a current, wreck the ships.

_IV.--Mr. Gradgrind and His Daughter_

Mrs. Gradgrind died while her husband was up in London, and Louisa was
with her mother when death came.

"You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother," said Mrs.
Gradgrind, when she was dying. "Ologies of all kinds from morning to
night. But there is something--not an ology at all--that your father has
missed, or forgotten. I don't know what it is; I shall never get its
name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to
him to find out, for God's sake, what it is."

It was shortly after Mrs. Gradgrind's death that Mr. Bounderby was
called away from home on business for a few days; and Mr. James
Harthouse, still not sure at times of his purpose, found himself alone
with Mrs. Bounderby.

They were in the garden, and Harthouse implored her to accept him as her
lover. She urged him to go away, she commanded him to go away; but she
neither turned her face to him nor raised it, but sat as still as though
she were a statue.

Harthouse declared that she was the stake for which he ardently desired
to play away all that he had in life; that the objects he had lately
pursued turned worthless beside her; the success that was almost within
his grasp he flung away from him, like the dirt it was, compared with
her.

All this, and more, he said, and pleaded for a further meeting.

"Not here," Louisa said calmly.

They parted at the beginning of a heavy shower of rain, and the fall
James Harthouse had ridden for was averted.

Mrs. Bounderby left her husband's house, left it for good; not to share
Mr. Harthouse's life, but to return to her father.

Mr. Gradgrind, released from parliament for a time, was alone in his
study, when his eldest daughter entered.

"What is the matter, Louisa?"

"Father, I want to speak to you. You have trained me from my cradle?"

"Yes, Louisa."

"I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny. How could you
give me life, and take from me all the things that raise it from the
state of conscious death? Now, hear what I have come to say. With a
hunger and a thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment
appeased, in a condition where it seemed nothing could be worth the pain
and trouble of a contest, you proposed my husband to me."

"I never knew you were unhappy, my child!"

"I took him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. I
knew, and, father you