mbey every
day (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her from a
continual irritation of spirit, and a continual sense of being unjust
to another, almost intolerable? Does this not seem like--I do not say
it is--sacrificing Mrs Dombey to the preservation of your preeminent and
unassailable position?'

Again the light in his eyes fell upon her, as she stood looking at her
husband: now with an extraordinary and awful smile upon her face.

'Carker,' returned Mr Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tone
that was intended to be final, 'you mistake your position in offering
advice to me on such a point, and you mistake me (I am surprised to
find) in the character of your advice. I have no more to say.

'Perhaps,' said Carker, with an unusual and indefinable taunt in
his air, 'you mistook my position, when you honoured me with the
negotiations in which I have been engaged here'--with a motion of his
hand towards Mrs Dombey.

'Not at all, Sir, not at all,' returned the other haughtily. 'You were
employed--'

'Being an inferior person, for the humiliation of Mrs Dombey. I forgot'
Oh, yes, it was expressly understood!' said Carker. 'I beg your pardon!'

As he bent his head to Mr Dombey, with an air of deference that accorded
ill with his words, though they were humbly spoken, he moved it round
towards her, and kept his watching eyes that way.

She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood up
with such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit's majesty of
scorn and beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright jewels
radiant on her head, and, plucking it off with a force that dragged
and strained her rich black hair with heedless cruelty, and brought it
tumbling wildly on her shoulders, cast the gems upon the ground. From
each arm, she unclasped a diamond bracelet, flung it down, and trod upon
the glittering heap. Without a word, without a shadow on the fire of
her bright eye, without abatement of her awful smile, she looked on Mr
Dombey to the last, in moving to the door; and left him.

Florence had heard enough before quitting the room, to know that Edith
loved her yet; that she had suffered for her sake; and that she had kept
her sacrifices quiet, lest they should trouble her peace. She did not
want to speak to her of this--she could not, remembering to whom she
was opposed--but she wished, in one silent and affectionate embrace, to
assure her that she felt it