ons, had been elected to
Parliament and now spent much time in London. Mrs. Gradgrind was yet
feebler and more ailing. Tom had grown to be a young man, a selfish and
idle one, and Bounderby had made him a clerk in his bank. Louisa, not
blind to her brother's faults, but loving him devotedly, had become, in
this time, an especial object of Bounderby's notice.

Indeed, the mill owner had determined to marry her. Louisa had always
been repelled by his coarseness and rough ways, and when he proposed
for her hand she shrank from the thought. If her father had ever
encouraged her confidence she might then have thrown herself on his
breast and told him all that she felt, but to Mr. Gradgrind marriage was
only a cold fact with no romance in it, and his manner chilled her. Tom,
in his utter selfishness, thought only of what a good thing it would be
for him if his sister married his employer, and urged it on her with no
regard whatever for her own liking.

At length, thinking, as long as she had never been allowed to have a
sentiment that could not be put down in black and white, that it did not
much matter whom she married after all, and believing that at least it
would help Tom, she consented.

She married Bounderby, the richest man in Coketown, and went to live in
his fine house, while Mrs. Sparsit, the housekeeper, angry and
revengeful, found herself compelled to move into small rooms over
Bounderby's bank.

II

THE ROBBERY OF BOUNDERBY'S BANK

In one of Bounderby's weaving mills a man named Stephen Blackpool had
worked for years. He was sturdy and honest, but had a stooping frame, a
knitted brow and iron-gray hair, for in his forty years he had known
much trouble.

Many years before he had married; unhappily, for through no fault or
failing of his own, his wife took to drink, left off work, and became a
shame and a disgrace to the town. When she could get no money to buy
drink with, she sold his furniture, and often he would come home from
the mill to find the rooms stripped of all their belongings and his wife
stretched on the floor in drunken slumber. At last he was compelled to
pay her to stay away, and even then he lived in daily fear lest she
return to disgrace him afresh.

What made this harder for Stephen to bear was the true love he had for a
sweet, patient, working woman in the mill named Rachel. She had an oval,
delicate face, with gentle eyes and dark, shining hair. She knew his
story and loved him, t