The String of Pearls (1850), p. 403

It is something astonishing, and yet one of the most ordinary of mental phenomena, to note what a power a cool and clear intellect will exert over one that is distracted and full of woe and clamorous grief. Mr. Oakley did sit down by the side of Arabella's aunt, and he told her all that happened the girl of which, of course, was the real or supposed appearance of Johanna in Fleet Street, in male attire. The collateral circumstances, such as the hurried and half frantic farewell of him in the shop by Johanna, and the misrepresentation by Arabella, that she (Johanna) was going to stop there, evidently made a deep impression upon the aunt. Her countenance changed visibly, as she said faintly—
"God help us all."
"Lost! lost!" cried Oakley. "Yes, you—even you, hopeful as you were, and hopeful as you would fain have made me—even you, now that you know all,
feel that she is lost, God, indeed, only can help me now."
"No, Mr. Oakley," said the aunt, rallying, "I will not yet trust to appearances, although I own that they are bad. I will come to no conclusion until I have seen Arabella, and got the truth from her. It is quite clear that there is some secret between the two young creatures. It is quite clear that there is something going on that we know nothing of, and to speculate upon which may only involve us in an inextricable labyrinth of conjectures. I say, there is some secret, but it may not be a guilty one.
"Not—not guilty?"
"No, Mr. Oakley, there are many degrees of indiscretion to pass through ere the gulf of guilt is reached at last. I have faith in Arabella—I have faith in Johanna; and even now, admitting for a moment the truth of what that man whom you brought with you here, reports, Johanna may only have to be blamed for folly."
"Do—do you think he did so see her?"
"I doubt it much."
"Mother," said a lad of fifteen, coming hastily into the room. "Mother I—"
He paused upon seeing Mr. Oakley there, and stammered out some apology—
"He had only come to tell his mother that a whole suit of his clothes were missing from his room and that he could find them nowhere, and he could not make it out; and one of his hats was gone too, and a pair of shoes, and—"
Old Oakley fell back in his chair with a groan.
"She has them," he said. "She has them. My child, whom I shall never see again, has them."

CHAPTER XC.

MORNING IN FLEET STREET AGAIN.
Another day has dawned upon the great city—another sun has risen upon the iniquities of hosts of men, but upon no amount of cold-blooded, hardened, pitiless criminality that could come near to that of Sweeny Todd. No, he certainly held the position of being in London, then, the worst of the worst.
But who shall take upon himself now to say that in this pest-ridden, loyalty-mad, abuse-loving city of London, there are not some who are more than even Sweeney Todd's equals? Who shall say that hidden scenes of guilt and horror are not transacting all around us, that would, in their black iniquity, far transcend anything that Sweeney Todd has done or dreamt of doing ? Let the imagination run riot in its fanciful conjectures of what human nature is capable of, and in London there shall be found those who will reduce to practice the worst frenzied deeds that can be conceived.
Yes, the dawn of another day had come, and Todd had made all his prepara