“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 fa