Edith went out alone that day, and returned home early. It was but a few
minutes after ten o'clock, when her carriage rolled along the street in
which she lived.

There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been
when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same
cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its
leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, or
rendered shapeless by the fitful searches of a throbbing and bewildered
brain for any resting-place, than adorning such tranquillity. So
obdurate, so unapproachable, so unrelenting, one would have thought that
nothing could soften such a woman's nature, and that everything in life
had hardened it.

Arrived at her own door, she was alighting, when some one coming quietly
from the hall, and standing bareheaded, offered her his arm. The servant
being thrust aside, she had no choice but to touch it; and she then knew
whose arm it was.

'How is your patient, Sir?' she asked, with a curled lip.

'He is better,' returned Carker. 'He is doing very well. I have left him
for the night.'

She bent her head, and was passing up the staircase, when he followed
and said, speaking at the bottom:

'Madam! May I beg the favour of a minute's audience?'

She stopped and turned her eyes back 'It is an unseasonable time, Sir,
and I am fatigued. Is your business urgent?'

'It is very urgent, returned Carker. 'As I am so fortunate as to have
met you, let me press my petition.'

She looked down for a moment at his glistening mouth; and he looked up
at her, standing above him in her stately dress, and thought, again, how
beautiful she was.

'Where is Miss Dombey?' she asked the servant, aloud.

'In the morning room, Ma'am.'

'Show the way there!' Turning her eyes again on the attentive gentleman
at the bottom of the stairs, and informing him with a slight motion of
her head, that he was at liberty to follow, she passed on.

'I beg your pardon! Madam! Mrs Dombey!' cried the soft and nimble
Carker, at her side in a moment. 'May I be permitted to entreat that
Miss Dombey is not present?'

She confronted him, with a quick look, but with the same self-possession
and steadiness.

'I would spare Miss Dombey,' said Carker, in a low voice, 'the knowledge
of what I have to say. At least, Madam, I would leave it to you to
decide whether she shall know of it or not. I owe that to you. It is my
bounden duty to you. After our former interview, it would be monstrous
in me if I did otherwise.'

She slowly withdrew her eyes from his face, and turning to the servant,
said, 'Some other room.' He led the way to a drawing-room, which he
speedily lighted up and then left them. While he remained, not a word
was spoken. Edith enthroned herself upon a couch by the fire; and Mr
Carker, with his hat in his hand and his eyes bent upon the carpet,
stood before her, at some little distance.

'Before I hear you, Sir,' said Edith, when the door was closed, 'I wish
you to hear me.'

'To be addressed by Mrs Dombey,' he returned, 'even in accents of
unmerited reproach, is an honour I so greatly esteem, that although I
were not her servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, most
readily.'

'If you are charged by the man whom you have just now left, Sir;' Mr
Carker raised his eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise,
but she met them, and stopped him, if such were his intention; 'with any
message to me, do not attempt to deliver it, for I will not receive
it. I need scarcely ask you if you are come on such an errand. I have
expected you some time.'

'It is my misfortune,' he replied, 'to be here, wholly against my will,
for such a purpose. Allow me to say that I am here for two purposes.
That is one.'

'That one, Sir,' she returned, 'is ended. Or, if you return to it--'

'Can Mrs Dombey believe,' said Carker, coming nearer, 'that I would
return to it in the face of her prohibition? Is it possible that Mrs
Dombey, having no regard to my unfortunate position, is so determined to
consider me inseparable from my instructor as to do me great and wilful
injustice?'

'Sir,' returned Edith, bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speaking
with a rising passion that inflated her proud nostril and her swelling
neck, and stirred the delicate white down upon a robe she wore, thrown
loosely over shoulders that could hear its snowy neighbourhood. 'Why do
you present yourself to me, as you have done, and speak to me of love
and duty to my husband, and pretend to think that I am happily married,
and that I honour him? How dare you venture so to affront me, when you
know--I do not know better, Sir: I have seen it in your every glance,
and heard it in your every word--that in place of affection between us
there is aversion and contempt, and that I despise him hardly less than
I despise myself for being his! Injustice! If I had done justice to the
torment you have made me feel, and to my sense of the insult you have
put upon me, I should have slain you!'

She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been blinded by her pride
and wrath, and self-humiliation,--which she was, fiercely as she bent
her gaze upon him,--she would have seen the answer in his face. To bring
her to this declaration.

She saw it not, and cared not whether it was there or no. She saw only
the indignities and struggles she had undergone and had to undergo, and
was writhing under them. As she sat looking fixedly at them, rather
than at him, she plucked the feathers from a pinion of some rare and
beautiful bird, which hung from her wrist by a golden thread, to serve
her as a fan, and rained them on the ground.

He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs
of her anger as had escaped her control subsided, with the air of a man
who had his sufficient reply in reserve and would presently deliver it.
And he then spoke, looking straight into her kindling eyes.

'Madam,' he said, 'I know, and knew before to-day, that I have found
no favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so
openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence--'

'Confidence!' she repeated, with disdain.

He passed it over.

'--that I will make no pretence of concealment. I did see from the
first, that there was no affection on your part for Mr Dombey--how could
it possibly exist between such different subjects? And I have seen,
since, that stronger feelings than indifference have been engendered in
your breast--how could that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstanced
as you have been? But was it for me to presume to avow this knowledge to
you in so many words?'

'Was it for you, Sir,' she replied, 'to feign that other belief, and
audaciously to thrust it on me day by day?'

'Madam, it was,' he eagerly retorted. 'If I had done less, if I had
done anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus; and I
foresaw--who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of
Mr Dombey than myself?--that unless your character should prove to be as
yielding and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did
not believe--'

A haughty smile gave him reason to observe that he might repeat this.

