The String of Pearls (1850), p. 542

"Depend on me."
The turnkey, with a great show of respect, backed out of the cell as the chaplain entered it.
"Well, Mrs. Lovett," said the pious individual, "I hope to find you in a better frame of mind than upon my last visit to you."
"Sir," said Mrs. Lovett, "if you will come to me at your own hour in the morning I shall then present myself to you in a different manner, and I shall no longer object to anything you may be pleased to say to me.
"hat a blessed conversion. Really, now, this is very satisfactory indeed. Mrs. Lovett, of course you are a very great sinner, but if you attend to me, I can warrant your being received in the ether world by ten thousand angels.
"I thank you, sir. Half the number would be quite sufficient, I feel assured, for my poor deserts."
"No! ten thousand—ten thousand. Not one less than that number. But if you have any doubts about the reality of flames everlasting, I shall have great satisfaction in removing them, by holding your hand for a few moments
in the flame of this candle."
"You are very kind," said Mrs. Lovett, "but I shall be quite as well convinced if you hold yours, as I shall then I hope see the agony depicted in your countenance."
"Humph!—ah! No, I would rather not exactly. But quite rejoicing that you are in so very pious a frame of mind, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock."
"That will do very well," said Mrs. Lovett.
The chaplain, thinking he had made quite a wonderful convert in Mrs. Lovett, and with serious thoughts of getting somebody to write a tract for him on the subject, left the cell, little suspecting how he was to be duped.
"Well, you did gammon him," said the turnkey, "I will say that for you."
"Can you not leave me a light ?"
"Agin the rules. Can't do it; but I'll wait till you have put the mattress to rights, if you like."
"Oh, no. It will do very well. Good night."
"Good night, Ma'am Lovett, and thank you for me. They may say what they likes about you, but I will stick up for you, so far that you are liberal with your tin, and that's a very good thing indeed. I ain't quite sure that it isn't everything, as this here world goes."
The door of the cell was closed, and the last rays of the turnkeys candle disappeared. Mrs. Lovett was alone again in her dreary cell.
The darkness now was very intense, indeed : for during the few minutes that she had been conversing with the chaplain, the twilight had almost faded away, dropping quite into night, so that net an object was visible in the cell. She heard the turnkey's footsteps die away in the distance, and then indeed she felt truly alone.
"And I shall not seethe 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