The String of Pearls (1850), p. 346

"All right, I suppose, Colonel Jeffery
He only shook his head.
"What, anything amiss?"
"She has rejected me!"
"Oh, is that all?"
"All? And enough too.
"Phoo! She was sure to do that. Don't you know the old adage, that—
"Woman's nay still stands for nought."
Why, man, No comes as naturally to the tip of a young girls tongue when she means Yes, as Don't when she expects to be kissed. I tell you, she loves you. She adores the very gound you walk on."
"And yet she taunted me with my passion for Johanna, and called me a second-hand lover."
"Did she, though? Ha! ha! ha! ha! Upon my life that was good—was it not?"

CHAPTER LXXVII.
MUTUAL DEFIANCE.

Mrs. Lovett, Mrs. Lovett, we are neglecting you! Excuse us, fascinating piece of wickedness. We are now in Bell-yard again. It will be recollected what a mental ferment the appearance of Ben, and Arabella, and Sir Richard Blunt, at the window of her shop had put her in. Not that she knew any of those parties—nor that she connected any of them in any way with her feelings, except so far as their attitudes might at that moment lead her to suppose. The attitudes certainly were such as to create suspicion. All this, joined to the previous state of mind of Mrs. Lovett, did not tend to produce that heavenly calm, which philosophers tell us is such a remarkably nice things. On the contrary, the mind of Mrs. Lovett rather resembled a raging torrent, boiling and bubbling to some destruction which was afar off, and which could only be reached through the perils and dangers of some stormy passage. She was sighing for peace. She had began to sicken for the results of her life of iniquity—not those results which an indignant and outraged public would have visited her with, but those results which she and all persons, who deliberately and systematically commence a career of guilt, picture to themselves. Criminality is never engaged in for its own sake. There is always some ultimate object in view, which makes the retrospect less horrible, and the prospect dim and dubious, though it may be yet a thing of pleasurable anticipation. Of course, we are only reasoning upon those minds that reflect. There are many who lead a life of criminality, who do so as the manifestation of an intellect that can picture nothing else.
But the reader knows that Mrs. Lovett was not of such an order. She was to some extent an educated, and to a considerable extent a clever woman. Hence, then, she had always pictured to herself wealth and retirement, respect and power, as the ends for which she was striving with such unscrupulous means. But of late, with a shuddering horror, she had begun to dread that all she had hoped for was getting only more distant. She had contracted a strong notion of the bad faith of Todd, and if such were really the case, all was indeed lost. If he allowed his cupidity just to induce him to commit the crime that would be one too many, destruction must fall upon them both. If likewewise he insantly made an effort to take to himself all the profits of the unholy traffic that they were mutually engaged in, all would be lost to both; for was she a likely woman to crouch down in silence under such a blow?
No! the scaffold prepared by her instrumentality for Todd, would be scarcely less a triumph to her that she herself would share it with him. He ought to have
known better than he did, How clear and long-sighted we find people upon subjects that from this distance may be supposed to present difficulties, and