young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own

rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of

the forehead strongly marked.

“We are thoughtful tonight!” said Darnay, drawing his arm

about her.

“Yes, dearest Charles,” with her hands on his breast, and the

inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; “we are rather

thoughtful tonight, for we have something on our mind tonight.”

“What is it, my Lucie?”

“Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you

not to ask it?”

“Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?”

What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from

the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!

“I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration

and respect than you expressed for him tonight.”

“Indeed, my own? Why so?”

“That is what you are not to ask me! But I thinkI knowhe

does.”

“If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my

Life?”

“I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always,

and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to

believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that

there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”

“It is a painful reflection to me,” said Charles Darnay, quite

astounded, “that I should have done him any wrong. I never

thought this of him.”

“My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is

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scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is

reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things,

gentle things, even magnanimous things.”

She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost

man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for

hours.

“And, O my dearest Love!” she urged, clinging nearer to him,

laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his,

“remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he

is in his misery!”

The supplication touched him home. “I will always remember

it, dear Heart. I will remember it as long as I live.”

He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and

folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the

dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could

have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the

soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the

nightand the words would not have parted from his lips for the

first time“God bless her for her sweet compassion!”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics