confidence in his being bound to do what she
required, that held him at a singular
disadvantage, "the only reparation that remains
with you, is to leave here immediately and
finally. I am quite sure that you can
mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you
have done. I am quite sure that it is
the only compensation you have left it in your
power to make. I do not say that it is much,
or that it is enough; but it is something, and it
is necessary. Therefore, though without any
other authority than I have given you, and even
without the knowledge of any other person
than yourself and myself, I ask you to
depart from this place to-night, under an
obligation never to return to it."

If she had asserted any influence over him
beyond her plain faith in the truth and
right of what she said; if she had concealed
the least doubt or irresolution, or had
harboured for the best purpose any reserve or
pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest
trace of any sensitiveness to his ridicule
or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he
might offer; he would have carried it against
her at this point. But he could as easily
have changed a clear sky by looking at it in
surprise, as affect her.

"But do you know," he asked, quite at a
loss, "the extent of what you ask? You
probably are not aware that I am here on a
public kind of business, preposterous enough
in itself, but which I have gone in for, and
sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to
in quite a desperate manner? You probably
are not aware of that, but I assure you it's
the fact."

It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.

"Besides which," said Mr. Harthouse,
taking a turn or two across the room,
dubiously, " it's so alarmingly absurd. It
would make a man so ridiculous, after going
in for these fellows, to back out in such an
incomprehensible way."

"I am quite sure," repeated Sissy, "that
it is the only reparation in your power, sir.
I am quite sure, or I would not have come
here."

He glanced at her face, and walked about
again. "Upon my soul, I don't know what to
say. So immensely absurd!"

It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secresy.

"If I were to do such a very ridiculous
thing," he said, stopping again presently, and
leaning against the chimney-piece, "it could
only be in the most inviolable confidence."

"I will trust to you, sir," returned Sissy,
"and you will trust to me."

His leaning against the chimney-piece
reminded him of the night with the whelp. It
was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow
he felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He
could make no way at all.

"I suppose a man never was placed in a
more ridiculous position," he said, after looking
down, and looking up, and laughing, and
frowning, and walking off, and walking back
again. "But I see no way out of it. What
will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. I
must take off myself, I imagine—in short, I
engage to do it."

Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the
result, but she was happy in it, and her face
beamed brightly.

"You will permit me to say," continued
Mr. James Harthouse, " that I doubt if any
other ambassador, or ambassadress, could
have addressed me with the same success.
I must not only regard myself as being in a
very ridiculous position, but as being
vanquished at all points. Will you allow me the
privilege of remembering my enemy's name?"

"My name?" said the ambassadress.

"The only name I could possibly care to
know, to-night."

"Sissy Jupe."

"Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related
to the family?"

"I am only a poor girl," returned Sissy.
"I was separated from my father—he was
only a stroller—and taken pity on by Mr.
Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever
since."

She was gone.

"It wanted this to complete the defeat,"
said Mr. James Harthouse, sinking, with a
resigned air, on the sofa, after standing
transfixed a little while. " The defeat may now be
considered perfectly accomplished. Only a
poor girl—only a stroller—only James
Harthouse made nothing of—only James
Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure."

The Great Pyramid put it into his head to
go up the Nile. He took a pen upon the
instant, and wrote the following note (in
appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother:

Dear Jack. All up at Coketown. Bored out of
the place, and going in for camels. Affectionately,
JEM.

He rang the bell.

"Send my fellow here."

"Gone to bed sir."

"Tell him to get up, and pack up."

He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr.
Bounderby, announcing his retirement from
that part of the country, and showing where
he would be found for the next fortnight.
The other, similar in effect, to Mr. Gradgrind.
Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon
their superscriptions, he had left the tall chimneys
of Coketown behind, and was in a railway
carriage, tearing and glaring over the dark
landscape.

The moral sort of fellows might suppose
that Mr. James Harthouse derived some
comfortable reflections afterwards, from this
prompt retreat, as one of his few actions that
made any amends for anything, and as a
token to himself that he had escaped the
climax of a very bad business. But it was
not so, at all. A secret sense of having failed
and been ridiculous—a dread of what
other fellows who went in for similar sorts of
things, would say at his expense if they knew