'I say, which I did not believe,--the time was likely to come, when such
an understanding as we have now arrived at, would be serviceable.'

'Serviceable to whom, Sir?' she demanded scornfully.

'To you. I will not add to myself, as warning me to refrain even from
that limited commendation of Mr Dombey, in which I can honestly
indulge, in order that I may not have the misfortune of saying anything
distasteful to one whose aversion and contempt,' with great expression,
'are so keen.'

'Is it honest in you, Sir,' said Edith, 'to confess to your "limited
commendation," and to speak in that tone of disparagement, even of him:
being his chief counsellor and flatterer!'

'Counsellor,--yes,' said Carker. 'Flatterer,--no. A little reservation I
fear I must confess to. But our interest and convenience commonly oblige
many of us to make professions that we cannot feel. We have partnerships
of interest and convenience, friendships of interest and convenience,
dealings of interest and convenience, marriages of interest and
convenience, every day.'

She bit her blood-red lip; but without wavering in the dark, stern watch
she kept upon him.

'Madam,' said Mr Carker, sitting down in a chair that was near her, with
an air of the most profound and most considerate respect, 'why should
I hesitate now, being altogether devoted to your service, to speak
plainly? It was natural that a lady, endowed as you are, should think it
feasible to change her husband's character in some respects, and mould
him to a better form.'

'It was not natural to me, Sir,' she rejoined. 'I had never any
expectation or intention of that kind.'

The proud undaunted face showed him it was resolute to wear no mask he
offered, but was set upon a reckless disclosure of itself, indifferent
to any aspect in which it might present itself to such as he.

'At least it was natural,' he resumed, 'that you should deem it quite
possible to live with Mr Dombey as his wife, at once without submitting
to him, and without coming into such violent collision with him. But,
Madam, you did not know Mr Dombey (as you have since ascertained), when
you thought that. You did not know how exacting and how proud he is,
or how he is, if I may say so, the slave of his own greatness, and goes
yoked to his own triumphal car like a beast of burden, with no idea on
earth but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on, over everything
and through everything.'

His teeth gleamed through his malicious relish of this conceit, as he
went on talking:

'Mr Dombey is really capable of no more true consideration for you,
Madam, than for me. The comparison is an extreme one; I intend it to
be so; but quite just. Mr Dombey, in the plenitude of his power, asked
me--I had it from his own lips yesterday morning--to be his go-between
to you, because he knows I am not agreeable to you, and because he
intends that I shall be a punishment for your contumacy; and besides
that, because he really does consider, that I, his paid servant, am an
ambassador whom it is derogatory to the dignity--not of the lady to whom
I have the happiness of speaking; she has no existence in his mind--but
of his wife, a part of himself, to receive. You may imagine how
regardless of me, how obtuse to the possibility of my having any
individual sentiment or opinion he is, when he tells me, openly, that I
am so employed. You know how perfectly indifferent to your feelings he
is, when he threatens you with such a messenger. As you, of course, have
not forgotten that he did.'

She watched him still attentively. But he watched her too; and he saw
that this indication of a knowledge on his part, of something that
had passed between herself and her husband, rankled and smarted in her
haughty breast, like a poisoned arrow.

'I do not recall all this to widen the breach between yourself and
Mr Dombey, Madam--Heaven forbid! what would it profit me?--but as an
example of the hopelessness of impressing Mr Dombey with a sense that
anybody is to be considered when he is in question. We who are about
him, have, in our various positions, done our part, I daresay, to
confirm him in his way of thinking; but if we had not done so, others
would--or they would not have been about him; and it has always been,
from the beginning, the very staple of his life. Mr Dombey has had to
deal, in short, with none but submissive and dependent persons, who have
bowed the knee, and bent the neck, before him. He has never known what
it is to have angry pride and strong resentment opposed to him.'

'But he will know it now!' she seemed to say; though her lips did not
part, nor her eyes falter. He saw the soft down tremble once again, and
he saw her lay the plumage of the beautiful bird against her bosom for
a moment; and he unfolded one more ring of the coil into which he had
gathered himself.

'Mr Dombey, though a most honourable gentleman,' he said, 'is so prone
to pervert even facts to his own view, when he is at all opposed,
in consequence of the warp in his mind, that he--can I give a better
instance than this!--he sincerely believes (you will excuse the folly of
what I am about to say; it not being mine) that his severe expression
of opinion to his present wife, on a certain special occasion she may
remember, before the lamented death of Mrs Skewton, produced a withering
effect, and for the moment quite subdued her!'

Edith laughed. How harshly and unmusically need not be described. It is
enough that he was glad to hear her.

'Madam,' he resumed, 'I have done with this. Your own opinions are so
strong, and, I am persuaded, so unalterable,' he repeated those words
slowly and with great emphasis, 'that I am almost afraid to incur your
displeasure anew, when I say that in spite of these defects and my full
knowledge of them, I have become habituated to Mr Dombey, and esteem
him. But when I say so, it is not, believe me, for the mere sake of
vaunting a feeling that is so utterly at variance with your own, and
for which you can have no sympathy'--oh how distinct and plain and
emphasized this was!--'but to give you an assurance of the zeal with
which, in this unhappy matter, I am yours, and the indignation with
which I regard the part I am to fill!'

She sat as if she were afraid to take her eyes from his face.

And now to unwind the last ring of the coil!

'It is growing late,' said Carker, after a pause, 'and you are, as you
said, fatigued. But the second object of this interview, I must not
forget. I must recommend you, I must entreat you in the most earnest
manner, for sufficient reasons that I have, to be cautious in your
demonstrations of regard for Miss Dombey.'

'Cautious! What do you mean?'

'To be careful how you exhibit too much affection for that young lady.'

