“You had better, Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to

propitiate, by tone and manner, “have the dear child here, and our

good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and

knows no French.”

The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was

more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by

distress and danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in

English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered,

“Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope you are pretty well!” She also

bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the

two took much heed of her.

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“Is that his child?” said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work

for the first time and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as

if it were the finger of Fate.

“Yes, Madame,” answered Mr. Lorry; “this is our poor

prisoner’s darling daughter, and only child.”

The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party

seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her

mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held

her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and

her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the

mother and the child.

“It is enough, my husband,” said Madame Defarge. “I have seen

them. We may go.”

But the suppressed manner had enough of menace in itnot

visible and presented, but indistinct and withheldto alarm Lucie

into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge’s

dress:

“You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no

harm. You will help me to see him if you can?”

“Your husband is not my business here,” returned Madame

Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. “It is the

daughter of your father who is my business here.”

“For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child’s

sake! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful.

We are more afraid of you than of these others.”

Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her

husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail

and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.

“What is that your husband says in that little letter?” asked

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Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. “Influence; he says

something touching influence?”

“That my father,” said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from

her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not

on it, “has much influence around him.”

“Surely it will release him!” said Madame Defarge. “Let it do

so.”

“As a wife and mother,” cried Lucie most earnestly, “I implore