, and woman, all

in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you she sees and

loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age,

loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful

trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this, night and

day, since I have known you in your home.”

Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing

was a little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.

“Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her

and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and

forborne, as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt,

and do even now feel, that to bring my loveeven minebetween

you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as

itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!”

“I believe it,” answered her father, mournfully. “I have thought

so before now. I believe it.”

“But, do not believe,” said Darnay, upon whose ear the

mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, “that if my

fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as to make

her my wife, I must at any time put any separation between her

and you, I could or would breathe a word of what I now say.

Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be

a baseness. If I had any such possib