'You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?' asked
the gentleman of that name.

'Pooh!' rejoined Miss Pross; 'you were a bachelor in your
cradle.'

'Well!' observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little
wig, 'that seems probable, too.'

'And you were cut out for a bachelor,' pursued Miss Pross,
before you were put in your cradle.'

'Then, I think,' said Mr. Lorry, 'that I was very unhandsomely
dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection
of my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie,' drawing his arm
soothingly round her waist, 'I hear them moving in the next
room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are
anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to
you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear,
in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken
every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are
in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's shall go to the
wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fort-
night's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on
your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have
sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame.
Now, I hear Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my
dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Some-
body comes to claim his own.'

For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the
well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the
bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine
tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned,
were as old as Adam.

The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with
Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale--which had not been the
case when they went in together--that no vestige of colour was
to be seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he
was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it
disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance
and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind.

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