The String of Pearls (1850), p. 395

the world goeth; and yet she looked comely did the maiden—ay, very comely. I was moved to see her truly. Her eyes there was no mistaking, and her lips—Ay, it was the maiden; but after sitting in the kennel for one moment into which I fell, and getting up again amid the laughter of the ungodly bystanders, I found that she was gone."
"And so you have come on to me with this monstrous tale?"
"Monstrous tail?" said Mr. Lupin, turning round as though he expected to find such an appendage flourishing behind him. "I am not aware—"
The old spectacle-maker staggered into a seat, and holding his hands clasped before him for a few moments, he strove to think calmly of what had been told to him.
The preacher was not slow in taking advantage of this condition into which Mr. Oakley fell, to protect himself against any further danger from the sword.
He picked up that weapon from the floor, and not finding any place readily in the shop where he might effectually hide it, he held it behind his back, and finally thrust the long blade of it between his coat and his waistcoat, where he thought it was to be sure wonderfully well hidden. He did not calculate that the point projected above his coat-collar and his head some six inches or so, presenting a very singular appearance indeed.
He then waited for Oakley to speak, for to tell the truth, the curiosity of Lupin was strongly excited concerning Johanna, as well as his sense of enjoyment, tickled by the distress of the father whom he considered his enemy.
After this he waited patiently enough to see what course the bafflicted man would pursue, and, indeed, the whole conduct of Lupin was most convincing
of the fact, that he entertained no doubt whatever as to the identity of the supposed boy he had seen in Fleet Street. The time at which he had seen Johanna, must have been when she ran over the road from Todd's shop, and took refuge in the fruiterer's.
Well, then, poor Mr. Oakley Ivas trying to think. He way trying to convince himself that it could not possibly have been Johanna who had been seen by the preacher; but then there was still present to his mind the impression that had been made upon it by the singular manner in which she had bidden him adieu upon the last occasion of his seeing her. He remembered how she had come back, after leaving the shop with her young friend, Arabella Wilmot, and how then, with a burst of feeling, she had taken of him a second farewell.
No wonder then that, by combining that with the information Lupin had brought, the father found enough to shudder at; and he did shudder, Mr. Lupin watched him attentively.
Suddenly rising, with a face pale as death itself, Oakley advanced to Lupin, and laying his hand upon his breast, he said to him—
"Man, I suspect that there is much hypocrisy in your nature. It may be unjust to do so—it may be that I am doing you a wrong, but yet I do think in my heart that you are one of those who adopt the garb and the language of piety for the selfish purposes of human nature. And yet you must have some feeling: at the bottom of even such a heart as yours, there must be some touch of humanity; and by that I conjure you to say if you have told the truth to me in this matter concerning my child."
"I have," said Lupin.
"If you have not, I will say nothing to you, I will be guilty of no attempt at revengeful violence. Only tell me so, and you shall go in peace."
"What I have told you of the maiden is true," said Lupin. "I saw her—with these eyes I saw her."
The spectacle-maker slipped off his working apron and the black sleeves he wore over his coat to protect it from the dust and other destructive matters incidental to his work-bench, and then he snatched his hat from a peg upon which it hung in the shop.
"Come," he said. "Come. You and I will walk together to the house,