almost defiant, and giving it the character of being
rendered on compulsion, or as a matter of traffic to which she was a
reluctant party again not lost upon that same observer who was smiling
round the board. It set him thinking of her as he had first seen her,
when she had believed herself to be alone among the trees.

Mr Dombey having nothing else to say, proposed--the breakfast being
now finished, and the Major gorged, like any Boa Constrictor--that they
should start. A barouche being in waiting, according to the orders of
that gentleman, the two ladies, the Major and himself, took their seats
in it; the Native and the wan page mounted the box, Mr Towlinson being
left behind; and Mr Carker, on horseback, brought up the rear. Mr Carker
cantered behind the carriage at the distance of a hundred yards or so,
and watched it, during all the ride, as if he were a cat, indeed, and
its four occupants, mice. Whether he looked to one side of the road,
or to the other--over distant landscape, with its smooth undulations,
wind-mills, corn, grass, bean fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards,
hayricks, and the spire among the wood--or upwards in the sunny air,
where butterflies were sporting round his head, and birds were pouring
out their songs--or downward, where the shadows of the branches
interlaced, and made a trembling carpet on the road--or onward, where
the overhanging trees formed aisles and arches, dim with the softened
light that steeped through leaves--one corner of his eye was ever on the
formal head of Mr Dombey, addressed towards him, and the feather in the
bonnet, drooping so neglectfully and scornfully between them; much as he
had seen the haughty eyelids droop; not least so, when the face met that
now fronting it. Once, and once only, did his wary glance release these
objects; and that was, when a leap over a low hedge, and a gallop across
a field, enabled him to anticipate the carriage coming by the road,
and to be standing ready, at the journey's end, to hand the ladies
out. Then, and but then, he met her glance for an instant in her first
surprise; but when he touched her, in alighting, with his soft white
hand, it overlooked him altogether as before.

Mrs Skewton was bent on taking charge of Mr Carker herself, and showing
him the beauties of the Castle. She was determined to have his arm, and
the Major's too. It would do that incorrigible creature: who was the
most barbarous infidel in point of poetry: good to be i