'Too much affection, Sir!' said Edith, knitting her broad brow and
rising. 'Who judges my affection, or measures it out? You?'

'It is not I who do so.' He was, or feigned to be, perplexed.

'Who then?'

'Can you not guess who then?'

'I do not choose to guess,' she answered.

'Madam,' he said after a little hesitation; meantime they had been, and
still were, regarding each other as before; 'I am in a difficulty here.
You have told me you will receive no message, and you have forbidden me
to return to that subject; but the two subjects are so closely entwined,
I find, that unless you will accept this vague caution from one who has
now the honour to possess your confidence, though the way to it has been
through your displeasure, I must violate the injunction you have laid
upon me.'

'You know that you are free to do so, Sir,' said Edith. 'Do it.'

So pale, so trembling, so impassioned! He had not miscalculated the
effect then!

'His instructions were,' he said, in a low voice, 'that I should inform
you that your demeanour towards Miss Dombey is not agreeable to him.
That it suggests comparisons to him which are not favourable to himself.
That he desires it may be wholly changed; and that if you are in
earnest, he is confident it will be; for your continued show of
affection will not benefit its object.'

'That is a threat,' she said.

'That is a threat,' he answered, in his voiceless manner of assent:
adding aloud, 'but not directed against you.'

Proud, erect, and dignified, as she stood confronting him; and looking
through him as she did, with her full bright flashing eye; and smiling,
as she was, with scorn and bitterness; she sunk as if the ground had
dropped beneath her, and in an instant would have fallen on the floor,
but that he caught her in his arms. As instantaneously she threw him
off, the moment that he touched her, and, drawing back, confronted him
again, immoveable, with her hand stretched out.

'Please to leave me. Say no more to-night.'

'I feel the urgency of this,' said Mr Carker, 'because it is impossible
to say what unforeseen consequences might arise, or how soon, from your
being unacquainted with his state of mind. I understand Miss Dombey is
concerned, now, at the dismissal of her old servant, which is likely
to have been a minor consequence in itself. You don't blame me for
requesting that Miss Dombey might not be present. May I hope so?'

'I do not. Please to leave me, Sir.'

'I knew that your regard for the young lady, which is very sincere and
strong, I am well persuaded, would render it a great unhappiness to you,
ever to be a prey to the reflection that you had injured her position
and ruined her future hopes,' said Carker hurriedly, but eagerly.

'No more to-night. Leave me, if you please.'

'I shall be here constantly in my attendance upon him, and in the
transaction of business matters. You will allow me to see you again, and
to consult what should be done, and learn your wishes?'

She motioned him towards the door.

'I cannot even decide whether to tell him I have spoken to you yet;
or to lead him to suppose that I have deferred doing so, for want of
opportunity, or for any other reason. It will be necessary that you
should enable me to consult with you very soon.'

'At any time but now,' she answered.

'You will understand, when I wish to see you, that Miss Dombey is not to
be present; and that I seek an interview as one who has the happiness to
possess your confidence, and who comes to render you every assistance in
his power, and, perhaps, on many occasions, to ward off evil from her?'

Looking at him still with the same apparent dread of releasing him for
a moment from the influence of her steady gaze, whatever that might be,
she answered, 'Yes!' and once more bade him go.

He bowed, as if in compliance; but turning back, when he had nearly
reached the door, said:

'I am forgiven, and have explained my fault. May I--for Miss Dombey's
sake, and for my own--take your hand before I go?'

She gave him the gloved hand she had maimed last night. He took it in
one of his, and kissed it, and withdrew. And when he had closed the
door, he waved the hand with which he had taken hers, and thrust it in
his breast.

Edith saw no one that night, but locked her door, and kept herself
alone.

She did not weep; she showed no greater agitation, outwardly, than when
she was riding home. She laid as proud a head upon her pillow as she had
borne in her carriage; and her prayer ran thus:

'May this man be a liar! For if he has spoken truth, she is lost to me,
and I have no hope left!'

This man, meanwhile, went home musing to bed, thinking, with a dainty
pleasure, how imperious her passion was, how she had sat before him in
her beauty, with the dark eyes that had never turned away but once; how
the white down had fluttered; how the bird's feathers had been strewn
upon the ground.

Carker asks to speak with Edith. She tries to arrange that Florence be present during this conversation, but he implies that he would prefer Florence not know what they will speak about. They meet in private, and in her agitation Edith explicitly admits that there is no affection between her and Dombey. Carker pretends to take her side, explaining that Dombey is proud and stubborn, but that he disagrees with his method of trying to control his wife. Carker also tells her that Dombey wants Edith to show less affection to Florence. If she does not do so, Dombey is likely to find some way to punish Florence


Among sundry minor alterations in Mr Carker's life and habits that
began to take place at this time, none was more remarkable than the
extraordinary diligence with which he applied himself to business, and
the closeness with which he investigated every detail that the affairs
of the House laid open to him. Always active and penetrating in such
matters, his lynx-eyed vigilance now increased twenty-fold. Not only
did his weary watch keep pace with every present point that every day
presented to him in some new form, but in the midst of these engrossing
occupations he found leisure--that is, he made it--to review the past
transactions of the Firm, and his share in them, during a long series
of years. Frequently when the clerks were all gone, the offices dark and
empty, and all similar places of business shut up, Mr Carker, with the
whole anatomy of the iron room laid bare before him, would explore the
mysteries of books and papers, with the patient progress of a man who
was dissecting the minutest nerves and fibres of his subject. Perch, the
messenger, who usually remained on these occasions, to entertain himself
with the perusal of the Price Current by the light of one candle, or
to doze over the fire in the outer office, at the imminent risk every
moment of diving head foremost into the coal-box, could not withhold the
tribute of his admiration from this zealous conduct, although it much
contracted his domestic enjoyments; and again, and again, expatiated
to Mrs Perch (now nursing twins) on the industry and acuteness of their
managing gentleman in the City.

