CHAPTER LXXVIII.
MUTUAL DEFIANCE.
Be so good, reader, as to picture to yourself the look of Mrs. Lovett. We feel that one brief moment of imagination will do more to enable you to feel and to see with
“Your mind’s eye”
her aspect, than as if we were to try a paragraph upon the subject. How that he! he! he! of Mr. Brown’s rung in her ears. It was at any time almost enough to provoke a saint, and we need not say that this time of all others was not one at which Mrs. Lovett’s feelings were attuned to gentleness and patience. Besides, she certainly was no saint. A rather heavy inkstand stood upon the table between Mrs. Lovett and the stock-broker. The next moment it narrowly escaped his head, leaving in its progress over his frontispiece a long streak of ink down his visage.
“Wretch!” sai
