Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the
details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find
them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare
myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know
what they are.”
“Naturally,” said Mr. Lorry. “Yes—I—” After a pause, he
added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears.
“It is very difficult to begin.”
He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The
young forehead lifted itself into that singular —but it
was pretty and characteristic, besides being singular—and she
raised her **s if with an involuntary action she caught at, or
stayed some passing shadow.
“Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?”
“Am I not?” Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them
outwards with an argumentative smile.
Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose,
the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be,
the deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in
the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He
watched her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes
again, went on:
“In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than
address you as a young English lady, Miss Manette?”
“If you please, sir.”
“Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business
charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don’t heed me
any more than if I was a speaking machine—truly, I am not much
else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
our customers.”
“Story!”
He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when
he added, in a hurry, “Yes, customers; in the banking business we
usually call our connexion our customers. He was a French
gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements—a
Doctor.”
“Not of Beauvais?”
“Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father,
the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your
father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of
knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but
confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and had
been—oh! twenty years.”
“At that time—I may ask, at what time, sir?”
“I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married—an English
lady—and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of
many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely
in Tellson’s hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of
one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere
business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no
particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one
to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from
one of our customers to another in the course of my business day;
in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on—”
“But this is my father’s story, sir; and I begin to think”—the
curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him—“that
when I was left an orphan through my mother’s"};
