And she could not but see that these revealings of a great alteration in Walter manifested themselves in despite of his utmost efforts to hide them. In his consideration for her, she thought, and in the earnestness of his desire to spare her any wound from his kind hand, he resorted to innumerable little artifices and disguises. So much the more did Florence feel the greatness of the alteration in him; so much the oftener did she weep at this estrangement of her brother.
The good Captain—her untiring, tender, ever zealous friend—saw it, too, Florence thought, and it pained him. He was less cheerful and hopeful than he had been at first, and would steal looks at her and Walter, by turns, when they were all three together of an evening, with quite a sad face.
Florence resolved, at last, to speak to Walter. She believed she knew now what the cause of his estrangement was, and she thought it would be a relief to her full heart, and would set him more at ease, if she told him she had found it out, and quite submitted to it, and did not reproach him.
It was on a certain Sunday afternoon, that Florence took this resolution. The faithful Captain, in an amazing shirt-collar, was sitting by her, reading with his spectacles on, and she asked him where Walter was.
"I think he’s down below, my lady lass," returned the Captain.
"I should like to speak to him," said Florence, rising hurriedly as if to go down stairs.
"I ’ll rouse him up here, Beauty," said the Captain, "in a trice."
Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, shouldered his book—for he made it a point of duty to read none but very large books on a Sunday, as having a more staid appearance: and had bargained, years ago, for a prodigious volume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterly confounded him at any time, insomuch that he had not yet ascertained of what subject it treated—and withdrew. Walter soon appeared.
"Captain Cuttle tells me, Miss Dombey,"—he eagerly began on coming in—but stopped when he saw her face.
"You are not so well to-day. You look distressed. You have been weeping."
He spoke so kindly, and with such a fervent tremor in his voice, that the tears gushed into her eyes at the sound of his words.
"Walter," said Florence, gently, "I am not quite well, and I have been weeping. I want to speak to you."
He sat down opposite to her, looking at her beautiful and innocent face; and his own turned pale, and his lips trembled.
"You said, upon the night when I knew that you were saved—and oh! dear Walter, what I felt that night, and what I hoped!—"
He put his trembling hand upon the table between them, and sat looking at her.
"—that I was changed. I was surprised to hear you say so, but I understand, now, that I am. Don’t be angry with me, Walter. I was too much overjoyed to think of it, then."
She seemed a child to him again. It was the ingenuous, confiding, loving child he saw and heard. Not the dear woman, at whose feet he would have laid the riches of the earth.
