n such company.
This chance arrangement left Mr Dombey at liberty to escort Edith: which
he did: stalking before them through the apartments with a gentlemanly
solemnity.

'Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their
delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful
places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque
assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How
dreadfully we have degenerated!'

'Yes, we have fallen off deplorably,' said Mr Carker.

The peculiarity of their conversation was, that Mrs Skewton, in spite of
her ecstasies, and Mr Carker, in spite of his urbanity, were both
intent on watching Mr Dombey and Edith. With all their conversational
endowments, they spoke somewhat distractedly, and at random, in
consequence.

'We have no Faith left, positively,' said Mrs Skewton, advancing her
shrivelled ear; for Mr Dombey was saying something to Edith. 'We have no
Faith in the dear old Barons, who were the most delightful creatures--or
in the dear old Priests, who were the most warlike of men--or even in
the days of that inestimable Queen Bess, upon the wall there, which were
so extremely golden. Dear creature! She was all Heart And that charming
father of hers! I hope you dote on Harry the Eighth!'

'I admire him very much,' said Carker.

'So bluff!' cried Mrs Skewton, 'wasn't he? So burly. So truly English.
Such a picture, too, he makes, with his dear little peepy eyes, and his
benevolent chin!'

'Ah, Ma'am!' said Carker, stopping short; 'but if you speak of pictures,
there's a composition! What gallery in the world can produce the
counterpart of that?'

As the smiling gentleman thus spake, he pointed through a doorway to
where Mr Dombey and Edith were standing alone in the centre of another
room.

They were not interchanging a word or a look. Standing together, arm
in arm, they had the appearance of being more divided than if seas had
rolled between them. There was a difference even in the pride of the
two, that removed them farther from each other, than if one had been
the proudest and the other the humblest specimen of humanity in all
creation. He, self-important, unbending, formal, austere. She, lovely
and graceful, in an uncommon degree, but totally regardless of herself
and him and everything around, and spurning her own attractions with her
haughty brow and lip, as if they were a badge or livery she ha