"And I shall not see the sunlight of another day," she said. "My pilgrimage is over."
She pronounced these words with a shudder, for even she could not at such a moment feel quite at ease. She held in her hands the means of death, and yet she hesitated—not that she had the remotest intention of foregoing her fixed resolve; but feeling that at any moment she had it in her power now to carry it out, she lingered there upon the shores of life.
"And it has come to this," she said. "After all my scheming—after all my resolves, it has come to suicide in a felon's cell. Well, I played a daring game, and for heavy stakes, and I have lost, that is all."
She covered her eyes with her hands for several minutes, and slowly rocked to and fro.
Who shall say what thoughts crossed that bold bad woman's soul at that time? Who shall say that in those few moments her memory did not fly back to some period when she was innocent and happy?—for even Mrs. Lovett must have been innocent and happy once; and the thought that such had been her blessed state, compared to what it was now, was enough to drive her mad—quite mad.
When she withdrew her hands from before her eyes she uttered a cry of terror. Memory had conjured up the forms of departed spirits to her; and now so strong had become the impression upon her mind in that hour of agony, that she thought she saw them in her cell.
"Oh, mercy—mercy!" she said. "Why should I be tortured thus? Why should I suffer such horrors? Why do you glare at me with such fiery eyes for, horrible spectres!"
Mrs. Lovett In Newgate.—Is Conscience-Stricken.
She covered up her eyes again; but then a still more terrible supposition took possession of her, for instead of fancying that the spectres were in the darkness of the cell at some distance from her, she thought that they all came crowding up to within an inch of her face, gibing and mocking.