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disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears.'

'What do you recommend, father,' asked Louisa, her reserved
composure not in the least affected by these gratifying results,
'that I should substitute for the term I used just now? For the
misplaced expression?'

'Louisa,' returned her father, 'it appears to me that nothing can
be plainer. Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of
Fact you state to yourself is: Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry
him? Yes, he does. The sole remaining question then is: Shall I
marry him? I think nothing can be plainer than that?'

'Shall I marry him?' repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.

'Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear
Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that
question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that
belong to many young women.'

'No, father,' she returned, 'I do not.'

'I now leave you to judge for yourself,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'I
have stated the case, as such cases are usually stated among
practical minds; I have stated it, as the case of your mother and
myself was stated in its time. The rest, my dear Louisa, is for
you to decide.'

From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now
leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in
his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her,
when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give
him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must
have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many
years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences
of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until
the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to
wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap.
With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened
her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of
the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are
drowned there.

Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently
towards the town, that he said, at length: 'Are you consulting the
chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa?'

'There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke.
Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!' she answered,
turning quickly.

'Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of
the remark.' To do him justice he did not, at all.

She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and
concentrating her attention upon him again, said, 'Father, I have
often thought that life is very short.' - This was so distinctly
one of his subjects that he interposed.

'It is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration of
human life is proved to have increased of late years. The
calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among
other figures which cannot go wrong, have established the fact.

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