f
your displeasure?'

'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey. 'I have said so.'

'Yes,' rejoined Carker, quickly; 'but why?'

'Why!' Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. 'Because I told her.'

'Ay,' replied Carker. 'But why did you tell her? You see,' he continued
with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have
laid its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey's arm; 'if I perfectly understand
what is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to have
the happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I
have not the honour of Mrs Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I have
no reason to expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got
it?'

'Possibly not,' said Mr Dombey.

'Consequently,' pursued Carker, 'your making the communications to Mrs
Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?'

'It appears to me,' said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with
some embarrassment, 'that Mrs Dombey's views upon the subject form no
part of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be
so.'

'And--pardon me--do I misconceive you,' said Carker, 'when I think you
descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey's pride--I use the
word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds,
adorns and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and
accomplishments--and, not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her
to the submission you so naturally and justly require?'

'I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,' said Mr Dombey, 'to give
such close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt,
but I will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found
upon it, that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you
have one will be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that
any confidence I could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you--'

'Oh! I degraded!' exclaimed Carker. 'In your service!'

'or to place you,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'in a false position.'

'I in a false position!' exclaimed Carker. 'I shall be
proud--delighted--to execute your trust. I could have wished, I own,
to have given the lady at whose feet I would lay my humble duty and
devotion--for is she not your wife!--no new cause of dislike; but a wish
from you is, of course, paramount to every other consideration on
earth. Besides, when Mrs Dombey is converted from these little errors
of judgment, incide