This last ejaculation was occasioned by Mr. Toots's deep concern at the distress he saw in Florence's face; which caused him to stop short in a fit of chuckles, and become an image of despair.

"Dear Mr. Toots," said Florence, "you are so friendly to me, and so honest, that I am sure I may ask a favour of you."

"Miss Dombey," returned Mr. Toots, "if you'll only name one, you'll-you'll give me an appetite. To which," said Mr. Toots, with some sentiment, "I have long been a stranger."

Susan, who is an old friend of mine, the oldest friend I have," said Florence, "is about to leave here suddenly, and quite alone, poor girl. She is going home, a little way into the country. Might I ask you to take care of her until she is in the coach ?"

"Miss Dombey," returned Mr. Toots, "you really do me an honour and a kindness. This proof of your confidence, after the manner in which I was beast enough to conduct myself at Brighton

"Yes," said Florence, hurriedly-"no-don't think of that. Then would you have the kindness to-to go? and to be ready to meet her when she comes out? Thank you a thousand times! You ease my mind so much. She doesn't seem so desolate. You cannot think how grateful I feel to you, or what a good friend I am sure you are!" And Florence in her earnestness thanked him again and again; and Mr. Toots, in his earnestness, hurried away-but backwards, that he might lose no glimpse of her.

Florence had not the courage to go out, when she saw poor Susan in the hall, with Mrs. Pipchin driving her forth, and Diogenes jumping about her, and terrifying Mrs. Pipchin to the last degree by making snaps at her bombazeen skirts, and howling with anguish at the sound of her voice-for the good duenna was the dearest and most cherished aversion of his breast. But she saw Susan shake hands with the servants all round, and turn once to look at her old home; and she saw Diogenes bound out after the cab, and want to follow it, and testify an impossibility of conviction that he had no longer any property in the fare; and the door was shut, and the hurry over, and her tears flowed fast for the loss of an old friend, whom no one could replace. No one. No one.

Mr. Toots, like the leal and trusty soul he was, stopped the cabriolet in a twinkling, and told Susan Nipper of his commission, at which she cried more than before.

"Upon my soul and body!" said Mr. Toots, taking his seat beside her, "I feel for you. Upon my word and honour I think you can hardly know your own feelings better than I imagine them. I can conceive nothing more dreadful than to have to leave Miss Dombey." Susan abandoned herself to her grief now, and it really was touching to see her.

I say," said Mr. Toots, "now, don't! at least I mean now do, you know!"

"Do what, Mr. Toots?" cried Susan.

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Hospitality of Mr. Toots.

499

Why, come home to my place, and have some dinner before you start," said Mr. Toots. "My cook's a most respectable woman-one of the most motherly people I ever saw-and she'll be delighted to make you comfortable. Her son," said Mr. Toots, as an additional recommendation, "was educated in the Blue-coat School, and blown up in a powder-mill."

Susan accepting this kind offer, Mr. Toots conducted her to his dwelling, where they were received by the matron in question who fully justified his character of her, and by the Chicken, who at first supposed, on seeing a lady in the vehicle, that Mr. Dombey had been doubled up, agreeably to his old recommendation, and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentleman awakened in Miss Nipper some considerable astonishment; for, having been defeated by the Larkey Boy, his visage was in a state of such great dilapidation, as to be hardly presentable in society with comfort to the beholders. The Chicken himself attributed this punishment to his having had the misfortune to get into Chancery early in the proceedings, when he was severely fibbed by the Larkey one, and heavily grassed. But it appeared from the published records of that great contest that the Larkey Boy had had it all his own way from the beginning, and that the Chicken had been tapped, and bunged, and had received pepper, and had been made groggy, and had come up piping, and had endured a complication of similar strange inconveniences, until he had been gone into and finished.

After a good repast, and much hospitality, Susan set out for the coach-office in another cabriolet, with Mr. Toots inside, as before, and the Chicken on the box, who, whatever distinction he conferred on the little party by the moral weight and heroism of his character, was scarcely ornamental to it, physically speaking, on account of his plasters; which were numerous. But the Chicken had registered a vow, in secret, that he would never leave Mr. Toots (who was secretly pining to get rid of him), for any less consideration than the goodwill and fixtures of a public-house; and being ambitious to go into that line, and drink himself to death as soon as possible, he felt it his cue to make his company unacceptable.

The night-coach by which Susan was to go, was on the point of departure. Mr. Toots having put her inside, lingered by the window, irresolutely, until the driver was about to mount; when, standing on the step, and putting in a face that by the light of the lamp was anxious and confused, he said abruptly

"I say, Susan! Miss Dombey, you know"Yes, sir."

"Do you think she could-you know—eh?"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Toots," said Susan, "but I don't hear you." "Do you think she could be brought, you know-not exactly at once, but in time-in a long time-to-to love me, you know! There!" said poor Mr. Toots.

"Oh dear no : " returned Susan, shaking her head. never. Ne-ver!"

“I should say,

"Thank'ee!" said Mr. Toots. "It's of no consequence. Good night. It's of no consequence, thank'ee!"

CHAPTER XLV.

THE TRUSTY AGENT.

EDITH went out alone that day, and returned home early. It was but a few minutes after ten o'clock, when her carriage rolled along the street in which she lived.

There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, or rendered shapeless by the fitful searches of a throbbing and bewildered brain for any resting-place, than adorning such tranquillity. So obdurate, so unapproachable, so unrelenting, one would have thought that nothing could soften such a woman's nature, and that everything in life had hardened it.

