“Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey’s—only Mr Dombey’s. Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him.”
In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if with sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the daughter’s face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement passion, she remained still: except that she clenched her arms tighter and tighter within each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain them by that means from doing an injury to herself, or someone else, in the blind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her.
“Little he thought who I was!” said the old woman, shaking her clenched hand.
“And little he cared!” muttered her daughter, between her teeth.
“But there we were, said the old woman, “face to face. I spoke to him, and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long grove of trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body.”
“He will thrive in spite of that,” returned the daughter disdainfully.
“Ay, he is thriving,” said the mother.
She held her peace; for the face and form before her were unshaped by rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions that strove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, was no less formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeaking the violent and dangerous character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, and she asked, after a silence:
“Is he married?”
“No, deary,” said the mother.