One thing was quite evident, and that was that he fully expected and dreaded the visit of Mrs. Lovett upon money matters. It will be recollected that ten o'clock was named as about the hour when that lady was to bring in her little account in the partnership affair of Todd, Lovett, & Co.; and as he (Todd) had for once in his life been fairly bothered to make any further excuses to so pertinacious a creditor as Mrs. Lovett, he had hit upon the plan of trying to put her off during the day by one means or another, and at night he would, at an earlier hour than he had before intended, be off and away.
Everything was in readiness, and he considered Mrs. Lovett his only hindrance—a danger he scarcely thought her—for, at the very worst, he could not conceive that even her passion would be sufficient to induce her to sacrifice herself, for the sake of revenge upon him.
His house was prepared so that a match would at any moment suffice to give the touch that would set it in a blaze; and then, as he said—"Who shall say where the conflagration among the old well-dried wooden houses of Fleet-street may reach to?"
His passage in the Hamburgh ship was secure—the fearful proceeds of his life of rapine and murder were in her hold. How uncommonly safe Todd thought himself, and how well he considered he had managed his affairs.
Short-sighted mortals that we are! How often we mistake the shifting morass of difficulty for the terra firma of prosperity, and how often do we weep for those events, which, in themselves and their results, form the ground-work of the happiness of a life! Truly we are
"Such things as air is made of."
If Todd now for one moment could have imagined that his plunder, which he believed was so safe on board the Hamburgh ship, was actually, on the contrary, at the office of Sir Richard Blunt, in Craven-street, what would have been his sensations? Would he have laughed and sniggered over the bumper of brandy he was holding to his lips in his parlour? No, indeed.
If he could but have guessed that the ship in which he had intended to embark, was then twenty-four hours on her route, and battling with the surging waves of the German Ocean, how would he have felt!
Strange to say, he never had felt so confident of success and triumph as upon that day. He could have said with Romeo in Mantua—
"My bosom's lord sits lightly on its throne,"