CHAPTER I
Completing his resemblance to a man who was
sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his
breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:
A bottle of good claret after dinner does a
digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw
him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a lo and had just poured out his last
glassful of wine complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found
in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a
bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into
the inn-yard.
He set down his glass untouched. `This is
Mam'selle!' said he.
In a very few minutes the waiter came in to
announce that Miss Manette had arrived from London
`So soon?'
Alter 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 expression--but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being
singular--and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught
at, or stayed some passing shadow.
`Are you quite a stranger to me, 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, iii 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---
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