"I will come here at ten, then."
"So be it. Ah, Mrs. Lovett, how charming it is to be able to explain away these little difficulties of sentiment. Never trust to appearances. How very deceitful they are apt to be."
There was an air of candour about Todd, that might have deceived the devil himself. Notwithstanding all his hideous ugliness—notwithstanding his voice was of the lowest order, and notwithstanding that frightful laugh, and that obliquity of vision that seemed peculiar to himself in its terrible malignancy, there was a plausibility about his manner, when he pleased, that was truly astonishing. Even Mrs. Lovett, with all her knowledge of the man, felt that it was a hard struggle to disbelieve his representations. What must it have been to those who knew him not?
"No," said Mrs. Lovett, "it don't do to trust to appearances."
She still held the iron in her hand.
"Nor," added Todd, giving the razor he had been putting an edge to, a flourish, "nor will it do to listen always to the dictates of compassion; for if we did, what miseries might we inflict upon ourselves. Now, here is a cure in point."
"Where?"
"I allude to this little affair between us. If you had flown to Bow-street, and there, to spite me, made a full disclosure of certain little facts, why, the result would have been that we might both have slept in Newgate to-night."
"Yes, yes."
"And then there would have been no recal. You could not have freed us by telling the police that you had made a mistake. Then the gallows would have risen up in our dreams."