'I have hung about a family, my deary,' said the mother, even more humbly and submissively than before.
'What family?'
'Hush, darling. Don't be angry with me. I did it for the love of you. In memory of my poor gal beyond seas.' She put out her hand deprecatingly, and drawing it back again, laid it on her lips.
'Years ago, my deary,' she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentive and stem face opposed to her, 'I came across his little child, by chance.'
'Whose child?'
'Not his, Alice deary; don't look at me like that; not his. How could it be his? You know he has none.'
'Whose then?' returned the daughter. 'You said his.'
'Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey's - only Mr Dombey's. Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him.'
In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if with sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the daughter's face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement passion, she remained still: except that she clenched her arms tighter and tighter within each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain them by that means from doing an injury to herself, or someone else, in the blind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her.
'Little he thought who I was!' said the old woman, shaking her clenched hand.
'And little he cared!' muttered her daughter, between her teeth.
'But there we were, said the old woman, 'face to face. I spoke to him, and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long grove of trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body.'
'He will thrive in spite of that,' returned the daughter disdainfully.
'Ay, he is thriving,' said the mother.
She held her peace; for the face and form before her were unshaped by rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions that strove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, was no less formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeaking the violent and dangerous character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, and she asked, after a silence:
'Is he married?'