“You scarcely seem to like your hand,” said Sydney, with the

greatest composure. “Do you play?”

“I think, sir,” said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned

to Mr. Lorry, “I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and

benevolence, to put it to this other gentleman, so much your

junior, whether he can under any circumstances reconcile it to his

station to play that Ace of which he has spoken. I admit that I am a

spy, and that it is considered a discreditable stationthough it

must be filled by somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why

should he so demean himself as to make himself one?”

“I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad,” said Carton, taking the answer on

himself, and looking at his watch, “without any scruple, in a very

few minutes.”

“I should have hoped, gentlemen both,” said the spy, always

striving to hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, “that your respect

for my sister” “I could not better testify my respect for your

sister than by finally relieving her of her brother,” said Sydney

Carton.

“You think not, sir?”

“I have thoroughly made up my mind about it.”

The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his

ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual

demeanour, received such a check from the inscrutability of

Carton,who was a mystery to wiser and honester men than he,

that it faltered here and failed him. While he was at a loss, Carton

said, resuming his former air of contemplating cards:

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“And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impression that

I have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend

and fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pasturing in the

country prisons; who was he?”

“French. You don’t know him,” said the spy. quickly.

“French, eh?” replied Carton, musing, and not appearing to

notice him at all, though he echoed his word. “Well, he may be.”

“Is, I assure you,” said the spy; “though it’s not important.”

“Though it’s not important,” repeated Carton, in the same

mechanical way“though it’s not importantNo, it’s not

important. No. Yet I know the face.”

“I think not. I am sure not. It can’t be,” said the spy.

“Itcan’tbe,” muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, and

filling his glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. “Can’t

be. Spoke good French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought.”

“Provincial,” said the spy.

“No. Foreign!” cried Carton, striking his open hand on the

table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. “Cly! Disguised, but the

same man. We had that man before us at the Old Bailey.”

“Now, there you are hasty, sir,” said Barsad, with a smile that

gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side; “there you

really give me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will unreservedly

admit, at this distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been