, »I must ask, had you not better
re-consider the question of a separation? I know how incompatible it appears
with your high public position, and I know how determined you are when you give
Mrs. Dombey to understand« - the light in his eyes fell upon her as he separated
his words each from each, with the distinctness of so many bells - »that nothing
but death can ever part you. Nothing else. But when you consider that Mrs.
Dombey, by living in this house, and making it as you have said, a scene of
contention, not only as her part in that contention, but compromises Miss Dombey
every day (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her from a
continual irritation of spirit, and a continual sense of being unjust to
another, almost intolerable? Does this not seem like - I do not say it is -
sacrificing Mrs. Dombey to the preservation of your pre-eminent and unassailable
position?«
    Again the light in his eyes fell upon her, as she stood looking at her
husband: now with an extraordinary and awful smile upon her face.
    »Carker,« returned Mr. Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tone that
was intended to be final, »you mistake your position in offering advice to me on
such a point, and you mistake me (I am surprised to find) in the character of
your advice. I have no more to say.«
    »Perhaps,« said Carker, with an unusual and indefinable taunt in his air, »
you mistook my position, when you honoured me with the negotiations in which I
have been engaged here« - with a motion of his hand towards Mrs. Dombey.
    »Not at all, Sir, not at all,« returned the other haughtily. »You were
employed -«
    »Being an inferior person, for the humiliation of Mrs. Dombey. I forgot. Oh,
yes, it was expressly understood!« said Carker. »I beg your pardon!«
    As he bent his head to Mr. Dombey, with an air of deference that accorded
ill with his words, though they were humbly spoken, he moved it round towards
her, and kept his watching eyes that way.
    She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood up with
such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit's majesty of scorn and
beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright jewels radiant on her head,
and, plucking it off with a force
