o his inner room; and Polly had the
satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object,
and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of
her purpose.

Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she came
down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, and
uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind was
too much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his having
forgotten her suggestion.

'If you really think that sort of society is good for the child,' he
said sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it,
'where's Miss Florence?'

'Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly,
'but I understood from her maid that they were not to--'

Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.

'Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she
chooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the
children be together, when Richards wishes it.'

The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly--it was a
good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr
Dombey--requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there,
to make friends with her little brother.

She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this
errand, but she thought that she saw Mr Dombey's colour changed; that
the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, as
if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only
deterred by very shame.

And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there
had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which
was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbed
as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not
forget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no part
in it. That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth'
lay those two figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on
the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator--not a sharer with
them--quite shut out.

Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his
mind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were
fraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through the
mist of his pride, his previous feeling of indifference towards l