Mr Carker, in his ostentation
of humility, received this notice with a deferential smile, and said
he understood its delicate meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth
the cottage was good enough for one in his position - better, perhaps,
than such a man should occupy, poor as it was.
'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look
better than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended to its
fullest stretch. 'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of
beggars.'
He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he
spoke, and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey,
drawing himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by
his second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls.
Cursorily as his cold eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance
accompanied his, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it
went, and what it saw. As it rested on one picture in particular,
Carker hardly seemed to breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so cat-like
and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed from that, as from
the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by the rest.
Carker looked at it - it was the picture that resembled Edith - as
if it were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon his
face, that seemed in part addressed to it, though it was all derisive
of the great man standing so unconscious beside him.
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