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So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came down stairs again, and stole into his room: not free from unshaped fears, beforehand.

All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned over him and looked at him.

Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them, even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.

She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.

CHAPTER 18

Nine Days

The marriage day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor’s room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr Lorry, and Miss Pross – to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom.

‘And so,’ said Mr Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; ‘and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought what I was doing. How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr Charles!’

‘You didn’t mean it,’ remarked the matter of fact Miss Pross, ‘and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!’

‘Really? Well; but don’t cry,’ said the gentle Mr Lorry.

‘I am not crying,’ said Miss Pross; ‘you are.’

‘I, my Pross?’ (By this time, Mr Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.)

‘You were just now; I saw you do it, and I don’t wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made ’em, is enough to bring tears into anybody’s eyes. There’s not a fork or a spoon in the collection, ’ said Miss Pross, ‘that I didn’t cry over, last night after the box came, till I couldn’t see it.’

‘I am highly gratified,’ said Mr Lorry, ‘though, upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance, invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might have been a Mrs Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!’

‘Not at all!’ From Miss Pross.

‘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,