`As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business,' he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly relations, `let me ask you--does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?'

`Never.'

`And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?'

`Ah!' returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. `But I don't say he don't refer to it within himself.'

`Do you believe that he thinks of it much?'

`I do,' said Miss Pross.

`Do you imagine---' Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short with:

`Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.'

`I stand corrected,; do you suppose--you go so far as to Suppose, sometimes?

`Now and then,' said Miss Pross.

`Do you suppose,' Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, `that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?'

`I don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.'

`And that is---?'

`That she thinks he has.'

`Now don't be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business.'

`Dull?' Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.

Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, `No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business:- Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don't approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest.'

`Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad's the best, you'll tell me,' said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, `he is afraid of the whole subject.

`Afraid?'

`It's plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It's a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he re-covered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn't make the subject pleasant, I should think.'

It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for. `True,' said he, `and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present confidence.'