The same increased and sharp attention that Mr Carker bestowed on the
business of the House, he applied to his own personal affairs. Though
not a partner in the concern--a distinction hitherto reserved solely to
inheritors of the great name of Dombey--he was in the receipt of some
percentage on its dealings; and, participating in all its facilities
for the employment of money to advantage, was considered, by the minnows
among the tritons of the East, a rich man. It began to be said, among
these shrewd observers, that Jem Carker, of Dombey's, was looking about
him to see what he was worth; and that he was calling in his money at
a good time, like the long-headed fellow he was; and bets were even
offered on the Stock Exchange that Jem was going to marry a rich widow.

Yet these cares did not in the least interfere with Mr Carker's watching
of his chief, or with his cleanness, neatness, sleekness, or any
cat-like quality he possessed. It was not so much that there was a
change in him, in reference to any of his habits, as that the whole man
was intensified. Everything that had been observable in him before, was
observable now, but with a greater amount of concentration. He did each
single thing, as if he did nothing else--a pretty certain indication in
a man of that range of ability and purpose, that he is doing something
which sharpens and keeps alive his keenest powers.

The only decided alteration in him was, that as he rode to and fro along
the streets, he would fall into deep fits of musing, like that in
which he had come away from Mr Dombey's house, on the morning of
that gentleman's disaster. At such times, he would keep clear of the
obstacles in his way, mechanically; and would appear to see and hear
nothing until arrival at his destination, or some sudden chance or
effort roused him.

Walking his white-legged horse thus, to the counting-house of Dombey and
Son one day, he was as unconscious of the observation of two pairs of
women's eyes, as of the fascinated orbs of Rob the Grinder, who, in
waiting a street's length from the appointed place, as a demonstration
of punctuality, vainly touched and retouched his hat to attract
attention, and trotted along on foot, by his master's side, prepared to
hold his stirrup when he should alight.

'See where he goes!' cried one of these two women, an old creature, who
stretched out her shrivelled arm to point him out to her companion, a
young woman, who stood close beside her, withdrawn like herself into a
gateway.

Mrs Brown's daughter looked out, at this bidding on the part of Mrs
Brown; and there were wrath and vengeance in her face.

'I never thought to look at him again,' she said, in a low voice; 'but
it's well I should, perhaps. I see. I see!'

'Not changed!' said the old woman, with a look of eager malice.

'He changed!' returned the other. 'What for? What has he suffered? There
is change enough for twenty in me. Isn't that enough?'

'See where he goes!' muttered the old woman, watching her daughter with
her red eyes; 'so easy and so trim a-horseback, while we are in the
mud.'

'And of it,' said her daughter impatiently. 'We are mud, underneath his
horse's feet. What should we be?'

In the intentness with which she looked after him again, she made a
hasty gesture with her hand when the old woman began to reply, as if her
view could be obstructed by mere sound. Her mother watching her, and not
him, remained silent; until her kindling glance subsided, and she drew a
long breath, as if in the relief of his being gone.

'Deary!' said the old woman then. 'Alice! Handsome gall Ally!' She
gently shook her sleeve to arouse her attention. 'Will you let him go
like that, when you can wring money from him? Why, it's a wickedness, my
daughter.'

'Haven't I told you, that I will not have money from him?' she returned.
'And don't you yet believe me? Did I take his sister's money? Would
I touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through his white
hands--unless it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it back
to him? Peace, mother, and come away.'

'And him so rich?' murmured the old woman. 'And us so poor!'

'Poor in not being able to pay him any of the harm we owe him,' returned
her daughter. 'Let him give me that sort of riches, and I'll take them
from him, and use them. Come away. Its no good looking at his horse.
Come away, mother!'

But the old woman, for whom the spectacle of Rob the Grinder returning
down the street, leading the riderless horse, appeared to have some
extraneous interest that it did not possess in itself, surveyed that
young man with the utmost earnestness; and seeming to have whatever
doubts she entertained, resolved as he drew nearer, glanced at her
daughter with brightened eyes and with her finger on her lip, and
emerging from the gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him on
the shoulder.

'Why, where's my sprightly Rob been, all this time!' she said, as he
turned round.

The sprightly Rob, whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the
salutation, looked exceedingly dismayed, and said, with the water rising
in his eyes:

'Oh! why can't you leave a poor cove alone, Misses Brown, when he's
getting an honest livelihood and conducting himself respectable? What do
you come and deprive a cove of his character for, by talking to him in
the streets, when he's taking his master's horse to a honest stable--a
horse you'd go and sell for cats' and dogs' meat if you had your way!
Why, I thought,' said the Grinder, producing his concluding remark as if
it were the climax of all his injuries, 'that you was dead long ago!'

'This is the way,' cried the old woman, appealing to her daughter, 'that
he talks to me, who knew him weeks and months together, my deary, and
have stood his friend many and many a time among the pigeon-fancying
tramps and bird-catchers.'

'Let the birds be, will you, Misses Brown?' retorted Rob, in a tone of
the acutest anguish. 'I think a cove had better have to do with lions
than them little creeturs, for they're always flying back in your face
when you least expect it. Well, how d'ye do and what do you want?' These
polite inquiries the Grinder uttered, as it were under protest, and with
great exasperation and vindictiveness.

