Carker,' said Mr Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and saying in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler lip, 'there is no occasion for apology. You mistake. The association is with the matter in hand, and not with any recollection, as you suppose. I do not approve of Mrs Dombey's behaviour towards my daughter.'

'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I don't quite understand.'

'Understand then,' returned Mr Dombey, 'that you may make that - that you will make that, if you please - matter of direct objection from me to Mrs Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion for my daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is likely to induce people to contrast Mrs Dombey in her relation towards my daughter, with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will have the goodness to let Mrs Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it; and that I expect her to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs Dombey may be in earnest, or she may be pursuing a whim, or she may be opposing me; but I object to it in any case, and in every case. If Mrs Dombey is in earnest, so much the less reluctant should she be to desist; for she will not serve my daughter by any such display. If my wife has any superfluous gentleness, and duty over and above her proper submission to me, she may bestow them where she pleases, perhaps; but I will have submission first! - Carker,' said Mr Dombey, checking the unusual emotion with which he had spoken, and falling into a tone more like that in which he was accustomed to assert his greatness, 'you will have the goodness not to omit or slur this point, but to consider it a very important part of your instructions.'

Mr Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table, and standing thoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, looked down at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, half human and half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr Dombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great wedding ring.

'I beg your pardon,' said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming his chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey's, 'but let me understand. Mrs Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ of your displeasure?'

'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey. 'I have said so.'

'Yes,' rejoined Carker, quickly; 'but why?'

'Why!' Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. 'Because I told her.'

'Ay,' replied Carker. 'But why did you tell her? You see,' he continued with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have laid its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey's arm; 'if I perfectly understand what is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to have the happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I have not the honour of Mrs Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I have no reason to expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got it?'

'Possibly not,' said Mr Dombey.

'Consequently,' pursued Carker, 'your making the communications to Mrs Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?'

'It appears to me,' said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with some embarrassment, 'that Mrs Dombey's views upon the subject form no part of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be so.'

'And - pardon me - do I misconceive you,' said Carker, 'when I think you descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey's pride - I use the word as expressive of a quality which, 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.