CHAPTER XXXV.
MRS. LOVETT’S NEW LOVER.
Mrs. Lovett was a woman of luxurious habits. Perhaps the constant savoury hot pie atmosphere in which she dwelt contributed a something to the development of her tastes, but certainly that lady, in dress, jewellery, and men, had her fancies. Did the reader think that she saw anything attractive in the satyr-like visage of Todd, with its eccentricities of vision? Did the reader think that the lawyers’ clerks frequenting her shop suited her taste, varying, as all the world knows that class of bipeds does, between the fat and flabby, and the white and candle looking, if we may be allowed the expression? Ah, no,—Mrs. Lovett’s dreams of man had a loftier range, but we must not anticipate. Facts will speak trumpet-tongued for themselves.
It is the hour w
