She gave her hand to Sissy, as if she meant with her help too.

‘Your wretched brother,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Do you think he had planned this robbery, when he went with you to the lodging?’

‘I fear so, father. I know he had wanted money very much, and had spent a great deal.’

‘The poor man being about to leave the town, it came into his evil brain to cast suspicion on him?’

‘I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, father. For I asked him to go there with me. The visit did not originate with him.’

‘He had some conversation with the poor man. Did he take him aside?’

‘He took him out of the room. I asked him afterwards, why he had done so, and he made a plausible excuse; but since last night, father, and when I remember the circumstances by its light, I am afraid I can imagine too truly what passed between them.’

‘Let me know,’ said her father, ‘if your thoughts present your guilty brother in the same dark view as mine.’

‘I fear, father,’ hesitated Louisa, ‘that he must have made some representation to Stephen Blackpool—perhaps in my name, perhaps in his own—which induced him to do in good faith and honesty, what he had never done before, and to wait about the Bank those two or three nights before he left the town.’

‘Too plain!’ returned the father. ‘Too plain!’

He shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments. Recovering himself, he said:

‘And now, how is he to be found? How is he to be saved from justice? In the few hours that I can possibly allow to elapse before I publish the truth, how is he to be found by us, and only by us? Ten thousand pounds could not effect it.’

‘Sissy has effected it, father.’

He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his house, and said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kindness, ‘It is always you, my child!’