“Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if
Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage
morning. Do you promise?”
“Willingly.”
“Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better
she should not see us together tonight, 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 alonefor Miss Pross had gone straight upstairsand 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 the 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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 shoe-making tools, and his
old unfinished work, were all as usual.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
Chapter XVII
A COMPANION PICTURE
S
ydney,” said Mr. Stryver, on that selfsame 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,
an