"Here!"
"Yes," said Florence, advancing to him. "I was afraid you might be going
away, and hardly thinking of me. And, Walter, there is something I wish
to say to you before you go, and you must call me Florence, if you
please, and not speak like a stranger. My dear brother before he died
said that he was very fond of you, and said, 'remember Walter'; and if
you will be a brother to me, Walter, now that I have none on earth, I'll
be your sister all my life, and think of you like one, wherever we
may be!"
In her sweet simplicity, she held out both her hands, and Walter, taking
them, stooped down and touched the tearful face; and it seemed to him
in doing so, that he responded to her innocent appeal beside the dead
child's bed.
After Walter's departure, Florence lived alone as before, in the great
dreary house, and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant
stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty
into stone.
No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick
wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy than was her
father's mansion in its grim reality. The spell upon it was more wasting
than the spell which used to set enchanted houses sleeping once upon a
time, but left their waking freshness unimpaired. But Florence bloomed
there, like the King's fair daughter in the story. Her books, her music,
and her daily teachers were her only real companions, except Susan
Nipper and Diogenes, and she lived within the circle of her innocent
pursuits and thoughts, and nothing harmed her.
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