Preview: Part I, Chapter 4
Reading boundary
Start: When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon,
Stop after: Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.
Jarvis Lorry reaches Dover and waits at the Royal George Hotel for a young woman sent by Tellson’s Bank. His formal appearance and insistence that he is merely a man of business sit uneasily beside the troubling purpose that occupied his dreams on the road.
Dickens uses gestures, pauses, repeated business language, and the room’s dark furnishings to manage a difficult conversation. Lorry’s professional self-description differs sharply from his actual emotional responses.