verything.'

His teeth gleamed through his malicious relish of this conceit, as he
went on talking:

'Mr Dombey is really capable of no more true consideration for you,
Madam, than for me. The comparison is an extreme one; I intend it to
be so; but quite just. Mr Dombey, in the plenitude of his power, asked
me--I had it from his own lips yesterday morning--to be his go-between
to you, because he knows I am not agreeable to you, and because he
intends that I shall be a punishment for your contumacy; and besides
that, because he really does consider, that I, his paid servant, am an
ambassador whom it is derogatory to the dignity--not of the lady to whom
I have the happiness of speaking; she has no existence in his mind--but
of his wife, a part of himself, to receive. You may imagine how
regardless of me, how obtuse to the possibility of my having any
individual sentiment or opinion he is, when he tells me, openly, that I
am so employed. You know how perfectly indifferent to your feelings he
is, when he threatens you with such a messenger. As you, of course, have
not forgotten that he did.'

She watched him still attentively. But he watched her too; and he saw
that this indication of a knowledge on his part, of something that
had passed between herself and her husband, rankled and smarted in her
haughty breast, like a poisoned arrow.

'I do not recall all this to widen the breach between yourself and
Mr Dombey, Madam--Heaven forbid! what would it profit me?--but as an
example of the hopelessness of impressing Mr Dombey with a sense that
anybody is to be considered when he is in question. We who are about
him, have, in our various positions, done our part, I daresay, to
confirm him in his way of thinking; but if we had not done so, others
would--or they would not have been about him; and it has always been,
from the beginning, the very staple of his life. Mr Dombey has had to
deal, in short, with none but submissive and dependent persons, who have
bowed the knee, and bent the neck, before him. He has never known what
it is to have angry pride and strong resentment opposed to him.'

'But he will know it now!' she seemed to say; though her lips did not
part, nor her eyes falter. He saw the soft down tremble once again, and
he saw her lay the plumage of the beautiful bird against her bosom for
a moment; and he unfolded one more ring of the coil into which he had
gathered himself.

'Mr Dombey, though a most honourable ge