The String of Pearls; or, The Barber of Fleet Street — page 365: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

| ‘* Horrible !” ' shouts? | ‘©You don’t like the picture ?” | | though in pious horror. ' | i ee ta toi i dan nn THE STRING OF PEARLS. 357 | T allude to this little affair between us. If you had flown to Bow-street, and there, to spite me, made a full disclosure of certain little facts, why, the result would have been that we might both have slept in Newgate to-night.” “Yes, yes. ** And then there would have been no recal. You could not have freed us by telling the police that you had made a mistake. Then the gallows would have risen up in our dreams.” ‘« And it being easily discovered that it was no love of public justice or feeling of remorse, that induced you to the betrayal, they would have shown you no mercy, but you would have swung from the halter amid the shouts anc execrations of——” “© No, no!” ‘* J say yes.” “ No moreof this—no more of this. Can you bear to paint such a picture— does it not seem to you as though you stood upon that scaffold, and heard those Oh, horror, horror !” ‘“No, no!” | Halha! Well, Mrs. Lovett, you and [had far better be friends than foes ; and above all, you ought by this time to feel that you could trust me. The very fact that to all the world else I am false, ought to prove to you that to you Iamtrue. No human being can exist purely isolated, and 1am not an ex: ception.” ‘Say no more—say no more, <*T'o. morrow be it, then.” ‘© At ten.” «At ten be it, and then we will go to Black. settled, take a glass of wine to our——”’ | ‘“No,no. Notthat. I-—I am not very well. l—a, Thatis, no!” ‘¢As you please—as you please. By-the-by, did Black give me a receipt, or did he say it was not usual? Stay a moment, I will look in my secretaire. Sit down a moment in the shaving chair; I will be with you again directly.” | «We will settle that to-morrow,” said Mrs. Lovett ; ‘‘I feel. convinced that Black did not give ycu a receipt. Good-day.” She left the shop, unceremoniously carrying the iron with her. Todd breathed more freely when Mrs. Lovett was gone. He gave one of his horrible laughs as he watched her through the opening in his window, | “ Ha! ha! Curses on her ; but I will have her life first, ere she sees one guinea of my hoard !”’ He saw Charley Green crossing the road. | «Ah, the boy comes back. ’Tis well. { don’t know how or why it is, but the I think it will be better to cut his throat We will meet to-morrow.’ Come now, since all this is A throbbing head-ache—a sight of that boy makes me uneasy. and have done with him. Q | Todd was suddenly silent. He saw two women pass, and as they did so, one pointed to his shop and said something to the other, who lifted up her hands as One of these women was Mrs. Ragg, poor Tobias’s mother. The other was a stranger to Todd, but she looked lke what Mrs. Ragg had been, namely, a laundress in the temple. ‘‘Curses,” he muttered. Johanna entered the shop. ‘Todd caught up his hat. ‘«* Charley ?” ‘¢ Yes, sir.” ‘¢T shall be gone five miautes. Bevigilant. Ifany one should come, you can say I have stepped a few doors off to trim Mr, Pentwheezle’s whiskers.” | 66 Yes, sir.” | eee _ S.C comicbooks.com