She was the first person who
had ever ventured to oppose him in the slightest particular;--their
pride, however different in kind, was equal in degree, and their flinty
opposition struck out fire which consumed the tie between them--and soon
the final separation came.
One evening after a dispute with her husband, Mrs. Dombey went out to
dinner, and did not return. In the confusion of that dreadful night,
compassion for her father was the first distinct emotion that
overwhelmed Florence. At daybreak she hastened to him with her arms
stretched out, crying, "Oh, dear, dear papa!" as if she would have
clasped him around the neck. But in his frenzy he answered her with
brutal words, and lifted up his cruel arm and struck her, with that
heaviness, that she tottered on the marble floor. She did not sink down
at his feet; she did not shut out the sight of him with her trembling
hands; she did not utter one word of reproach. But she looked at him,
and a cry of desolation issued from her heart. She saw she had no father
upon earth, and ran out, orphaned, from his house. Another moment and
Florence, with her head bent down to hide her agony of tears, was in
the street.
In the wildness of her sorrow, shame, and terror, the forlorn girl
hurried through the sunshine of a bright morning as if it were the
darkness of a winter night. Wringing her hands and weeping bitterly, she
fled without a thought, without a hope, without a purpose, but to fly
somewhere--anywhere.
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