Two persons, however, had a suspicion of the truth. One of these was the porter of the bank, whose suspicion was strong. The other was Louisa, who, though her love denied it room, hid in her secret heart a fear that her brother had had a share in the crime. In the night she went to Tom\'s bedside, put her arms around him and begged him to tell her any secret he might be keeping from her. But he answered sullenly that he did not know what she meant.

Mrs. Sparsit\'s fine-bred nerves (so she insisted) were so shaken by the robbery that she came to Bounderby\'s house to remain till she recovered.

The feeble, pink-eyed bundle of shawls that was Mrs. Gradgrind, happening to die at this time, and Louisa being absent at her mother\'s funeral, Mrs.[Pg 428] Sparsit saw her opportunity. She had never forgiven Louisa for marrying Bounderby, and she now revenged herself by a course of such flattery that the vulgar bully began to think his cold, proud wife much too regardless of him and of his importance.

What pleased the hawk-faced old busybody most was the game the suave Harthouse was playing, which she was sharp enough to see through at once. If Louisa would only disgrace herself by running away with Harthouse, thought Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby might be free again and she might marry him. So she watched narrowly the growing intimacy between them, hoping for Louisa\'s ruin.

There came a day when Bounderby was summoned on business to London, and Louisa stayed meanwhile at the Bounderby country house, which lay some distance from Coketown. Mrs. Sparsit guessed that Harthouse would use this chance to see Louisa alone, and, to spy upon her, took the train herself, reaching there at nightfall.

She went afoot from the station to the grounds, opened the gate softly and crept close to the house. Here and there in the dusk, through garden and wood, she stole, and at length she found what she sought. There under the trees stood Harthouse, his horse tied near by, and talking with him was Louisa.

Mrs. Sparsit stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his ambuscade against the savages, and[Pg 429] listened with all her ears. She could not hear all, but caught enough to know that he was telling her he loved her, and begging her to leave her husband, her home and friends, and to run away with him.

In her delight and in the noise of rain upon the foliage (for a thunder-storm was rolling up) Mrs. Sparsit did not catch Louisa\'s answer. Where and when Harthouse asked her to join him, she could not hear, but as he mounted and rode away she thought he said "To-night."

She waited in the rain, rejoicing, till her patience was at length rewarded by seeing Louisa, cloaked and veiled as if for a journey, come from the house and go toward the railroad station. Then Mrs. Sparsit, drawing her draggled shawl over her head to hide her face, followed, boarded the same train, and hastened to tell the news of his wife\'s elopement to Bounderby in London.

Wet to the skin, her feet squashing in her shoes, her clothes spoiled and her bonnet looking like an over-ripe fig, with a terrible cold that made her voice only a whisper, and sneezing herself almost to pieces, Mrs. Sparsit found Bounderby at his city hotel, exploded with the combustible information she carried and fainted quite away on his coat collar.

Furious at the news she brought, Bounderby hustled her into a fast train, and together, he raging and glaring and she inwardly jubilant, they hurried[Pg 430] toward Coketown to inform Mr. Gradgrind, who was then at home, of his daughter\'s doings.

But where, meanwhile, was Louisa? No............