Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs. Sparsit to do anything she pleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed it to Mr. Bounderby. ‘It will do you good, sir. It will warm your heart. It is the sort of thing you want, and ought to take, sir.’ And when Mr. Bounderby said, ‘Your health, ma’am!’ she answered with great feeling, ‘Thank you, sir. The same to you, and happiness also.’ Finally, she wished him good night, with great pathos; and Mr. Bounderby went to bed, with a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender, though he could not, for his life, have mentioned what it was.

Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and waited for her brother’s coming home. That could hardly be, she knew, until an hour past midnight; but in the country silence, which did anything but calm the trouble of her thoughts, time lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness and stillness had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the bell at the gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that it rang on until daylight; but it ceased, and the circles of its last sound spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead again.

She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then she arose, put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark, and up the staircase to her brother’s room. His door being shut, she softly opened it and spoke to him, approaching his bed with a noiseless step.

She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew his face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but she said nothing to him.

He started by and by as if he were just then awakened, and asked who that was, and what was the matter?

‘Tom, have you anything to tell me? If ever you loved me in your life, and have anything concealed from every one besides, tell it to me.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo. You have been dreaming.’

‘My dear brother:’ she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair flowed over him as if she would hide him from every one but herself: ‘is there nothing that you have to tell me? Is there nothing you can tell me if you will? You can tell me nothing that will change me. O Tom, tell me the truth!’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo!’

‘As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie somewhere one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am dust. In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!’

‘What is it you want to know?’

‘You may be certain;’ in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom as if he were a child; ‘that I will not reproach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me? Whisper very softly. Say only “yes,” and I shall understand you!’