltered Miss Tox, 'and only in my own defence
against your unkind words, my dear Louisa, I would merely ask you if you
haven't often favoured such a fancy, and even said it might happen, for
anything we could tell?'

'There is a point,' said Mrs Chick, rising, not as if she were going to
stop at the floor, but as if she were about to soar up, high, into
her native skies, 'beyond which endurance becomes ridiculous, if not
culpable. I can bear much; but not too much. What spell was on me when I
came into this house this day, I don't know; but I had a presentiment--a
dark presentiment,' said Mrs Chick, with a shiver, 'that something was
going to happen. Well may I have had that foreboding, Lucretia, when my
confidence of many years is destroyed in an instant, when my eyes are
opened all at once, and when I find you revealed in your true colours.
Lucretia, I have been mistaken in you. It is better for us both that
this subject should end here. I wish you well, and I shall ever wish you
well. But, as an individual who desires to be true to herself in her own
poor position, whatever that position may be, or may not be--and as the
sister of my brother--and as the sister-in-law of my brother's wife--and
as a connexion by marriage of my brother's wife's mother--may I be
permitted to add, as a Dombey?--I can wish you nothing else but good
morning.'

These words, delivered with cutting suavity, tempered and chastened by a
lofty air of moral rectitude, carried the speaker to the door. There she
inclined her head in a ghostly and statue-like manner, and so withdrew
to her carriage, to seek comfort and consolation in the arms of Mr
Chick, her lord.

Figuratively speaking, that is to say; for the arms of Mr Chick were
full of his newspaper. Neither did that gentleman address his eyes
towards his wife otherwise than by stealth. Neither did he offer any
consolation whatever. In short, he sat reading, and humming fag ends
of tunes, and sometimes glancing furtively at her without delivering
himself of a word, good, bad, or indifferent.

In the meantime Mrs Chick sat swelling and bridling, and tossing her
head, as if she were still repeating that solemn formula of farewell
to Lucretia Tox. At length, she said aloud, 'Oh the extent to which her
eyes had been opened that day!'

'To which your eyes have been opened, my dear!' repeated Mr Chick.

'Oh, don't talk to me!' said Mrs Chic 'if you can bear to see me in
this state, and not ask me what the matter is, you had better hold your
tongue for ever.'

'What is the matter, my dear?' asked Mr Chick

'To think,' said Mrs Chick, in a state of soliloquy, 'that she should
ever have conceived the base idea of connecting herself with our family
by a marriage with Paul! To think that when she was playing at horses
with that dear child who is now in his grave--I never liked it at the
time--she should have been hiding such a double-faced design! I
wonder she was never afraid that something would happen to her. She is
fortunate if nothing does.'

'I really thought, my dear,' said Mr Chick slowly, after rubbing the
bridge of his nose for some time with his newspaper, 'that you had
gone on the same tack yourself, all along, until this morning; and had
thought it would be a convenient thing enough, if it could have been
brought about.'

Mrs Chick instantly burst into tears, and told Mr Chick that if he
wished to trample upon her with his boots, he had better do It.

'But with Lucretia Tox I have done,' said Mrs Chick, after abandoning
herself to her feelings for some minutes, to Mr Chick's great terror.
'I can bear to resign Paul's confidence in favour of one who, I hope and
trust, may be deserving of it, and with whom he has a perfect right to
replace poor Fanny if he chooses; I can bear to be informed, in Paul's
cool manner, of such a change in his plans, and never to be consulted
until all is settled and determined; but deceit I can not bear, and
with Lucretia Tox I have done. It is better as it is,' said Mrs Chick,
piously; 'much better. It would have been a long time before I could
have accommodated myself comfortably with her, after this; and I really
don't know, as Paul is going to be very grand, and these are people of
condition, that she would have been quite presentable, and might not
have compromised myself. There's a providence in everything; everything
works for the best; I have been tried today but on the whole I do not
regret it.'

In which Christian spirit, Mrs Chick dried her eyes and smoothed her
lap, and sat as became a person calm under a great wrong. Mr Chick
feeling his unworthiness no doubt, took an early opportunity of being
set down at a street corner and walking away whistling, with his
shoulders very much raised, and his hands in his pockets.

While poor excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a fawner and
toad-eater, was at least an honest and a constant one, and had ever
borne a faithful friendship towards her impeacher and had been truly
absorbed and swallowed up in devotion to the magnificence of Mr
Dombey--while poor excommunicated Miss Tox watered her plants with her
tears, and felt that it was winter in Princess's Place.

Mrs. Chick comes to visit Miss Tox. She tells Miss Tox that Mr. Dombey is going to remarry, expressing doubts about his choice of wife. Miss Tox is clearly distressed, as Major Bagstock observes with pleasure. Mrs. Chick, witnessing her strong reaction, realizes that Miss Tox has been hoping to marry Dombey herself, and is outraged. Mrs. Chick announces her intention to cut off the friendship, and is annoyed with her husband when he says that he had always seen Miss Tox's intentions, and assumed that the women were working together to facilitate a marriage