stood its delicate meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth the
cottage was good enough for one in his position--better, perhaps, than
such a man should occupy, poor as it was.

'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better
than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest
stretch. 'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of beggars.'

He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he spoke,
and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his
second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily
as his cold eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied
his, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it went, and what it
saw. As it rested on one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to
breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye
of his great chief passed from that, as from the others, and appeared no
more impressed by it than by the rest.

Carker looked at it--it was the picture that resembled Edith--as if it
were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon his face, that
seemed in part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the great
man standing so unconscious beside him. Breakfast was soon set upon the
table; and, inviting Mr Dombey to a chair which had its back towards
this picture, he took his own seat opposite to it as usual.

Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom to be, and quite
silent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her gaudy cage,
attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too observant of his
visitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in meditation, looked
fixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff neckcloth, without raising
his eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob, who was in attendance, all his
faculties and energies were so locked up in observation of his master,
that he scarcely ventured to give shelter to the thought that the
visitor was the great gentleman before whom he had been carried as a
certificate of the family health, in his childhood, and to whom he had
been indebted for his leather smalls.

'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?'

He leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry, with his chin
resting on his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to the
picture, as if he said to