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. Suddenly she thought of the only other time she had been lost in the wide wilderness of London--and went that way. To the home of Walter's uncle. Checking her sobs and endeavoring to calm the agitation of her manner, so as to avoid attracting notice, Florence was going more quietly when Diogenes, panting for breath, and making the street ring with his glad bark, was at her feet. She bent down on the pavement, and laid his rough loving foolish head against her breast, and they went on together. At length the little shop came into view. She ran in and found Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, standing over the fire, making his morning's cocoa. Hearing a footstep and the rustle of a dress, the captain turned at the instant when Florence reeled and fell upon the floor. The captain, pale as Florence, calling her by his childhood's name for her, raised her like a baby, and laid her upon the same old sofa upon which she had slumbered long ago. "It's Heart's Delight!" he exclaimed; "It's the sweet creetur grow'd a woman!" But Florence did not stir, and the captain moistened her lips and forehead, put back her hair, covered her feet with his own coat, patted her hand--so small in his, that he was struck with wonder when he touched it--and seeing that her eyelids quivered and that her lips began to move, continued these restorative applications with a better heart. At last she opened her eyes, and spoke: "Captain Cuttle! Is it you? Is Walter's uncle here?" "Here, Pretty?" returned the captain. "He a'n't been here this many a long day. He a'n't been heer'd on since he sheered off arter poor Wal'r. But," said the captain, as a quotation, "Though lost to sight, to memory dear, and England, home, and beauty!" "Do you live here?" asked Florence.