'Hark how he speaks to an old friend, my deary!' said Mrs Brown, again
appealing to her daughter. 'But there's some of his old friends not so
patient as me. If I was to tell some that he knows, and has spotted and
cheated with, where to find him--'

'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' interrupted the miserable
Grinder, glancing quickly round, as though he expected to see his
master's teeth shining at his elbow. 'What do you take a pleasure in
ruining a cove for? At your time of life too! when you ought to be
thinking of a variety of things!'

'What a gallant horse!' said the old woman, patting the animal's neck.

'Let him alone, will you, Misses Brown?' cried Rob, pushing away her
hand. 'You're enough to drive a penitent cove mad!'

'Why, what hurt do I do him, child?' returned the old woman.

'Hurt?' said Rob. 'He's got a master that would find it out if he was
touched with a straw.' And he blew upon the place where the old woman's
hand had rested for a moment, and smoothed it gently with his finger, as
if he seriously believed what he said.

The old woman looking back to mumble and mouth at her daughter, who
followed, kept close to Rob's heels as he walked on with the bridle in
his hand; and pursued the conversation.

'A good place, Rob, eh?' said she. 'You're in luck, my child.'

'Oh don't talk about luck, Misses Brown,' returned the wretched Grinder,
facing round and stopping. 'If you'd never come, or if you'd go away,
then indeed a cove might be considered tolerable lucky. Can't you go
along, Misses Brown, and not foller me!' blubbered Rob, with sudden
defiance. 'If the young woman's a friend of yours, why don't she take
you away, instead of letting you make yourself so disgraceful!'

'What!' croaked the old woman, putting her face close to his, with a
malevolent grin upon it that puckered up the loose skin down in her very
throat. 'Do you deny your old chum! Have you lurked to my house fifty
times, and slept sound in a corner when you had no other bed but the
paving-stones, and do you talk to me like this! Have I bought and sold
with you, and helped you in my way of business, schoolboy, sneak, and
what not, and do you tell me to go along? Could I raise a crowd of old
company about you to-morrow morning, that would follow you to ruin like
copies of your own shadow, and do you turn on me with your bold looks!
I'll go. Come, Alice.'

'Stop, Misses Brown!' cried the distracted Grinder. 'What are you doing
of? Don't put yourself in a passion! Don't let her go, if you please. I
haven't meant any offence. I said "how d'ye do," at first, didn't I?
But you wouldn't answer. How you do? Besides,' said Rob piteously, 'look
here! How can a cove stand talking in the street with his master's
prad a-wanting to be took to be rubbed down, and his master up to every
individgle thing that happens!'

The old woman made a show of being partially appeased, but shook her
head, and mouthed and muttered still.

'Come along to the stables, and have a glass of something that's good
for you, Misses Brown, can't you?' said Rob, 'instead of going on, like
that, which is no good to you, nor anybody else. Come along with her,
will you be so kind?' said Rob. 'I'm sure I'm delighted to see her, if
it wasn't for the horse!'

With this apology, Rob turned away, a rueful picture of despair, and
walked his charge down a bye street' The old woman, mouthing at her
daughter, followed close upon him. The daughter followed.

Turning into a silent little square or court-yard that had a great
church tower rising above it, and a packer's warehouse, and a
bottle-maker's warehouse, for its places of business, Rob the Grinder
delivered the white-legged horse to the hostler of a quaint stable at
the corner; and inviting Mrs Brown and her daughter to seat themselves
upon a stone bench at the gate of that establishment, soon reappeared
from a neighbouring public-house with a pewter measure and a glass.

'Here's master--Mr Carker, child!' said the old woman, slowly, as her
sentiment before drinking. 'Lord bless him!'

'Why, I didn't tell you who he was,' observed Rob, with staring eyes.

'We know him by sight,' said Mrs Brown, whose working mouth and nodding
head stopped for the moment, in the fixedness of her attention. 'We saw
him pass this morning, afore he got off his horse; when you were ready
to take it.'

'Ay, ay,' returned Rob, appearing to wish that his readiness had carried
him to any other place.--'What's the matter with her? Won't she drink?'

This inquiry had reference to Alice, who, folded in her cloak, sat a
little apart, profoundly inattentive to his offer of the replenished
glass.

The old woman shook her head. 'Don't mind her,' she said; 'she's a
strange creetur, if you know'd her, Rob. But Mr Carker--'

'Hush!' said Rob, glancing cautiously up at the packer's, and at the
bottle-maker's, as if, from any one of the tiers of warehouses, Mr
Carker might be looking down. 'Softly.'

'Why, he ain't here!' cried Mrs Brown.

'I don't know that,' muttered Rob, whose glance even wandered to the
church tower, as if he might be there, with a supernatural power of
hearing.

'Good master?' inquired Mrs Brown.

Rob nodded; and added, in a low voice, 'precious sharp.'

'Lives out of town, don't he, lovey?' said the old woman.

'When he's at home,' returned Rob; 'but we don't live at home just now.'

'Where then?' asked the old woman.

'Lodgings; up near Mr Dombey's,' returned Rob.

The younger woman fixed her eyes so searchingly upon him, and so
suddenly, that Rob was quite confounded, and offered the glass again,
but with no more effect upon her than before.

'Mr Dombey--you and I used to talk about him, sometimes, you know,' said
Rob to Mrs Brown. 'You used to get me to talk about him.'

The old woman nodded.

'Well, Mr Dombey, he's had a fall from his horse,' said Rob,
unwillingly; 'and my master has to be up there, more than usual, either
with him, or Mrs Dombey, or some of 'em; and so we've come to town.'

'Are they good friends, lovey?'asked the old woman.

'Who?' retorted Rob.

'He and she?'

'What, Mr and Mrs Dombey?' said Rob. 'How should I know!'

'Not them--Master and Mrs Dombey, chick,' replied the old woman,
coaxingly.

