less than them--was so intense and deep, that
her mother's simper, for the instant, though of a hardy constitution,
drooped before it.

'My darling girl,' she began again.

'Not woman yet?' said Edith, with a smile.

'How very odd you are to-day, my dear! Pray let me say, my love,
that Major Bagstock has brought the kindest of notes from Mr Dombey,
proposing that we should breakfast with him to-morrow, and ride to
Warwick and Kenilworth. Will you go, Edith?'

'Will I go!' she repeated, turning very red, and breathing quickly as
she looked round at her mother.

'I knew you would, my own, observed the latter carelessly. 'It is, as
you say, quite a form to ask. Here is Mr Dombey's letter, Edith.'

'Thank you. I have no desire to read it,' was her answer.

'Then perhaps I had better answer it myself,' said Mrs Skewton, 'though
I had thought of asking you to be my secretary, darling.' As Edith made
no movement, and no answer, Mrs Skewton begged the Major to wheel her
little table nearer, and to set open the desk it contained, and to take
out pen and paper for her; all which congenial offices of gallantry the
Major discharged, with much submission and devotion.

'Your regards, Edith, my dear?' said Mrs Skewton, pausing, pen in hand,
at the postscript.

'What you will, Mama,' she answered, without turning her head, and with
supreme indifference.

Mrs Skewton wrote what she would, without seeking for any more explicit
directions, and handed her letter to the Major, who receiving it as a
precious charge, made a show of laying it near his heart, but was fain
to put it in the pocket of his pantaloons on account of the insecurity
of his waistcoat The Major then took a very polished and chivalrous
farewell of both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her usual
manner, while the younger, sitting with her face addressed to the
window, bent her head so slightly that it would have been a greater
compliment to the Major to have made no sign at all, and to have left
him to infer that he had not been heard or thought of.

'As to alteration in her, Sir,' mused the Major on his way back; on
which expedition--the afternoon being sunny and hot--he ordered the
Native and the light baggage to the front, and walked in the shadow
of that expatriated prince: 'as to alteration, Sir, and pining, and so
forth, that won't go down with Joseph Bagstock, None of that, Sir. It
won't do here. But as to there being something of a divisio