‘I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse. I have talked it over with my friend Tom more than once — of course I remain on terms of perfect confidence with Tom — and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his. Will you walk?’

They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the twilight — she leaning on his arm — and she little thought how she was going down, down, down, Mrs Sparsit’s staircase.

Night and day, Mrs Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa had arrived at the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it would; but, until then, there it was to be, a Building, before Mrs Sparsit’s eyes. And there Louisa always was, upon it. And always gliding down, down, down!

Mrs Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go; she heard of him here and there; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept her black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of compunction, all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her, ever drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom of this new Giant’s Staircase.

With all her deference for Mr Bounderby as contradistinguished from his portrait, Mrs Sparsit had not the smallest intention of interrupting the descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her hopes. Hushed in expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs; and seldom so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at the figure coming down.