my heart, or propose to yourself to win the worthless thing?
Was there any poor pretence of any in our bargain? Upon your side, or on
mine?'

'These questions,' said Mr Dombey, 'are all wide of the purpose, Madam.'

She moved between him and the door to prevent his going away, and
drawing her majestic figure to its height, looked steadily upon him
still.

'You answer each of them. You answer me before I speak, I see. How can
you help it; you who know the miserable truth as well as I? Now, tell
me. If I loved you to devotion, could I do more than render up my whole
will and being to you, as you have just demanded? If my heart were pure
and all untried, and you its idol, could you ask more; could you have
more?'

'Possibly not, Madam,' he returned coolly.

'You know how different I am. You see me looking on you now, and you can
read the warmth of passion for you that is breathing in my face.' Not a
curl of the proud lip, not a flash of the dark eye, nothing but the same
intent and searching look, accompanied these words. 'You know my general
history. You have spoken of my mother. Do you think you can degrade, or
bend or break, me to submission and obedience?'

Mr Dombey smiled, as he might have smiled at an inquiry whether he
thought he could raise ten thousand pounds.

'If there is anything unusual here,' she said, with a slight motion of
her hand before her brow, which did not for a moment flinch from its
immovable and otherwise expressionless gaze, 'as I know there are
unusual feelings here,' raising the hand she pressed upon her bosom, and
heavily returning it, 'consider that there is no common meaning in the
appeal I am going to make you. Yes, for I am going;' she said it as in
prompt reply to something in his face; 'to appeal to you.'

Mr Dombey, with a slightly condescending bend of his chin that rustled
and crackled his stiff cravat, sat down on a sofa that was near him, to
hear the appeal.

'If you can believe that I am of such a nature now,'--he fancied he saw
tears glistening in her eyes, and he thought, complacently, that he had
forced them from her, though none fell on her cheek, and she regarded
him as steadily as ever,--'as would make what I now say almost
incredible to myself, said to any man who had become my husband, but,
above all, said to you, you may, perhaps, attach the greater weight to
it. In the dark end to which we are tending, and may come, we shall not
involve ourselves alone (that