The arch of diamonds spanning her dark hair, flashed and glittered like a starry bridge. There was no warning in them, or they would have turned as dull and dim as tarnished honour. Carker still sat and listened, with his eyes cast down.
“Mrs Dombey,” said Mr Dombey, resuming as much as he could of his arrogant composure, “you will not conciliate me, or turn me from any purpose, by this course of conduct.”
“It is the only true although it is a faint expression of what is within me,” she replied. “But if I thought it would conciliate you, I would repress it, if it were repressible by any human effort. I will do nothing that you ask.”
“I am not accustomed to ask, Mrs Dombey,” he observed; “I direct.”
“I will hold no place in your house to-morrow, or on any recurrence of to-morrow. I will be exhibited to no one, as the refractory slave you purchased, such a time. If I kept my marriage day, I would keep it as a day of shame. Self-respect! appearances before the world! what are these to me? You have done all you can to make them nothing to me, and they are nothing.”
“Carker,” said Mr Dombey, speaking with knitted brows, and after a moment’s consideration, “Mrs Dombey is so forgetful of herself and me in all this, and places me in a position so unsuited to my character, that I must bring this state of matters to a close.”
“Release me, then,” said Edith, immoveable in voice, in look, and bearing, as she had been throughout, “from the chain by which I am bound. Let me go.”
“Madam?” exclaimed Mr Dombey.
“Loose me. Set me free!”
“Madam?” he repeated, “Mrs Dombey?”