The String of Pearls (1850), p. 386

"He loved me, and he sped away
Far o'er the raging sea,
To seek tl e gems of other lands,
And bring them all to me."

At that moment, with all external objects hidden from her perception, she could almost fancy she could hear his voice as he had said to her—"My darling, I shall come back rich and prosperous, and we shall be happy."
Alas! how sadly had that dream ended. Ee who had escaped the perils of the deep—he who had successfully battled with the tempest, and all the perils by sea and by land incidental to the life he had embarked in, had returned miserably to perish, almost within hearing of her for whom he had adventured so much.
The thought was maddening!
"And I live!" she said; "I can live after that! Oh, Mark—Mark—I did not love you well enough, or I could not have existed so long after the horrible certainty of your fate has been revealed to me. They may say what they will to try to make me calmer and happier, but I know that he is Todd's victim."
After this she sat for a time in a kind of stupor, and it was during that interval that Todd arrived home.
There was no light in the shop but what at times came from a little flickering flame, that would splutter into a moment's brief existence in the fire; but Todd, as he glared through the upper portion of the half-glass door at a spot where he knew the blind did not prevent him, could just see Johanna thus sitting.
"Humph!" he said. "The boy is quiet enough, and probably, after all, may suspect nothing; although I don't at all like his manner at times; yet it is safer to kill him before I go. It is absolute security. He shall help me to arrange everything to set the house on fire, and then when I have completed all my arrangements, it will be easy to knock him on the head."
With this he opened the door.
Johanna started.
"Well," said Todd, "well, any one been?"
"Only a man to be shaved, sir. I told him you would be home soon, but he could not wait, so he left."
"Let him leave and get shaved at the devil!" said Todd. "You are sure no one has been here peeping and prying, and asking questions which you would be quite delighted to answer, eh?"
"Peeping and prying, sir?"
"Yes, peeping and prying. You know the meaning of that. Don t put on a look of surprise at me. It won't do. I known what you boys are. Curse you all! Yes, I know what you are."
Johanna made no answer.
Todd took off his hat, and shook the rain from it violently. Then in a voice that made Johanna start again, he cried—
"Light the lamp, idiot!"
It was quite clear that the occurrences at the colonel's had not improved Todd's temper at all, and that upon very little pretext for it, he would have committed some act of violence, of which Johanna might be the victim. Anything short of that she could endure, but she had made up her mind that if even he so much as laid his hand upon her, her power of further patience would be gone, and she would be compelled to adopt the means of summoning aid which had been pointed out to her by Sir Richard Blunt—namely, by casting something through the window into the street.
She lit the shop-lamp as quickly as she could.
"A lazy life you lead," said Todd. "A lazy life, indeed. Well, well, he added, softening his tone, "it don't matter—I shall polish you off for all that, Charley. What a pretty boy you are."
"Sir?"
"I say what a pretty boy you are. Why, you must have been your mamma's