“Nor written?”

“Never.”

“It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your selfdenial

is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her

father thanks you.”

He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.

“I know,” said Darnay, respectfully, “how can I fail to know,

Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day,

that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so

unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which

it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the

tenderness between a father and child. I know, Doctor Manette

how can I fail to knowthat, mingled with the affection and duty

of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart,

towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that,

as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to

you with all the constancy and fervour of her present years and

character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you

had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you

could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred

character than that in which you are always with her. I know that

when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl