upposed to be his invariable custom, whenever he considered he
had made a point.

As it was not his humour to be often sought, Captain Cuttle decided
not to go or send to him next day, or until he should make his gracious
pleasure known in such wise, or failing that, until some little time
should have lapsed. The Captain, therefore, renewed his solitary life
next morning, and thought profoundly, many mornings, noons, and nights,
of old Sol Gills, and Bunsby's sentiments concerning him, and the hopes
there were of his return. Much of such thinking strengthened Captain
Cuttle's hopes; and he humoured them and himself by watching for the
Instrument-maker at the door--as he ventured to do now, in his strange
liberty--and setting his chair in its place, and arranging the little
parlour as it used to be, in case he should come home unexpectedly. He
likewise, in his thoughtfulness, took down a certain little miniature
of Walter as a schoolboy, from its accustomed nail, lest it should
shock the old man on his return. The Captain had his presentiments, too,
sometimes, that he would come on such a day; and one particular Sunday,
even ordered a double allowance of dinner, he was so sanguine. But come,
old Solomon did not; and still the neighbours noticed how the seafaring
man in the glazed hat, stood at the shop-door of an evening, looking up
and down the street.

CHAPTER 40. Domestic Relations

It was not in the nature of things that a man of Mr Dombey's mood,
opposed to such a spirit as he had raised against himself, should be
softened in the imperious asperity of his temper; or that the cold hard
armour of pride in which he lived encased, should be made more flexible
by constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse
of such a nature--it is a main part of the heavy retribution on itself
it bears within itself--that while deference and concession swell
its evil qualities, and are the food it grows upon, resistance and a
questioning of its exacting claims, foster it too, no less. The evil
that is in it finds equally its means of growth and propagation in
opposites. It draws support and life from sweets and bitters; bowed down
before, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the breast in which it
has its throne; and, worshipped or rejected, is as hard a master as the
Devil in dark fables.

Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his cold and lofty arrogance, had
borne himself like the removed Being he almo