In the morning, when Mr Dombey was at his breakfast in one or other of the two first-mentioned of them, as well as in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung for Richards to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro with her young charge.

From the glimpses she caught of Mr Dombey at these times, sitting in the dark distance, looking out towards the infant from among the dark heavy furniture--the house had been inhabited for years by his father, and in many of its appointments was old-fashioned and grim--she began to entertain ideas of him in his solitary state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that was not to be accosted or understood.

Mr Dombey came to be, in the course of a few days, invested in his own person, to her simple thinking, with all the mystery and gloom of his house.

As she walked up and down the glass room, or sat hushing the baby there--which she very often did for hours together, when the dusk was closing in, too--she would sometimes try to pierce the gloom beyond, and make out how he was looking and what he was doing.

Sensible that she was plainly to be seen by him' however, she never dared to pry in that direction but very furtively and for a moment at a time.