hat in place of affection between us
there is aversion and contempt, and that I despise him hardly less than
I despise myself for being his! Injustice! If I had done justice to the
torment you have made me feel, and to my sense of the insult you have
put upon me, I should have slain you!'

She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been blinded by her pride
and wrath, and self-humiliation,--which she was, fiercely as she bent
her gaze upon him,--she would have seen the answer in his face. To bring
her to this declaration.

She saw it not, and cared not whether it was there or no. She saw only
the indignities and struggles she had undergone and had to undergo, and
was writhing under them. As she sat looking fixedly at them, rather
than at him, she plucked the feathers from a pinion of some rare and
beautiful bird, which hung from her wrist by a golden thread, to serve
her as a fan, and rained them on the ground.

He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs
of her anger as had escaped her control subsided, with the air of a man
who had his sufficient reply in reserve and would presently deliver it.
And he then spoke, looking straight into her kindling eyes.

'Madam,' he said, 'I know, and knew before to-day, that I have found
no favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so
openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence--'

'Confidence!' she repeated, with disdain.

He passed it over.

'--that I will make no pretence of concealment. I did see from the
first, that there was no affection on your part for Mr Dombey--how could
it possibly exist between such different subjects? And I have seen,
since, that stronger feelings than indifference have been engendered in
your breast--how could that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstanced
as you have been? But was it for me to presume to avow this knowledge to
you in so many words?'

'Was it for you, Sir,' she replied, 'to feign that other belief, and
audaciously to thrust it on me day by day?'

'Madam, it was,' he eagerly retorted. 'If I had done less, if I had
done anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus; and I
foresaw--who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of
Mr Dombey than myself?--that unless your character should prove to be as
yielding and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did
not believe--'

A haughty smile gave him reason to