very carefully
and trimly dressed, that morning. Though always somewhat formal, in his
dress, in imitation of the great man whom he served, he stopped short of
the extent of Mr Dombey's stiffness: at once perhaps because he knew
it to be ludicrous, and because in doing so he found another means of
expressing his sense of the difference and distance between them. Some
people quoted him indeed, in this respect, as a pointed commentary,
and not a flattering one, on his icy patron--but the world is prone
to misconstruction, and Mr Carker was not accountable for its bad
propensity.

Clean and florid: with his light complexion, fading as it were, in the
sun, and his dainty step enhancing the softness of the turf: Mr Carker
the Manager strolled about meadows, and green lanes, and glided among
avenues of trees, until it was time to return to breakfast. Taking a
nearer way back, Mr Carker pursued it, airing his teeth, and said aloud
as he did so, 'Now to see the second Mrs Dombey!'

He had strolled beyond the town, and re-entered it by a pleasant walk,
where there was a deep shade of leafy trees, and where there were a few
benches here and there for those who chose to rest. It not being a place
of general resort at any hour, and wearing at that time of the still
morning the air of being quite deserted and retired, Mr Carker had it,
or thought he had it, all to himself. So, with the whim of an idle man,
to whom there yet remained twenty minutes for reaching a destination
easily able in ten, Mr Carker threaded the great boles of the trees,
and went passing in and out, before this one and behind that, weaving a
chain of footsteps on the dewy ground.

But he found he was mistaken in supposing there was no one in the grove,
for as he softly rounded the trunk of one large tree, on which the
obdurate bark was knotted and overlapped like the hide of a rhinoceros
or some kindred monster of the ancient days before the Flood, he saw
an unexpected figure sitting on a bench near at hand, about which, in
another moment, he would have wound the chain he was making.

It was that of a lady, elegantly dressed and very handsome, whose dark
proud eyes were fixed upon the ground, and in whom some passion or
struggle was raging. For as she sat looking down, she held a corner of
her under lip within her mouth, her bosom heaved, her nostril quivered,
her head trembled, indignant tears were on her cheek, and her foot was
set upon the moss as though