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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens


305

orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her
natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To
appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity,
even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of
the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would
not have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-
morrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a
fierce desire to change places with the man who sent here there.
Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe.
Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird
way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying
hidden in her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her
waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with
the confident tread of such a character, and with the supple
freedom of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood,
bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame
Defarge took her way along the streets.

Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that very
moment waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned
out last night, the difficulty of taking Miss Pross in it had much
engaged Mr. Lorry’s attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid
overloading the coach, but it was of the highest importance that the
time occupied in examining it and its passengers, should be
reduced to the utmost; since their escape might depend on the
saving of only a few seconds here and there. Finally, he had
proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Pross and Jerry,
who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave it at three o’clock
in the lightest-wheeled conveyance known to that period.
Unencumbered with luggage, they would soon overtake the coach,
and, passing it and pre-ceding it on the road, would order its
horses in advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during the
precious hours of the night, when delay was the most to be
dreaded.

Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in
that pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it with joy. She and
Jerry had beheld the coach start, had known who it was that
Solomon brought, had passed some ten minutes in tortures of
suspense, and were now concluding their arrangements to follow
the coach, even as Madame Defarge, taking her way through the
streets, now drew nearer and nearer to the else-deserted lodging in
which they held their consultation.

“Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher,” said Miss Pross, whose
agitation was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or
move, or live: “what do you think of our not starting from this
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