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 XVIII. 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,
even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively
speaking) before him. And when, at the
fortnight'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 Somebody
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.

He gave his arm to his daughter, and took
her down stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry
had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed
in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring
church where no strange eyes looked
on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were
happily married.

Besides the glancing tears that shone among
the smiles of the little group when it was
done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling,
glanced on the bride's hand, which were
newly released from the dark obscurity of one
of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home
to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course
the golden hair that had mingled with the poor
shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were
mingling with them again in the morning sunlight,
on the threshold of the door at parting.

It was a hard parting, though it was not for
long. But, her father cheered her, and said at
last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding
arms, "Take her, Charles! She is
yours!" And her agitated hand waved to them
from a chaise window, and she was gone.

The corner being out of the way of the idle
and curious, and the preparations having been
very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and
Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when
they turned into the welcome shade of the cool
old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change