"Well then, madam, when Mr. Todd was last here, he said that you had at
last consented to reward years of devotion to you by becoming his, and
that the ceremony which was to make him a happy man by uniting him to so
much excellence and beauty, was to come off almost immediately, and that
that was the reason you had both agreed to withdraw all the money I had
in such snug and comfortable safe investments for you both. He! he! he!" CHAPTER LXXVIII. MUTUAL DEFIANCE. Be so good, reader, as to picture to yourself the look of Mrs. Lovett. We feel that one brief moment of imagination will do more to enable you
to feel and to see with

    "Your mind's eye"

her aspect, than as if we were to try a paragraph upon the subject. How
that he! he! he! of Mr. Brown's rung in her ears. It was at any time
almost enough to provoke a saint, and we need not say that this time of
all others was not one at which Mrs. Lovett's feelings were attuned to
gentleness and patience. Besides, she certainly was no saint. A rather
heavy inkstand stood upon the table between Mrs. Lovett and the
stock-broker. The next moment it narrowly escaped his head, leaving in
its progress over his frontispiece a long streak of ink down his visage. "Wretch!" said Mrs. Lovett. "It is not true." "Murder!" cried Mr. Brown. Mrs. Lovett covered her face with both her hands for a moment, as
though, to enable her to think clearly, it were necessary to shut out
the external world; and then starting up, she advanced to the door of
the room. "Murder!" said the stock-broker again. "Silence!" "A constable." "If you dare to say one word of this interview, I will return, and tear
you limb from limb." Mrs. Lovett opened the door of the private room with such a vengeance
that the nose of the clerk, who had been listening upon the other side,
was seriously damaged thereby. He started back with a howl of pain. "Fool!" said Mrs. Lovett, as she passed him, and that was all she
condescended to say to him;--not by any means an agreeable reminiscence
of his last words with a lady to a gentleman who prided himself upon his
looks--rather! Mrs. Lovett reached the street, and walked for some distance as though
street it was not. She was only roused to a sense of the world in which
she was, by hearing the sound of a voice calling--

"Mum--mum! Here yer is--mum--mum! woo!" She turned and saw the coach in which she had come to the stock-broker. "Going back, mum?" said the man. "Yes, yes." She stepped into the vehicle, looking more like an animated statue than
aught human. The man stood touching what was once the brim of a hat, as
he said--

"Where to, mum?" Mrs. Lovett looked at him with an air of such abstraction that it was
quite clear she did not see him, but she heard the question, that came
to her like an echo in the air. "Where to, mum?" "To Fleet-street!" Wheeze--creak--wheeze--creak--sway--sway, and the coach moved on again. Mrs. Lovett sunk down among the straw with which the lower part of the
vehicle was plentifully strewed; and then, with her head resting upon
the seat, her throbbing temples clasped in her hands, she tried to
think. Yes--she called upon all that calmness--that decision--that
talent or tact, call it which you will that had saved her for so long,
not to desert her now in this hour of her dire extremity. She called
upon everything for aid but upon Heaven! and then, to ease her mind, she
cursed a little. Somebody says--

    "Swearing when the passions are at war,
    And light the chambers of the brain with angers flash. Has an effect quite moral--a kind of safety valve,
    Sparing what might be a tremendous crash!" and so Mrs. Lovett got cooler, but not a whit the less determined, as
the crazy vehicle conveyed her to Fleet-street. She fully intended now
to measure conclusions with Todd. The distance was so short that even a
hackney-coach performed it with tolerable promptitude. Mrs. Lovett did
not wish to alight exactly at the door of Todd's shop; so she was rather
glad upon finding the coach stop at the corner of Fleet-street by the
old Market, and the driver demanded what number? "This will do." She was in the street in another minute. It took a minute to get out of
a hackney-coach. It was like watching the moment to spring from a boat
to the shore in a heavy surf. And yet, oh much vilified old
hackney-coach! how much superior wert thou to thy bastard son, the
present odious rattling, bumping, angular, bone-dislocating, horrid cab! The driver received about double his fare, and a cab-man of the present
day would have gathered a mob by his vociferations, and blackguarded you
into a shop, if you had treated him in such a way. Nothing less than
three times what he's entitled to ever lights up the smallest spark of
civility in the soul of a modern cab-driver, but the old
hackney-coach-man was always content with double; so upon this occasion
Mrs. Lovett got a "thank ye, mum;" and a long straw that had taken an
affection for the skirt of her dress was arrested by jarvey and restored
to the coach again. Mrs. Lovett walked to all appearance composedly up Fleet-street. Alas! in this world who can trust to appearances? She had time, before
reaching the shop of Sweeney Todd, to arrange slightly what she should
say to that worthy. Of course, he could know nothing of her visit to the
City--of her interview with Mr. Brown, and she need not blurt that out
too soon. She would argue with him a little, and then she would be down
upon him with the knowledge of his knavery and treachery. She reached
the shop. No wonder she paused there a moment or two to draw breath. You
would have done the same; and after all, Mrs. Lovett was mortal. But she
did not hesitate for long. The threshold was crossed--the handle of the
door was in her hand--it was turned, and she stood in Todd's shop. Todd
was looking at something in a bottle, which he was holding up to the
light; and Mrs. Lovett saw, too, that a pretty genteel-looking lad was
poking about the fire, as if to rouse it. "Ah, Mrs. Lovett!" said Todd, "how do you do? Some more of that fine
grease for the hair, I suppose, madam?" Todd winked towards the lad (our
dear friend Johanna), as though he would have said--"Don't appear to
know me too well before this boy. Be careful, if you please." "I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd." "Oh, certainly, madam. Pray walk in--this way, if you please, madam--to
my humble bachelor-parlour, madam. It is not fit exactly to ask a lady
into; but we poor miserable single men, you know, madam, can only do the
best we can. Ha! ha! This way." "No." "Eh? Not come in?" "No. I have something to say to you, Mr. Todd; but I will say it here." And now Mrs. Lovett gave a sidelong glance at the seeming boy, as much
as to say--

"You can easily send him away if you don't want him to listen to our
discourse." Todd saw the glance; and the diabolical look that he sent to Mrs. Lovett
in return would indeed have appalled any one of less nerve than she was
possessed of.