“Stop!”

The doctor laid his two hands on Darnay’s lips.

“Tell me when I ask you, not now.  Go!  God bless you!”

On a day shortly before the marriage, while Lucie was sitting at her work alone, Sydney Carton entered.

“I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton,” she said, looking up at him.

“No; but the life I lead is not conducive to health.”

“Is it not—­forgive me—­a pity to live no better life?”

“It is too late for that.”  He covered her eyes with his hand.  “Will you hear me?” he continued.  “Since I have known you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again.  A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing; but let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world.”

“Mr. Carton,” she answered, after an agitated pause, “I promise to respect your secret.”

“God bless you!  My last application is this, that you will believe that for you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything.  Oh, Miss Manette, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you!”

He said “farewell!” and left her.

A wonderful corner for echoes was the quiet street-corner near Soho Square, where Dr. Manette lived with his daughter and her husband.  But Lucie heard in the echoes none but friendly and soothing sounds.  Her husband’s step was strong and prosperous among them; her father’s firm and equal.  The time came when a little Lucie lay on her bosom.  But there were other echoes that rumbled menacingly in the distance, with a sound as of a great storm in France, with a dreadful sea rising.

It was August of the year 1792.  Charles Darnay talked in a low voice with Mr. Lorry in Tellson’s Bank.  The bank had a branch in Paris, and the London establishment was the headquarters of the aristocratic emigrants who had fled from France.

“And do you really go to Paris to-night?” asked Darnay.

“I do.  You can have no conception of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are involved, and the getting them out of harm’s way is in the power of scarcely anyone but myself.”

As Mr. Lorry spoke a letter was laid before him.  Darnay saw the direction—­it was to himself.  “To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evremonde.”  Horrified at the oppression and cruelty of his family towards the people, Darnay had left his native country and had never used the title that had, some years before, fallen to him by inheritance.  He had told his secret to Dr. Manette on the wedding morning, and to none other.

“I know the man,” he said.

“Will you take charge of the letter and deliver it?” asked Mr. Lorry.

“I will.”

When alone, Darnay opened the letter.  It was from the steward of his French estate.  The man had been charged with acting for an emigrant against the people.  It was in vain he had urged that by the marquis’s instructions he had acted for the people—­had remitted all rents and imposts.  The only response was that he had acted for an emigrant.  Nothing but the marquis’s personal testimony could save him from execution.