Arrived at her own door, she was alighting, when some one coming quietly from the hall, and standing bareheaded, offered her his arm. The servant being thrust aside, she had no choice but to touch it; and she then knew whose arm it was.

"How is your patient, sir?" she said, with a curled lip.

"He is better," returned Carker. "He is doing very well. I have left him for the night."

She bent her head, and was passing up the staircase, when he followed and said, speaking at the bottom

"Madam! May I beg the favour of a minute's audience?"

She stopped and turned her eyes back. "It is an unreasonable time, sir, and I am fatigued. Is your business urgent?"

"It is very urgent," returned Carker. "As I am so fortunate as to have met you, let me press my petition."

She looked down for a moment at his glistening mouth; and he looked up at her, standing above him in her stately dress, and thought, again, how beautiful she was.

"Where is Miss Dombey?" she asked the servant, aloud. "In the morning-room, ma'am."

"Show the way there! Turning her eyes again on the attentive gentleman at the bottom of the stairs, and informing him with a slight motion of her head, that he was at liberty to follow, she passed on. I beg your pardon! Madam! Mrs. Dombey!" cried the soft and

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The Messenger is confidential

501

nimble Carker at her side in a moment. "May I be permitted to entreat that Miss Dombey is not present?"

She confronted him, with a quick look, but with the same selfpossession and steadiness.

"I would spare Miss Dombey," said Carker, in a low voice, “the knowledge of what I have to say. At least, madam, I would leave it to you to decide whether she shall know of it or not. I owe that to you. It is my bounden duty to you. After our former interview, it would be monstrous in me if I did otherwise."

She slowly withdrew her eyes from his face, and turning to the servant, said, "Some other room." He led the way to a drawingroom, which he speedily lighted up and then left them. While he remained, not a word was spoken. Edith enthroned herself upon a couch by the fire; and Mr. Carker, with his hat in his hand and his eyes bent upon the carpet, stood before her, at some little distance. "Before I hear you, sir," said Edith, when the door was closed, "I wish you to hear me."

"To be addressed by Mrs. Dombey," he returned, << even in accents of unmerited reproach, is an honour I so greatly esteem, that although I were not her servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, most readily."

"If you are charged by the man whom you have just now left, sir;' Mr. Carker raised his eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise, but she met them, and stopped him, if such were his intention; "with any message to me, do not attempt to deliver it, for I will not receive it. I need scarcely ask you if you are come on such an errand. I have expected you some time."

It is my misfortune," he replied, "to be here, wholly against my will, for such a purpose. Allow me to say that I am here for two purposes. That is one."

"That one, sir," she

to it

returned, "is ended. Or, if you return

"Can Mrs. Dombey believe," said Carker, coming nearer, "that I would return to it in the face of her prohibition? It is possible that Mrs. Dombey, having no regard to my unfortunate position, is so determined to consider me inseparable from my instructor as to do me great and wilful injustice?"

"Sir," returned Edith, bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speaking with a rising passion that inflated her proud nostril and her swelling neck, and stirred the delicate white down upon a robe she wore, thrown loosely over shoulders that could bear its snowy neighbourhood, "Why do you present yourself to me, as you have done, and speak to me of love and duty to my husband, and pretend to think that I am happily married, and that I honour him? How dare you

venture so to affront me, when you know-I do not know better, sir: I have seen it in your every glance, and heard it in your every word— that in place of affection between us there is aversion and contempt,

and that I despise him hardly less than I despise myself for being his! Injustice! If I had done justice to the torment you have made me feel, and to my sense of the insult you have put upon me, I should have slain you!"

She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been blinded by her pride and wrath, and self-humiliation,--which she was, fiercely as she bent her gaze upon him,—she would have seen the answer in his face. To bring her to this declaration.

She saw

She saw it not, nor cared not whether it was there or no. only the indignities and struggles she had undergone, and had to undergo, and was writhing under them. As she sat looking fixedly at them, rather than at him, she plucked the feathers from a pinion of some rare and beautiful bird, which hung from her wrist by a golden thread, to serve her as a fan, and rained them on the ground.

He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs of her anger as had escaped her control subsided, with the air of a man who had his sufficient reply in reserve and would presently deliver it. And he then spoke, looking straight into her kindling eyes.

“Madam,” he said, "I know, and knew before to-day, that I have found no favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence

"Confidence!" she repeated, with disdain.

He passed it over.

66

that I will make no pretence of concealment.

I did see from

the first, that there was no affection on your part for Mr. Dombeyhow could it possibly exist between such different subjects! And I have seen, since, that stronger feelings than indifference have been engendered in your breast-how could that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstanced as you have been? But was it for me to presume to avow this knowledge to you in so many words?"

"Was it for you, sir," she replied, "to feign that other belief, and audaciously to thrust it on me day by day?"

"Madam, it was," he eagerly retorted. "If I had done less, if I had done anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus; and I foresaw-who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of Mr. Dombey than myself?-that unless your character should prove to be as yielding and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did not believe”

A haughty smile gave dim reason to observe that he might repeat this.

"I say, which I did not believe, the time was likely to come, when such an understanding as we have now arrived at, would be serviceable."

"Serviceable to whom, sir?" she demanded scornfully.

"To you. I will not add to myself, as warning me to refrain even