 faith in anything else?
What was there in her soul for James Harthouse to destroy, which Thomas
Gradgrind had nurtured there in its state of innocence!
    It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind - implanted
there before her eminently practical father began to form it - a struggling
disposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever heard
of, constantly strove with doubts and resentments. With doubts, because the
aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth. With resentments, because of the
wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed a whisper of the truth. Upon a
nature long accustomed to self-suppression, thus torn and divided, the Harthouse
philosophy came as a relief and justification. Everything being hollow and
worthless, she had missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it matter,
she had said to her father, when he proposed her husband. What did it matter,
she said still. With a scornful self-reliance, she asked herself, What did
anything matter - and went on.
    Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end, yet so
gradually, that she believed herself to remain motionless. As to Mr. Harthouse,
whither he tended, he neither considered nor cared. He had no particular design
or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled his lassitude. He was as
much amused and interested, at present, as it became so fine a gentleman to be;
perhaps even more than it would have been consistent with his reputation to
confess. Soon after his arrival he languidly wrote to his brother, the
honourable and jocular member, that the Bounderbys were great fun; and further,
that the female Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was
young, and remarkably pretty. After that, he wrote no more about them, and
devoted his leisure chiefly to their house. He was very often in their house, in
his flittings and visitings about the Coketown district; and was much encouraged
by Mr. Bounderby. It was quite in Mr. Bounderby's gusty way to boast to all his
world that he didn't care about your highly connected people, but that if his
wife Tom Gradgrind's daughter did, she was welcome to their company.
    Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation, if the face
which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would change for him.
    He was quick enough to observe; he had a good memory, and did not forget a
word of the brother's revelations.
