troublemaker and sacks him. Later Louisa and Tom visit Stephen, expressing regret, and Louisa gives him some money. Privately, Tom tells him to wait outside the bank after work. When a robbery takes place at the bank, Stephen is suspected of the crime; even more so as he had left the town the next day. Mrs. Sparsit observes the advancing relationship between James Harthouse and Louisa, and suspects an adulterous liaison. Unable to hear their dialogue, she assumes the affair is progressing. When Harthouse confesses his love for Louisa, Louisa refuses him. They leave separately, and Mrs. Sparsit follows Louisa to the station, where Louisa boards a train to her father's house; Mrs Sparsit loses her. When Louisa arrives, she is in an extreme state of distress. Having argued that her rigorous education has stifled her ability to express her emotions, Louisa collapses at her father's feet in a dead faint. Book 3: Garnering At Bounderby's London hotel, Mrs. Sparsit gives him the news her surveillance has brought. Bounderby takes her back to Coketown and to Stone Lodge, where Louisa is resting. Gradgrind tells Bounderby that Louisa resisted Harthouse's advances, but has experienced a crisis and needs time to recover. Bounderby is immensely indignant and ill-mannered, especially towards Mrs. Sparsit for misleading him. Ignoring Gradgrind's pleas, he announces that unless Louisa returns to him the next day, the marriage will end. She does not come back. Harthouse leaves Coketown after Sissy tells him never to return. As Slackbridge increasingly blackens Stephen Blackpool's name, Rachael goes to the bank to say she knows where he is, and that she will write asking him to return to Coketown to clear his name. Bounderby is suspicious when she tells him Stephen was visited by Louisa and Tom the night he was dismissed, and brings her to Gradgrind's house where Louisa confirms Rachael's account. Mrs Sparsit eventually tracks down Mrs Pegler, the old woman who makes a mysterious annual visit to see Bounderby's house, and brings her to the house where she is revealed as Bounderby's mother. Far from having abandoned him to a life of hardship, she gave him a good upbringing and, when he became successful, allowed herself to be persuaded never to visit him. Bounderby is now publicly exposed as a ridiculous humbug 'bully of humility'. On a Sunday outing, Rachael and Sissy find Stephen, who has fallen down an abandoned