'I don't know,' said Rob, looking round him again. 'I suppose so. How
curious you are, Misses Brown! Least said, soonest mended.'

'Why there's no harm in it!' exclaimed the old woman, with a laugh, and
a clap of her hands. 'Sprightly Rob, has grown tame since he has been
well off! There's no harm in it.'

'No, there's no harm in it, I know,' returned Rob, with the same
distrustful glance at the packer's and the bottle-maker's, and the
church; 'but blabbing, if it's only about the number of buttons on my
master's coat, won't do. I tell you it won't do with him. A cove had
better drown himself. He says so. I shouldn't have so much as told you
what his name was, if you hadn't known it. Talk about somebody else.'

As Rob took another cautious survey of the yard, the old woman made a
secret motion to her daughter. It was momentary, but the daughter, with
a slight look of intelligence, withdrew her eyes from the boy's face,
and sat folded in her cloak as before.

'Rob, lovey!' said the old woman, beckoning him to the other end of the
bench. 'You were always a pet and favourite of mine. Now, weren't you?
Don't you know you were?'

'Yes, Misses Brown,' replied the Grinder, with a very bad grace.

'And you could leave me!' said the old woman, flinging her arms about
his neck. 'You could go away, and grow almost out of knowledge, and
never come to tell your poor old friend how fortunate you were, proud
lad! Oho, Oho!'

'Oh here's a dreadful go for a cove that's got a master wide awake in
the neighbourhood!' exclaimed the wretched Grinder. 'To be howled over
like this here!'

'Won't you come and see me, Robby?' cried Mrs Brown. 'Oho, won't you
ever come and see me?'

'Yes, I tell you! Yes, I will!' returned the Grinder.

'That's my own Rob! That's my lovey!' said Mrs Brown, drying the tears
upon her shrivelled face, and giving him a tender squeeze. 'At the old
place, Rob?'

'Yes,' replied the Grinder.

'Soon, Robby dear?' cried Mrs Brown; 'and often?'

'Yes. Yes. Yes,' replied Rob. 'I will indeed, upon my soul and body.'

'And then,' said Mrs Brown, with her arms uplifted towards the sky, and
her head thrown back and shaking, 'if he's true to his word, I'll never
come a-near him though I know where he is, and never breathe a syllable
about him! Never!'

This ejaculation seemed a drop of comfort to the miserable Grinder, who
shook Mrs Brown by the hand upon it, and implored her with tears in his
eyes, to leave a cove and not destroy his prospects. Mrs Brown,
with another fond embrace, assented; but in the act of following her
daughter, turned back, with her finger stealthily raised, and asked in a
hoarse whisper for some money.

'A shilling, dear!' she said, with her eager avaricious face, 'or
sixpence! For old acquaintance sake. I'm so poor. And my handsome
gal'--looking over her shoulder--'she's my gal, Rob--half starves me.'

But as the reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, her daughter, coming
quietly back, caught the hand in hers, and twisted out the coin.

'What,' she said, 'mother! always money! money from the first, and to
the last. Do you mind so little what I said but now? Here. Take it!'

The old woman uttered a moan as the money was restored, but without in
any other way opposing its restoration, hobbled at her daughter's side
out of the yard, and along the by-street upon which it opened. The
astonished and dismayed Rob staring after them, saw that they stopped,
and fell to earnest conversation very soon; and more than once observed
a darkly threatening action of the younger woman's hand (obviously
having reference to someone of whom they spoke), and a crooning feeble
imitation of it on the part of Mrs Brown, that made him earnestly hope
he might not be the subject of their discourse.

With the present consolation that they were gone, and with the
prospective comfort that Mrs Brown could not live for ever, and was
not likely to live long to trouble him, the Grinder, not otherwise
regretting his misdeeds than as they were attended with such
disagreeable incidental consequences, composed his ruffled features to
a more serene expression by thinking of the admirable manner in which he
had disposed of Captain Cuttle (a reflection that seldom failed to put
him in a flow of spirits), and went to the Dombey Counting House to
receive his master's orders.

There his master, so subtle and vigilant of eye, that Rob quaked before
him, more than half expecting to be taxed with Mrs Brown, gave him the
usual morning's box of papers for Mr Dombey, and a note for Mrs Dombey:
merely nodding his head as an enjoinder to be careful, and to use
dispatch--a mysterious admonition, fraught in the Grinder's imagination
with dismal warnings and threats; and more powerful with him than any
words.

Alone again, in his own room, Mr Carker applied himself to work, and
worked all day. He saw many visitors; overlooked a number of documents;
went in and out, to and from, sundry places of mercantile resort; and
indulged in no more abstraction until the day's business was done. But,
when the usual clearance of papers from his table was made at last, he
fell into his thoughtful mood once more.

He was standing in his accustomed place and attitude, with his eyes
intently fixed upon the ground, when his brother entered to bring back
some letters that had been taken out in the course of the day. He put
them quietly on the table, and was going immediately, when Mr Carker the
Manager, whose eyes had rested on him, on his entrance, as if they had
all this time had him for the subject of their contemplation, instead of
the office-floor, said:

'Well, John Carker, and what brings you here?'

His brother pointed to the letters, and was again withdrawing.

'I wonder,' said the Manager, 'that you can come and go, without
inquiring how our master is'.

'We had word this morning in the Counting House, that Mr Dombey was
doing well,' replied his brother.

'You are such a meek fellow,' said the Manager, with a smile,--'but you
have grown so, in the course of years--that if any harm came to him,
you'd be miserable, I dare swear now.'

'I should be truly sorry, James,' returned the other.

'He would be sorry!' said the Manager, pointing at him, as if there were
some other person present to whom he was appealing. 'He would be truly
sorry! This brother of mine! This junior of the place, this slighted
piece of lumber, pushed aside with his face to the wall, like a rotten
picture, and left so, for Heaven knows how many years he's all gratitude
and respect, and devotion too, he would have me believe!'

