Page 827 of 896

He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known

nothing of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it

from herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his

father's and uncle's responsibility for that misery, until the

paper had been read. He had already explained to her that his

concealment from herself of the name he had relinquished, was the

one condition--fully intelligible now--that her father had

attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he had still

exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for

her father's sake, never to seek to know whether her father had

become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it

recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of

the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in

the garden.