He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked.
“We are thoughtful tonight!” said Darnay, drawing his arm about her.
“Yes, dearest Charles,” with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; “we are rather thoughtful tonight, for we have something on our mind tonight.”
“What is it, my Lucie?”
“Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?”
“Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?”
What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!
“I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him tonight.”
“Indeed, my own? Why so?”
“That is what you are not to ask me. But I think—I know—he does.”
“If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?”
“I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”
“It is a painful reflection to me,” said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, “that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him.”