'the knowledge
of what I have to say. At least, Madam, I would leave it to you to
decide whether she shall know of it or not. I owe that to you. It is my
bounden duty to you. After our former interview, it would be monstrous
in me if I did otherwise.'

She slowly withdrew her eyes from his face, and turning to the servant,
said, 'Some other room.' He led the way to a drawing-room, which he
speedily lighted up and then left them. While he remained, not a word
was spoken. Edith enthroned herself upon a couch by the fire; and Mr
Carker, with his hat in his hand and his eyes bent upon the carpet,
stood before her, at some little distance.

'Before I hear you, Sir,' said Edith, when the door was closed, 'I wish
you to hear me.'

'To be addressed by Mrs Dombey,' he returned, 'even in accents of
unmerited reproach, is an honour I so greatly esteem, that although I
were not her servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, most
readily.'

'If you are charged by the man whom you have just now left, Sir;' Mr
Carker raised his eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise,
but she met them, and stopped him, if such were his intention; 'with any
message to me, do not attempt to deliver it, for I will not receive
it. I need scarcely ask you if you are come on such an errand. I have
expected you some time.

'It is my misfortune,' he replied, 'to be here, wholly against my will,
for such a purpose. Allow me to say that I am here for two purposes.
That is one.'

'That one, Sir,' she returned, 'is ended. Or, if you return to it--'

'Can Mrs Dombey believe,' said Carker, coming nearer, 'that I would
return to it in the face of her prohibition? Is it possible that Mrs
Dombey, having no regard to my unfortunate position, is so determined to
consider me inseparable from my instructor as to do me great and wilful
injustice?'

'Sir,' returned Edith, bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speaking
with a rising passion that inflated her proud nostril and her swelling
neck, and stirred the delicate white down upon a robe she wore, thrown
loosely over shoulders that could hear its snowy neighbourhood. 'Why do
you present yourself to me, as you have done, and speak to me of love
and duty to my husband, and pretend to think that I am happily married,
and that I honour him? How dare you venture so to affront me, when you
know--I do not know better, Sir: I have seen it in your every glance,
and heard it in your every word--t