
words, »into haunts and into society which are not to be thought of without a
shudder. As to the accident which befel Miss Florence this morning, I regard
that as, in one great sense, a happy and fortunate circumstance; inasmuch as,
but for that occurrence, I never could have known - and from your own lips too -
of what you had been guilty. I think, Louisa, the other nurse, the young
person,« here Miss Nipper sobbed aloud, »being so much younger, and necessarily
influenced by Paul's nurse, may remain. Have the goodness to direct that this
woman's coach is paid to« - Mr. Dombey stopped and winced - »to Staggs's
Gardens.«
    Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, and crying
to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was a dagger in the
haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he
could not disown, clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he
cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp
agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.
    His son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor Paul had
better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have, for he had lost
his second mother - his first, so far as he knew - by a stroke as sudden as that
natural affliction which had darkened the beginning of his life. At the same
blow, his sister too, who cried herself to sleep so mournfully, had lost as good
and true a friend. But that is quite beside the question. Let us waste no words
about it.
 

                                  Chapter VII

  A Bird's-Eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-Place; Also of the State of Miss
                               Tox's Affections.

Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at some remote
period of English History, into a fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of
the town, where it stood in the shade like a poor relation of the great street
round the corner, coldly looked down upon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly
in a court, and it was not exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of
No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The
name of this retirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone
pavement, was Princess's Place;
