The String of Pearls (1850), p. 540

"Oh well; that's a new dodge anyhow. You take it easy, Ma'am Lovett, if anybody ever did."
"Innocence, my friend, should be composed."
The turnkey stared at her through the little bars that crossed even that small orifice in the door, and then closed it without another word. He was scarcely used to such an amount of cool effrontery as he found exhibited by Mrs. Lovett.
"Alone again," she said. "Alone again. I must be cautious, or they will suspect my purpose. I must only converse with myself in faint whispers. I would not be thwarted willingly in this my last and boldest act; and I am resolved that I will not live to look upon the light of another day. I am resolved, and wound up to my purpose. Oh, what poor fools they are to fancy they can prevent such a one as I am from dying when and how I wish! They have unwittingly supplied me with the ready means of death today."
These words were spoken so low, that if the turnkey had been listening with all his might on the other side of the door he could not possibly have overheard them. The recent visit of that functionary, if the peep through the little opening in the door could be called a visit, had taught Mrs. Lovett to be more cautious how she trusted the air of her cell with the secret resolves of her teeming brain.
But now that she had really and truly made up her mind to commit suicide, all the worst passions of her nature seemed to be up in arms and to wage wild war in her heart and brain; while amid them all was the intense hatred of Todd, and the hope that she should be revenged upon him, by his being brought to death upon the scaffold, triumphant over every other.
"I had hoped," she said; "oh, how I had hoped, that I might have had the satisfaction of witnessing such a scene—but that is past now. I must go before him; but still it is with the conviction that die he must, I feel, I know that he will not have the courage to do as I am about to do, and if he had, I am certain he has not provided himself with the means of success as I have provided myself."
These last words she scarcely whispered to herself, so very fearful was she that they might be overheard by the turnkey who was so close at hand.
And now a fear came over her that he was watching her through some little hole or crevice of the door, and the very thought was sufficient to make her wonderfully uneasy. If it were so, there was quite sufficient reflected light in the cell to make every one of her actions easily observable, and so her cherished design of taking her own life would be defeated completely.
In lieu of a piece of whalebone in the back of her dress, there was a small tin tube, soldered perfectly tight against the escape of any fluid, and made fast at each end. That tin tube had been in the dress she now selected for many months, and it was filled with a subtle liquid poison, a very few drops of which would prove certainly fatal.
She dreaded that she should be observed to take this ingenious contrivance from her dress and pounced upon before she could break it open and make use of its contents.
She sat down on the miserable kind of bench which served as a bed, and in a very low whisper to herself she said—
"I must wait till night—yes, I must wait till night!"
She knew well that the indulgence of a light would be denied to her, and she smiled to herself, as she thought how that mistaken piece of prison policy would enable her to free herself from what now was the bitter encumbrance of existance.
"The twilight," she muttered, "will soon creep into this gloomy place, and it will be my twilight, too—the twilight of my life before, and only just before, the night of death begins. That night will know no dawn—that long, long sleep which will know no waking. Yes, I will then escape from this strong prison!"