A Tale of Two Cities

Mr. Lorry arrives at a hotel in Dover, where he confirms that he can take a ship to Calais the next day. He takes off his winter clothing as he sits down to breakfast, revealing himself to be a “gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept” (20). He also asks the waiter to be on the lookout for the arrival of a young woman asking for him.

The woman Lorry was waiting for—Lucie Manette—arrives that evening, and Lorry goes to see her. She is a 17-year-old girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and an expression “not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all of the four” (23).

Lucie explains that she received word from Tellson’s that she needs to travel to Paris to settle a matter involving her deceased father’s property, and that Mr. Lorry would explain the situation to her. Lorry awkwardly confirms that this is so and begins to tell her the story of one of Tellson’s “customers” (25)—a French doctor who married an Englishwoman 20 years ago. At this point, Lucie guesses that Mr. Lorry was the person who brought her to England years ago, but Lorry continues to insist that he did so as a representative of Tellson’s and that he is a “mere machine” (25).