'I would have you believe nothing, James,' returned the other. 'Be as
just to me as you would to any other man below you. You ask a question,
and I answer it.'

'And have you nothing, Spaniel,' said the Manager, with unusual
irascibility, 'to complain of in him? No proud treatment to resent, no
insolence, no foolery of state, no exaction of any sort! What the devil!
are you man or mouse?'

'It would be strange if any two persons could be together for so
many years, especially as superior and inferior, without each having
something to complain of in the other--as he thought, at all events,'
replied John Carker. 'But apart from my history here--'

'His history here!' exclaimed the Manager. 'Why, there it is. The very
fact that makes him an extreme case, puts him out of the whole chapter!
Well?'

'Apart from that, which, as you hint, gives me a reason to be thankful
that I alone (happily for all the rest) possess, surely there is no one
in the House who would not say and feel at least as much. You do
not think that anybody here would be indifferent to a mischance or
misfortune happening to the head of the House, or anything than truly
sorry for it?'

'You have good reason to be bound to him too!' said the Manager,
contemptuously. 'Why, don't you believe that you are kept here, as a
cheap example, and a famous instance of the clemency of Dombey and Son,
redounding to the credit of the illustrious House?'

'No,' replied his brother, mildly, 'I have long believed that I am kept
here for more kind and disinterested reasons.'

'But you were going,' said the Manager, with the snarl of a tiger-cat,
'to recite some Christian precept, I observed.'

'Nay, James,' returned the other, 'though the tie of brotherhood between
us has been long broken and thrown away--'

'Who broke it, good Sir?' said the Manager.

'I, by my misconduct. I do not charge it upon you.'

The Manager replied, with that mute action of his bristling mouth, 'Oh,
you don't charge it upon me!' and bade him go on.

'I say, though there is not that tie between us, do not, I entreat,
assail me with unnecessary taunts, or misinterpret what I say, or would
say. I was only going to suggest to you that it would be a mistake to
suppose that it is only you, who have been selected here, above all
others, for advancement, confidence and distinction (selected, in the
beginning, I know, for your great ability and trustfulness), and who
communicate more freely with Mr Dombey than anyone, and stand, it may
be said, on equal terms with him, and have been favoured and enriched by
him--that it would be a mistake to suppose that it is only you who are
tender of his welfare and reputation. There is no one in the House,
from yourself down to the lowest, I sincerely believe, who does not
participate in that feeling.'

'You lie!' said the Manager, red with sudden anger. 'You're a hypocrite,
John Carker, and you lie.'

'James!' cried the other, flushing in his turn. 'What do you mean by
these insulting words? Why do you so basely use them to me, unprovoked?'

'I tell you,' said the Manager, 'that your hypocrisy and meekness--that
all the hypocrisy and meekness of this place--is not worth that to me,'
snapping his thumb and finger, 'and that I see through it as if it were
air! There is not a man employed here, standing between myself and the
lowest in place (of whom you are very considerate, and with reason,
for he is not far off), who wouldn't be glad at heart to see his master
humbled: who does not hate him, secretly: who does not wish him evil
rather than good: and who would not turn upon him, if he had the power
and boldness. The nearer to his favour, the nearer to his insolence; the
closer to him, the farther from him. That's the creed here!'

'I don't know,' said his brother, whose roused feelings had soon yielded
to surprise, 'who may have abused your ear with such representations;
or why you have chosen to try me, rather than another. But that you
have been trying me, and tampering with me, I am now sure. You have a
different manner and a different aspect from any that I ever saw in you.
I will only say to you, once more, you are deceived.'

'I know I am,' said the Manager. 'I have told you so.'

'Not by me,' returned his brother. 'By your informant, if you have one.
If not, by your own thoughts and suspicions.'

'I have no suspicions,' said the Manager. 'Mine are certainties. You
pusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs! All making the same show, all
canting the same story, all whining the same professions, all harbouring
the same transparent secret.'

His brother withdrew, without saying more, and shut the door as he
concluded. Mr Carker the Manager drew a chair close before the fire, and
fell to beating the coals softly with the poker.

'The faint-hearted, fawning knaves,' he muttered, with his two shining
rows of teeth laid bare. 'There's not one among them, who wouldn't feign
to be so shocked and outraged--! Bah! There's not one among them, but
if he had at once the power, and the wit and daring to use it, would
scatter Dombey's pride and lay it low, as ruthlessly as I rake out these
ashes.'

As he broke them up and strewed them in the grate, he looked on with a
thoughtful smile at what he was doing. 'Without the same queen
beckoner too!' he added presently; 'and there is pride there, not to
be forgotten--witness our own acquaintance!' With that he fell into a
deeper reverie, and sat pondering over the blackening grate, until he
rose up like a man who had been absorbed in a book, and looking round
him took his hat and gloves, went to where his horse was waiting,
mounted, and rode away through the lighted streets, for it was evening.

He rode near Mr Dombey's house; and falling into a walk as he approached
it, looked up at the windows The window where he had once seen Florence
sitting with her dog attracted his attention first, though there was no
light in it; but he smiled as he carried his eyes up the tall front of
the house, and seemed to leave that object superciliously behind.

'Time was,' he said, 'when it was well to watch even your rising little
star, and know in what quarter there were clouds, to shadow you if
needful. But a planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light.'

He turned the white-legged horse round the street corner, and sought
one shining window from among those at the back of the house. Associated
with it was a certain stately presence, a gloved hand, the remembrance
how the feathers of a beautiful bird's wing had been showered down upon
the floor, and how the light white down upon a robe had stirred and
rustled, as in the rising of a distant storm. These were the things he
carried with him as he turned away again, and rode through the darkening
and deserted Parks at a quick rate.

