, kept within due bounds, adorns and graces a
lady so distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments - and, not to say of
punishing her, but of reducing her to the submission you so naturally and justly
require?«
    »I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,« said Mr. Dombey, »to give such
close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt, but I will
gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found upon it, that is
indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you have one will be
sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that any confidence I could
intrust to you, would be likely to degrade you -«
    »Oh! I degraded!« exclaimed Carker. »In your service!«
    »- or to place you,« pursued Mr. Dombey, »in a false position.«
    »I in a false position!« exclaimed Carker. »I shall be proud - delighted -
to execute your trust. I could have wished, I own, to have given the lady at
whose feet I would lay my humble duty and devotion - for is she not your wife! -
no new cause of dislike; but a wish from you is, of course, paramount to every
other consideration on earth. Besides, when Mrs. Dombey is converted from these
little errors of judgment, incidental, I would presume to say, to the novelty of
her situation, I shall hope that she will perceive in the slight part I take,
only a grain - my removed and different sphere gives room for little more - of
the respect for you, and sacrifice of all considerations to you, of which it
will be her pleasure and privilege to garner up a great store every day.«
    Mr. Dombey seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her hand stretched
out towards the door, and again to hear through the mild speech of his
confidential agent an echo of the words, »Nothing can make us stranger to each
other than we are henceforth!« But he shook off the fancy, and did not shake in
his resolution, and said, »Certainly, no doubt.«
    »There is nothing more,« quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its old
place - for they had taken little breakfast as yet - and pausing for an answer
before he sat down.
    »Nothing,« said Mr. Dombey, »but this. You will be good enough to observe,
Carker, that no message to Mrs. Dombey with which you
