directly, and it is better she should not see us
together to-night. Go! God bless you!"

It was dark when Charles Darnay left him,
and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie
came home; she hurried into the room alone—
for Miss Pross had gone straight up-stairs—and
was surprised to find his reading chair empty.

"My father!" she called to him. "Father
dear!"

Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a
low hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing
lightly across the intermediate room, she looked
in at his door and came running back frightened,
crying to herself, with her blood all chilled,
"What shall I do! What shall I do!"

Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she
hurried back, and tapped at his door, and softly
called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of
her voice, and he presently came out to her,
and they walked up and down together for a
long time.

She came down from her bed, to look at him
in his sleep that night. He slept heavily, and
his tray of shoemaking tools, and his old
unfinished work, were all as usual.

CHAPTER XI. A COMPANION PICTURE.

"SYDNEY," said Mr. Stryver, on that
self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; "mix
another bowl of punch; I have something to say
to you."

Sydney had been working double tides that
night, and the night before, and the night before
that, and a good many nights in succession,
making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's
papers before the setting in of the long vacation.
The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver
arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything
was got rid of, until November should
come with its fogs atmospheric and fogs legal,
and bring grist to the mill again.

Sydney was none the livelier and none the
soberer for so much application. It had taken a
deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through
the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of
wine had preceded the towelling; and he was in a
very damaged condition, as he now pulled his
turban off and threw it into the basin in which
he had steeped it at intervals for the last six
hours.

"Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?"
said Stryver the portly, with his hands in his
waistband, glancing round from the sofa where
he lay on his back.

"I am."

"Now, look here! I am going to tell you
something that will rather surprise you, and
that perhaps will make you think me not quite
as shrewd as you usually do think me. I
intend to marry."

"Do you?"

"Yes. And not for money. What do you
say now?"

"I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is
she?"

"Guess."

"Do I know her?"

"Guess."

"I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in
the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering
in my head. If you want me to guess, you
must ask me to dinner."

"Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver,
coming slowly into a sitting posture. "Sydney,
I rather despair of making myself intelligible to
you, because you are such an insensible dog."

"And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting
the punch, "are such a sensitive and poetical
spirit."

"Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully,
"though I don't prefer any claim to being
the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better),
still, I am a tenderer sort of fellow than you."

"You are a luckier, if you mean that."

"I don't mean that. I mean, I am a man of
more——more——"

"Say gallantry, while you are about it,"
suggested Carton.

"Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is
that, I am a man," said Stryver, inflating
himself at his friend as he made the punch, "who
cares more to be agreeable, who takes more
pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to
be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you
do."

"Go on," said Sydney Carton.

"No; but before I go on," said Stryver,
shaking his head in his bullying way, "I'll
have this out with you. You have been at
Doctor Manette's house as much as I have, or
more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed
of your moroseness there! Your manners have
been of that silent and sullen and hang-dog kind,
that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed
of you, Sydney!"

"It should be very beneficial to a man in your
practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything,"
returned Sydney; "you ought to be much obliged
to me."

"You shall not get off in that way," rejoined
Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him; "no,
Sydney, it's my duty to tell you—and I tell you
to your face to do you good—that you are a
de-vilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of
society. You are a disagreeable fellow."

Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had
made, and laughed.

"Look at me!" said Stryver, squaring himself;
"I have less need to make myself agreeable than
you have, being more independent in
circumstances. Why do I do it?"

"I never saw you do it yet," muttered
Carton.

"I do it because it's politic; I do it on
principle. And look at me! I get on."

"You don't get on with your account of your
matrimonial intentions," answered Carton, with
a careless air, "I wish you would keep to that.
As to me—will you never understand that I am
incorrigible?"

He asked the question with some appearance
of scorn.

"You have no business to be incorrigible,"