“One day,” replied the Major.
“And can you be a day, or even a minute,” returned the lady, slightly settling her false curls and false eyebrows with her fan, and showing her false teeth, set off by her false complexion, “in the garden of what’s-its-name.”
“Eden, I suppose, Mama,” interrupted the younger lady, scornfully.
“My dear Edith,” said the other, “I cannot help it. I never can remember those frightful names—without having your whole Soul and Being inspired by the sight of Nature; by the perfume,” said Mrs Skewton, rustling a handkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, “of her artless breath, you creature!”
The discrepancy between Mrs Skewton’s fresh enthusiasm of words, and forlornly faded manner, was hardly less observable than that between her age, which was about seventy, and her dress, which would have been youthful for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the wheeled chair (which she never varied) was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, some fifty years before, by a then fashionable artist who had appended to his published sketch the name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a discovery made by the critics of the time, that it bore an exact resemblance to that Princess as she reclined on board her galley. Mrs Skewton was a beauty then, and bucks threw wine-glasses over their heads by dozens in her honour. The beauty and the barouche had both passed away, but she still preserved the attitude, and for this reason expressly, maintained the wheeled chair and the butting page: there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from walking.
“Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?” said Mrs Skewton, settling her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the reputation of some diamonds, and her family connexions.
“My friend Dombey, Ma’am,” returned the Major, “may be devoted to her in secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in the universe—”
“No one can be a stranger,” said Mrs Skewton, “to Mr Dombey’s immense influence.”
As Mr Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes.
“You reside here, Madam?” said Mr Dombey, addressing her.