"Do so. His fears upon your account must be calmed down."
The colonel accordingly wrote the necessary note to Todd. Of course, neither he nor Sir Richard Blunt knew that Todd had another reason for wishing to be off that night, which consisted in his great unwillingness to meet Mrs. Lovett in the morning; for it will be recollected that he had an appointment with that lady upon money matters at an early hour.
The reader is now fully aware of how matters stand, and will be able to comprehend easily the remarkable events which rapidly ensued upon this state of things, and therefore we can at once return to Todd.
We left him upon his door-step.
It was never Todd's custom to walk at once into his house as any one else would do upon their arrival, whose
"Conscience was not redolent of guilt!"
but he would peep and pry about, and linger like a moth fluttering around a candle, or a rat smelling at some tempting morsel, which might be connected with some artfully contrived trap, before he entered.
He wanted sadly to get a peep at what Charley was doing.
Now, poor Johanna, fortunately at that moment, was only sitting before the little miserable fire, holding her face in her hands, and deeply thinking of the once happy past. She had brought out from beneath the counter the sleeve of a sailor's jacket, which she had found upon her former examination of the shop, and after sprinkling it with some tears, for she fully believed it must have belonged to Mark Ingestrie, she had hidden it again.
And now as she sat in that house of murder all alone, she was picturing to herself every tone and look of her lover when he had first told her that he loved her before, as she might have said in the words of the old song—