joy and comfort beyond all price; but for that
very reason, it was so affecting to think that she caused him a moment's
unhappiness, or ruffled, by a breath, the harmless current of his life,
that her eyes filled with tears, and her bosom overflowed with pity.
Captain Cuttle, in his different way, thought much of Mr Toots too;
and so did Walter; and when the evening came, and they were all
sitting together in Florence's new room, Walter praised him in a most
impassioned manner, and told Florence what he had said on leaving
the house, with every graceful setting-off in the way of comment and
appreciation that his own honesty and sympathy could surround it with.

Mr Toots did not return upon the next day, or the next, or for several
days; and in the meanwhile Florence, without any new alarm, lived like
a quiet bird in a cage, at the top of the old Instrument-maker's house.
But Florence drooped and hung her head more and more plainly, as the
days went on; and the expression that had been seen in the face of the
dead child, was often turned to the sky from her high window, as if it
sought his angel out, on the bright shore of which he had spoken: lying
on his little bed.

Florence had been weak and delicate of late, and the agitation she had
undergone was not without its influences on her health. But it was no
bodily illness that affected her now. She was distressed in mind; and
the cause of her distress was Walter.

Interested in her, anxious for her, proud and glad to serve her, and
showing all this with the enthusiasm and ardour of his character,
Florence saw that he avoided her. All the long day through, he seldom
approached her room. If she asked for him, he came, again for the moment
as earnest and as bright as she remembered him when she was a lost
child in the staring streets; but he soon became constrained--her quick
affection was too watchful not to know it--and uneasy, and soon left
her. Unsought, he never came, all day, between the morning and the
night. When the evening closed in, he was always there, and that was
her happiest time, for then she half believed that the old Walter of her
childhood was not changed. But, even then, some trivial word, look,
or circumstance would show her that there was an indefinable division
between them which could not be passed.

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