The String of Pearls (1850), p. 349

"Mr. Brown."
"Yes, madam. Certainly. Mr. B. is in his private room. What name shall I have the pleasure of saving?"
"Lovett."
"Lovett? Yes, madam. Certainly—a hem! Pray be seated, madam, if you please."
Mrs. Lovett made a gesture of dissent, and the clerk went upon his errand. He was scarcely absent a moment, and then holding open a door, he said, with quite a chivalric air—
"This way, if you please, madam.—A monstrous fine woman," he added to himself.
The door closed after Mrs. Lovett, and she was in the private room of Mr. Anthony Brown.
"Ah, Mrs. Lovett. Pray be seated, madam. I am truly glad to see you well. Well, to be sure, you do look younger, and younger, and younger, every time I have the pleasure of a visit from you."
"Thank you, Mr. Brown, for the compliment. My visits have not been so numerous as usual of late."
"Why, no ma'am, they have not ; but I hope we are going to resume business again in the old way?"
"Not exactly."
"Well, my dear madam, whatever it is that has procured me the honour and the pleasure of this visit, I am sure I am very glad of it, and shall not quarrel with it. He! he! Nice weather, Mrs. Lovett."
"Very."
"Ah, madam—ah, it was a world of pities to disturb the investments. It was indeed. But ladies will be ladies."
"Sir?"
"I—I merely said ladies will be ladies you know. And indeed—he! he!—I fully expected the interesting ceremony had come off before now, I did indeed and I should have wagered a new hat."
"Mr. Brown, what are you talking about?"
"About?"
"Yes, what do you mean?"
"Why, a—a—that is—the—a—a—about—concerning—the—my dear madam, if I have inadvertently trodden upon your sensibilities, I—I really—"
"You really what?"
Mr. Brown looked perplexed. Mrs. Lovett looked a little furious.
"Sir," she said. "Before I explain the cause of my visit to you, I insist upon knowing to what all your mysterious hints and remarks allude. Speak
freely and plainly, sir."
"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.

MRS. LOVETT FINDS THAT IN THIS WORLD THERE IS RETRIBUTION.

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