The String of Pearls (1850), p. 326

"Yes, sir."
"That will do, sir. I'll polish you off very shortly, indeed, sir. Are you going, Charley?"
Johanna darted from the shop, and the moment she got clear of it, she by natural impulse drew the little slip of paper from her pocket, and read upon—
"Miss O. do not if you can help it. leave any one alone in Todd's shop, as circumstances may prevent us from always following his customers in; but if you should be forced to leave while any one is there, knock at No. 133 Fleet Street. This is from your friend R. B."
"133?" said Johanna, as she glanced around her, "133? Ah, it is close at hand. Here—here."
The number was only a short distance from Todd's, and Johanna was making her way to it, when some one stopped her.
"From Todd s," said a voice.
"Yes—yes. A man is there."
"Alone?"
"Yes, and—"
Before she could say another word the stranger drated from her, and made his way into Todd's shop. Johanna paused, and shrinking into a doorway, stood trembling like an aspen leaf.
"Oh, Heaven!" she ejaculated, "into what a sea of troubles have I plunged. Murder and I will become familiar, and I shall learn to breathe an atmosphere of blood. Oh, horror! horror! horror!"
The crowd in that dense thoroughfare passed on, and no one took heed of the seeming boy, as he wept and sobbed in that doorway. Some had no time to waste upon the sorrows of other people;—some buttoned up their pockets as though they feared that the tears that stood upon that pale face were but the preludes to some pecuniary demand;—others again passed on rapidly, for they were so comfortable and cosy that they really could not have their feelings lacerated by any tale of misery, not they. And so Johanna wept alone.
Ding dong! ding dong!
What is that? Oh, St. Dunstan's chimes. How long has she been from the the shop? Shall she return to it, or fly at once and seek for refuge from all the sorrows and from all the horrors that surround her, in the arms of her father?
"Direct me, oh God!" she cried.
Some one suddenly clasps her arm.
"Johanna! Johanna!"
It was Arabella Wilmot.
"Johanna—dear, dear Johanna, you are safe—quite safe. Come home now—oh, come—oh, come—come."
"You here, Arabella?"
"Yes, I am mad—mad!—at least, I was going mad, Johanna; in my agony to know what had become of you, and notwithstanding I have told Sir Richard
Blunt, I had no faith in the love and the courage of any one but myself. I was coming to Todd's."
"To Todd's?"
"Yes, dear, to Todds. I could not longer exist unless I saw with my own eyes that you were safe."
"What a fatal step that might have been."
"It might. Perhaps it would ; but God, in his goodness, has again, my dear Johanna, averted it by enabling me to meet you here. Come home now—come at once."
"Yes, I—I think—"
"Come—come;—you have done already much. Let, for the future, vour feelings be, that for Mark Ingestrie you have adventured what not one girl in a
million would adventure."
At this mention of the name of Mark Ingestrie, a sharp cry of mental agony burst from the lips of Johanna.