following day, an invitation which was readily accepted.

Dombey was greatly moved when he heard that Miss Montague had
accepted an invitation to dinner, but there was no help for it, and,
as though to make matters worse invitations were sent to a few
intimate friends, including Mrs. Trotter. Here, then, was a painful
position for the two guilty ones: they were forced to sit and see
the child whom they had cast off feted and honored by the woman both
of them had injured. It seemed as if a wet blanket were placed over
the whole assembly: Dombey sat moodily biting his finger-nails, and
as Mrs. Trotter would not sing and Mrs. Dombey _could_ not, matters
went very slowly indeed.

When the time came for separating, Mrs. Dombey motioned to Jacob to
see Miss Montague to her hotel, but he being deep in a fit of
abstraction, his eldest son Charles stepped forward, and before his
father could prevent him, was equipped in greatcoat and overshoes,
ready for a moonlight stroll. During the evening he had noticed that
Charles was rather attentive to the fair actress, and the thought
that an intimacy between them was possible drove him to the verge of
distraction, Mrs. Dombey noticed his strange behavior, and asked him
the cause, on which he muttered something about "Auction lunch--
infernal champagne," and some other incoherent exclamations,
altogether unintelligible to his unsuspicious wife. When he and his
paramour got outside they walked along in gloomy silence for several
minutes--at last he addressed her: "Is it not strange that this child,
whom I had thought far removed from me and mine, should be brought
even into my own house, and eat at my table?"

"Oh, it is fearful; only think what would be the consequence if an