In fatal truth, these were associated with a woman, a proud woman,
who hated him, but who by slow and sure degrees had been led on by his
craft, and her pride and resentment, to endure his company, and little
by little to receive him as one who had the privilege to talk to her
of her own defiant disregard of her own husband, and her abandonment of
high consideration for herself. They were associated with a woman who
hated him deeply, and who knew him, and who mistrusted him because she
knew him, and because he knew her; but who fed her fierce resentment by
suffering him to draw nearer and yet nearer to her every day, in spite
of the hate she cherished for him. In spite of it! For that very reason;
since in its depths, too far down for her threatening eye to pierce,
though she could see into them dimly, lay the dark retaliation, whose
faintest shadow seen once and shuddered at, and never seen again, would
have been sufficient stain upon her soul.

Did the phantom of such a woman flit about him on his ride; true to the
reality, and obvious to him?

Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly as she was. She bore him company
with her pride, resentment, hatred, all as plain to him as her beauty;
with nothing plainer to him than her hatred of him. He saw her sometimes
haughty and repellent at his side, and some times down among his horse's
feet, fallen and in the dust. But he always saw her as she was, without
disguise, and watched her on the dangerous way that she was going.

And when his ride was over, and he was newly dressed, and came into the
light of her bright room with his bent head, soft voice, and soothing
smile, he saw her yet as plainly. He even suspected the mystery of the
gloved hand, and held it all the longer in his own for that suspicion.
Upon the dangerous way that she was going, he was, still; and not a
footprint did she mark upon it, but he set his own there, straight.

Mr. Carker becomes even more diligent than usual in monitoring the business affairs of the Dombey firm. One day, Mrs. Brown and her daughter secretly watch him as he goes to work, and they discuss their hatred of him. Mrs. Brown encourages her daughter to try to extract money from him, but Alice refuses, saying that she only wants to cause him suffering. After Carker has arrived, Rob is leading his horse away and is approached by Mrs. Brown and Alice. Rob is uncomfortable talking to them, but also does not want to make Mrs. Brown angry. After Rob delivers the horse to the stables, he sits and talks with the women, explaining that he and Carker are currently lodging near the Domby house so as to be close by during Mr. Dombey's recovery. Mrs. Brown asks whether Carker is close to Mrs. Dombey, and Rob expresses discomfort with the information he is revealing. Mrs. Brown makes Rob promise to come and see her from time to time, and also gets him to give her money, although Alice is disgusted and makes her return it. While Mr. Carker is at the office, John Carker comes in to pick up some documents. Carker questions his brother about whether he feels resentment towards Dombey, and mocks John for his claim that he does not. Carker says that everyone employed by Dombey secretly hates and resents him. John Carker disagrees, and leaves Carker alone to his meditations. That night, he lurks outside the Dombey house gazing up at it and thinking about Edith

This section is perhaps the darkest in the novel. It unflinchingly addresses the dark possibilities that have been implied from the beginning: are there situations in which there is no hope? Will individuals remain stubbornly incapable of recognizing the error of their perspectives? While Mrs. Skewton is a relatively minor character, her death adds a bleak note to the novel in that she dies without ever realizing the tragic impact her actions have had, or coming to understand that her toxic view of the world was wrong. Her death therefore endorses the possibility that characters may not be capable of reform, change, or growth. This possibility looms even larger as Dombey and Edith's marriage disintegrates. While Edith can be spiteful in her behavior towards him, she proposes a number of possibilities meant to allow them to live in relative peace. She is also very concerned that Florence not be impacted by their antagonism. Dombey, however, rejects all of her attempts at trying to make conditions in the household more bearable. In his interactions with his wife, Dombey shows even more explicit coldness and cruelty than what he has demonstrated to his daughter. He demands subservience from Edith, clearly believing that his position as a man entitles him to dictate the terms of their marriage. He also uses his intelligence to maximize damage: since he can tell that she dislikes Carker, he knows it will be especially humiliating for her to have Carker be involved in the intimate details of their life. Dombey shows that he has no compassion in what he is willing to do to make it clear that he is superior to others. Carker also demonstrates his ability to cruelly manipulate people. He knows that Florence is Edith's weak spot, and he uses this knowledge to blackmail Edith and push her into situations she would not otherwise agree to. Edith's helpless position between the two men, both of whom only want to break her to their will and don't care for her well-being, helps to create sympathy for her, which is especially important given that, in the eyes of a Victorian audience, her decision to leave her husband for another man would be shocking and highly immoral. Her wildness in her interaction with Florence is also important in that it demonstrates she is not taking her decision lightly, and would not resort to this drastic step if she had any other options. Her disgust with the valuable luxuries Dombey has given her also provides a kind of moral redemption: she is unwilling to sacrifice her integrity just so that she can enjoy costly clothes and jewelry. Florence is perpetually put in the middle of conflicts between her father and stepmother, and when Edith leaves, she attempts to comfort her father. While his reaction speaks to the grief and rage he is experiencing, it is a devastating blow to Florence. Years of psychological violence are finally manifested in a physical strike. There is also the indication of how their relationship has only soured further as Florence has matured from child into woman. Dombey's misogynistic rage at the realization that his wife has betrayed him extends to Florence as well. Dickens carefully omits the language Dombey uses in this critical scene but he implies that Dombey presumably uses a sexualized slur against Edith, perhaps explicitly making the connection to the implied references to prostitution. To use this kind of language in front of his young, sheltered daughter would be hugely taboo and constitute another kind of violence, confirming for Florence that her father has no respect for her well-being.