"Certainly not, but I have come to see—if—if you are quite comfortable."
"Comfortable! What an insult!"
"Nay, you wrong me."
"That is impossible. This is the commencement only of some new misery. Speak on, madam. Speak on. I am helpless here, and condemned to suffer."
Notwithstanding these words of the cook there was a certain tone of hilarity about him, that Mrs. Lovett might well be surprised at, and she asked herself what does he hope. The fact is that much as he wished still to enact the character of a man full of despair, the cook could not get out of his head and heart the promises of Sir Richard Blunt—promises which still rung in his ears, like a peal of joy bells.
"Come, come," said Mrs. Lovett, "you are getting reconciled to your fate. Confess as much."
"I reconciled? Never."
"But you are not so unhappy?"
"Worse—worse. This apathetic condition that I am now in, and which to you may look like the composure of resignation, will end, in all likelihood, in raging madness."
"Indeed?"