Chapter 37 - Page 2

yes, but on her way to the door Florence met the visitor coming in. With the same disagreeable mixture of familiarity and forbearance with which he had first addressed her, he addressed her now in his softest manner--hoped she was quite well--needed not to ask, with such looks to anticipate the answer--had scarcely had the honour to know her, last night, she was so greatly changed--and held the door open for her to pass out; with a secret sense of power in her shrinking from him, that all the deference and politeness of his manner could not quite conceal.

He then bowed himself for a moment over Mrs. Skewton's condescending hand, and lastly bowed to Edith. Coldly returning his salute without looking at him, and neither seating herself nor inviting him to be seated, she waited for him to speak.

Entrenched in her pride and power, and with all the obduracy of her spirit summoned about her, still her old conviction that she and her mother had been known by this man in their worst colours, from their first acquaintance; that every degradation she had suffered in her own eyes was plain to him as to herself; that he read her life as though it were a vile book, and fluttered the leaves before her in slight looks and tones of voice which no one else could detect; weakened and undermined her. Proudly as she opposed herself to him, with her commanding face exacting his humility, her disdainful lip repulsing him, her bosom angry at his intrusion, and the dark lashes of her eyes sullenly veiling their light, that no ray of it might shine upon him--and submissively as he stood before her, with an entreating injured manner, but with complete submission to her will--she knew, in her own soul, that the cases were reversed, and that the triumph and superiority were his, and that he knew it full well.

'I have presumed,' said Mr. Carker, 'to solicit an interview, and I have ventured to describe it as being one of business, because--'

'Perhaps you are charged by Mr. Dombey with some message of reproof,' said Edith. 'You possess Mr. Dombey's confidence in such an unusual degree, Sir, that you would scarcely surprise me if that were your business.'

'I have no message to the lady who sheds a lustre upon his name,' said Mr. Carker. 'But I entreat that lady, on my own behalf, to be just to a very humble claimant for justice at her hands--a mere dependant of Mr. Dombey's--which is a position of humility; and to reflect upon my perfect helplessness last night, and the impossibility of my avoiding the share that was forced upon me in a very painful occasion.'

'My dearest Edith,' hinted Cleopatra in a low voice, as she held her eye-glass aside, 'really very charming of Mr. What'shis-name. And full of heart!'

'For I do,' said Mr. Carker, appealing to Mrs. Skewton with a look of grateful deference,--'I do venture to call it a painful occasion, though merely because it was so to me, who had the