e, but she must be proud
for, not against him. As he sat alone, hardening, he would often hear
her go out and come home, treading the round of London life with no more
heed of his liking or disliking, pleasure or displeasure, than if he
had been her groom. Her cold supreme indifference--his own unquestioned
attribute usurped--stung him more than any other kind of treatment could
have done; and he determined to bend her to his magnificent and stately
will.

He had been long communing with these thoughts, when one night he sought
her in her own apartment, after he had heard her return home late. She
was alone, in her brilliant dress, and had but that moment come from her
mother's room. Her face was melancholy and pensive, when he came upon
her; but it marked him at the door; for, glancing at the mirror before
it, he saw immediately, as in a picture-frame, the knitted brow, and
darkened beauty that he knew so well.

'Mrs Dombey,' he said, entering, 'I must beg leave to have a few words
with you.'

'To-morrow,' she replied.

'There is no time like the present, Madam,' he returned. 'You mistake
your position. I am used to choose my own times; not to have them chosen
for me. I think you scarcely understand who and what I am, Mrs Dombey.

'I think,' she answered, 'that I understand you very well.'

She looked upon him as she said so, and folding her white arms,
sparkling with gold and gems, upon her swelling breast, turned away her
eyes.

If she had been less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure,
she might not have had the power of impressing him with the sense of
disadvantage that penetrated through his utmost pride. But she had the
power, and he felt it keenly. He glanced round the room: saw how the
splendid means of personal adornment, and the luxuries of dress, were
scattered here and there, and disregarded; not in mere caprice and
carelessness (or so he thought), but in a steadfast haughty disregard of
costly things: and felt it more and more. Chaplets of flowers, plumes of
feathers, jewels, laces, silks and satins; look where he would, he
saw riches, despised, poured out, and made of no account. The very
diamonds--a marriage gift--that rose and fell impatiently upon her
bosom, seemed to pant to break the chain that clasped them round her
neck, and roll down on the floor where she might tread upon them.

He felt his disadvantage, and he showed it. Solemn and strange among
this wealth of colour and vo