Florence loved her father still, but by degrees had come to love him rather as some dear one who had been, or who might have been, than as the hard reality before her eyes. Something of the softened sadness with which she loved the memory of little Paul or her mother, seemed to enter now into her thoughts of him, and to make them, as it were, a dear remembrance. Whether it was that he was dead to her, and that partly for this reason, partly for his share in those old objects of her affection, and partly for the long association of him with hopes that were withered and tendernesses he had frozen, she could not have told; but the father whom she loved began to be a vague and dreamy idea to her; hardly more substantially connected with her real life than the image she would sometimes conjure up of her dear brother yet alive, and growing to be a man, who would protect and cherish her.
The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on her like the change from childhood to womanhood, and had come with it. Florence was almost seventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she was conscious of these thoughts.
She was often alone now, for the old association between her and her mamma was greatly changed. At the time of her father's illness, and when he was lying in his room downstairs, Florence had first observed that Edith avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to reconcile this with her affection when they did meet, she sought her in her own room at night, once more.
"Mamma," said Florence, stealing softly to her side, "have I offended you?"
She answered "No."
"I must have done something," said Florence. "Tell me what it is. You have changed your manner to me, dear mamma. I cannot say how instantly I feel the least change; for I love you with my whole heart."
"As I do you," said Mrs. Dombey. "Ah, Florence, believe me never more than now!"
"Why do you go away from me so often, and keep away?" asked Florence. "And why do you sometimes look so strangely on me, dear mamma? You do so, do you not?"
"Dear Florence, it is for your good. Why, I cannot tell you now. But you will believe I have always tried to make you happy, dear, will you not?"
"Mamma," said Florence, anxiously, "there is a change in you, in more than what you say to me, which alarms me. Let me stay with you a little."