had been led on by his
craft, and her pride and resentment, to endure his company, and little
by little to receive him as one who had the privilege to talk to her
of her own defiant disregard of her own husband, and her abandonment of
high consideration for herself. They were associated with a woman who
hated him deeply, and who knew him, and who mistrusted him because she
knew him, and because he knew her; but who fed her fierce resentment by
suffering him to draw nearer and yet nearer to her every day, in spite
of the hate she cherished for him. In spite of it! For that very reason;
since in its depths, too far down for her threatening eye to pierce,
though she could see into them dimly, lay the dark retaliation, whose
faintest shadow seen once and shuddered at, and never seen again, would
have been sufficient stain upon her soul.

Did the phantom of such a woman flit about him on his ride; true to the
reality, and obvious to him?

Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly as she was. She bore him company
with her pride, resentment, hatred, all as plain to him as her beauty;
with nothing plainer to him than her hatred of him. He saw her sometimes
haughty and repellent at his side, and some times down among his horse's
feet, fallen and in the dust. But he always saw her as she was, without
disguise, and watched her on the dangerous way that she was going.

And when his ride was over, and he was newly dressed, and came into the
light of her bright room with his bent head, soft voice, and soothing
smile, he saw her yet as plainly. He even suspected the mystery of the
gloved hand, and held it all the longer in his own for that suspicion.
Upon the dangerous way that she was going, he was, still; and not a
footprint did she mark upon it, but he set his own there, straight.

CHAPTER 47. The Thunderbolt

The barrier between Mr Dombey and his wife was not weakened by time.
Ill-assorted couple, unhappy in themselves and in each other, bound
together by no tie but the manacle that joined their fettered hands, and
straining that so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it wore and
chafed to the bone, Time, consoler of affliction and softener of anger,
could do nothing to help them. Their pride, however different in kind
and object, was equal in degree; and, in their flinty opposition,
struck out fire between them which might smoulder or might blaze, as
circumstances were, but burned up everything within their mutual rea