still.

'My dearest love,' said Cleopatra, 'do you hear what Mr Dombey says? Ah,
my dear Dombey!' aside to that gentleman, 'how her absence, as the
time approaches, reminds me of the days, when that most agreeable of
creatures, her Papa, was in your situation!'

'I have nothing to suggest. It shall be when you please,' said Edith,
scarcely looking over the table at Mr Dombey.

'To-morrow?' suggested Mr Dombey.

'If you please.'

'Or would next day,' said Mr Dombey, 'suit your engagements better?'

'I have no engagements. I am always at your disposal. Let it be when you
like.'

'No engagements, my dear Edith!' remonstrated her mother, 'when you are
in a most terrible state of flurry all day long, and have a thousand and
one appointments with all sorts of trades-people!'

'They are of your making,' returned Edith, turning on her with a slight
contraction of her brow. 'You and Mr Dombey can arrange between you.'

'Very true indeed, my love, and most considerate of you!' said
Cleopatra. 'My darling Florence, you must really come and kiss me once
more, if you please, my dear!'

Singular coincidence, that these gushes of interest In Florence hurried
Cleopatra away from almost every dialogue in which Edith had a share,
however trifling! Florence had certainly never undergone so much
embracing, and perhaps had never been, unconsciously, so useful in her
life.

Mr Dombey was far from quarrelling, in his own breast, with the manner
of his beautiful betrothed. He had that good reason for sympathy
with haughtiness and coldness, which is found In a fellow-feeling. It
flattered him to think how these deferred to him, in Edith's case, and
seemed to have no will apart from his. It flattered him to picture to
himself, this proud and stately woman doing the honours of his house,
and chilling his guests after his own manner. The dignity of Dombey and
Son would be heightened and maintained, indeed, in such hands.

So thought Mr Dombey, when he was left alone at the dining-table, and
mused upon his past and future fortunes: finding no uncongeniality in an
air of scant and gloomy state that pervaded the room, in colour a
dark brown, with black hatchments of pictures blotching the walls, and
twenty-four black chairs, with almost as many nails in them as so many
coffins, waiting like mutes, upon the threshold of the Turkey carpet;
and two exhausted negroes holding up two withered branches of candelabra
on the sideboard, and a mu