to his lips, said, 'Tomorrow morning
I shall have the happiness of claiming this hand as Mrs Dombey's,' and
bowed himself solemnly out.

Mrs Skewton rang for candles as soon as the house-door had closed upon
him. With the candles appeared her maid, with the juvenile dress that
was to delude the world to-morrow. The dress had savage retribution in
it, as such dresses ever have, and made her infinitely older and more
hideous than her greasy flannel gown. But Mrs Skewton tried it on with
mincing satisfaction; smirked at her cadaverous self in the glass, as
she thought of its killing effect upon the Major; and suffering her maid
to take it off again, and to prepare her for repose, tumbled into ruins
like a house of painted cards.

All this time, Edith remained at the dark window looking out into the
street. When she and her mother were at last left alone, she moved
from it for the first time that evening, and came opposite to her. The
yawning, shaking, peevish figure of the mother, with her eyes raised to
confront the proud erect form of the daughter, whose glance of fire was
bent downward upon her, had a conscious air upon it, that no levity or
temper could conceal.

'I am tired to death,' said she. 'You can't be trusted for a moment. You
are worse than a child. Child! No child would be half so obstinate and
undutiful.'

'Listen to me, mother,' returned Edith, passing these words by with a
scorn that would not descend to trifle with them. 'You must remain alone
here until I return.'

'Must remain alone here, Edith, until you return!' repeated her mother.

'Or in that name upon which I shall call to-morrow to witness what I do,
so falsely: and so shamefully, I swear I will refuse the hand of this
man in the church. If I do not, may I fall dead upon the pavement!'

The mother answered with a look of quick alarm, in no degree diminished
by the look she met.

'It is enough,' said Edith, steadily, 'that we are what we are. I
will have no youth and truth dragged down to my level. I will have no
guileless nature undermined, corrupted, and perverted, to amuse the
leisure of a world of mothers. You know my meaning. Florence must go
home.'

'You are an idiot, Edith,' cried her angry mother. 'Do you expect there
can ever be peace for you in that house, till she is married, and away?'

'Ask me, or ask yourself, if I ever expect peace in that house,' said
her daughter, 'and you know the answer.

'And am I to be told to-ni