He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.

`You have no business to be incorrigible,' was his friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone.

`I have no business to be, at all, that I know of,' said Sydney Carton. `Who is the lady?'

`Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney,' said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, `because I know you don't mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because,you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms.

`Certainly; and in these chambers.'

Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.

`You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.'

Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend.