“I beg your pardon,” said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming his chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey’s, “but let me understand. Mrs Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ of your displeasure?”
“Yes,” replied Mr Dombey. “I have said so.”
“Yes,” rejoined Carker, quickly; “but why?”
“Why!” Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. “Because I told her.”
“Ay,” replied Carker. “But why did you tell her? You see,” he continued with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have laid its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey’s arm; “if I perfectly understand what is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to have the happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I have not the honour of Mrs Dombey’s good opinion. In my position, I have no reason to expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got it?”
“Possibly not,” said Mr Dombey.
“Consequently,” pursued Carker, “your making the communications to Mrs Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?”
“It appears to me,” said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with some embarrassment, “that Mrs Dombey’s views upon the subject form no part of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be so.”
“And—pardon me—do I misconceive you,” said Carker, “when I think you descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey’s pride—I use the word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds, adorns and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments—and, not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her to the submission you so naturally and justly require?”
“I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,” said Mr Dombey, “to give such close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt, but I will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found upon it, that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you have one will be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that any confidence I could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you—”