"And so you do love me, Minna?" said Tobias. How his voice shook like a reed swayed by the wind, and yet what a world of melody was in it.
"Can you ask me to say yes?" was the reply of the fair young creature by his side. "Can you ask me to say yes, Tobias?"
"It seems to me," said Tobias, "as though it would be such a joy to hear you say so, Minna, and yet I will not ask you."
"How well you have got, Tobias. Your cheek has got its old colour back again. The colour it had long before you knew there was such a man as Sweeney Todd in the world. Your eyes are bright too, and your voice has its old pleasant sound."
"Used it to be pleasant to you, Minna?"
She held up her hand, and shook her head laughingly.
"No questions, Tobias! No questions. I will confess nothing."
"Stop!" said Tobias, as he put himself into an attitude of listening, "what was that, I thought I heard something? It was like a suppressed growl. I wish the colonel would come home. Did you not hear it, Minna?"
Minna had heard it, but she did not say she had.
"Where did it come from, Tobias?"
"From the stair-head, Minna."
"Oh, it is some accidental noise, such as is common to all houses, and such as always defy conjecture and explanation, and being nothing and meaning nothing, always comes to nothing. Yet I will go and see. Perhaps a door has been left open, and is banging to and fro by the wind, and if so it will only vex you to hear it again, Tobias."
It was Todd, who upon hearing the soft and tender speeches from the young lovers, had not been able to suppress a growl, and now that he had heard Minna Grey talk of coming to look what it was, he felt the necessity of instantly concealing himself somewhere.
It was not likely she would come down the stairs, so Todd adopted an original mode of keeping himself out of sight.
He descended steps sufficient, that by laying at full length along them, his head did not reach the top, and in the darkness he then considered that he should be quite safe from the casual glance, that in all likelihood, merely to satisfy Tobias, Minna would give outside the room door.
Todd thought by her manner she had heard nothing.
"No, no, Minna," said Tobias, "there is no occasion. It is nothing, I dare say, and I don't like you to be out of my sight a moment."
"It is only a moment."
She rose, and proceeded to the door.
An unknown feeling of dread, she knew not why, was at the heart of Minna. Certainly the slight sound she had heard, and that too in the house of Colonel Jeffery, was not sufficient to warrant such a feeling, and yet there, at her heart, it sat brooding.
She stood for a moment at the door.
It was only for a moment.
"How foolish I am," she thought, and then she passed out on to the landing, where she stood for a moment glancing round her.
"It is nothing, Minna," called out Tobias, "or shall I try and come. I feel quite strong enough to do so."
"Oh, no—no! It is nothing."
Minna stepped lightly back and sat down. She clasped her hands very tight indeed together, and then placed both upon her breast.
She had seen Todd.
Yes, Minna Grey had seen the man that had been, and who was for all she knew to the contrary still to be, the bane of Tobias's existence. The clear eyes of youth had noticed the lumbering figure as it lay upon the stairs before them.
And she did not scream—she did not cry for help—she did not faint, she only crept back as we have seen, and held her hands upon her heart, and looked at Tobias.
There was no mistaking Todd. Once seen he was known for ever. Like some hideous picture, there dwelt the memory of Sweeney Todd upon the young imagination of the fair Minna Grey.
Once before, a long time ago, so it seemed to her, she had seen him in the Temple skulking up an old staircase. From that moment the face was Daguerreotyped upon her brain.
It was never to be forgotten, and with the face comes the figure too. That she saw upon the stairs.
Alas! Poor Minn!
"And so it was nothing but one of those odd accidents that will occur in defiance of all experience, and calculation," said Tobias.
"Just that," replied Minna.
"Ah, my dear Minna. We are so safe here. It always seems to me as though the very air of this house, belonging as it does to such a man, so full of goodness as the colonel is, such that nothing very bad could live in it for long."
"I—I hope so—I think so.—What a calm and pleasant evening it is, Tobias, did you see the new book of the seasons, so full of pretty engravings in the shape of birds and trees, and flowers, that the colonel has purchased."
"New book?"
"Yes, it lies in his small study, upon this floor. I will fetch it for you, if you wish it, Tobias?"
"Nay, I will go."
"You are still weak. Remain in peace upon the couch, dear Tobias, and I will go for you."
Before she left the room, she kissed the forehead of the boy. A tear, too, fell upon his hand.
"Who knows," she thought, "that I shall ever see him in life again?"
"Minna, you weep."
"Weep? No—no—I am so—so happy."
She hastily left the room. Todd had heard what had passed, and had turned to hide himself again. The young girl knew that she passed the murderer within a hair's breadth. She knew that he had but to stretch out his right hand and say—"Minna Gray, you are my victim!" and his victim she would have become. Was not that dreadful? And she so young and so fair—so upon the threshold, as it were, of the garden of her existence—so loving, and so well-beloved. She felt for a moment, as she crossed the landing—just for a moment as though she were going mad. But the eye of the Omnipotent was upon that house. She staggered on. She made her way into a bed-room. It was the colonel's. Above the mantel-shelf, supported on a small bracket, was a pair of pistols. They were of a large size, and she had heard from the current gossip of the house, how they were always loaded, and how the servants feared to touch them, and how even they shrank from making the bed, lest the pistol from some malice aforethought, or from something incidental to such watching, should go off at once of their own accord, and inevitably shoot whoever chanced to be in the room. Minna Gray laid her hand upon the dreaded we............