"If you please, sir."

"Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to
acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don't heed me any more
than if I was a speaking machine--truly, I am not much else. I will,
with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our
customers."

"Story!"

He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he
added, in a hurry, "Yes, customers; in the banking business we
usually call our connection our customers. He was a French
gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements--a
Doctor."

"Not of Beauvais?"

"Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father,
the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father,
the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing
him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential.
I was at that time in our French House, and had been--oh! twenty years."

"At that time--I may ask, at what time, sir?"

"I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married--an English
lady--and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs
of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in
Tellson's hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of