o forestall inquiry and elude risk. The girl has insured her life
to the amount of her fortune?"

"To that amount only? Pooh! Her death will buy more than that. As no one
single office will insure for more than 5,000 pounds, and as it was easy
to persuade her that such offices were liable to failure, and that it
was usual to insure in several, and for a larger amount than the sum
desired, I got her to enter herself at three of the principal offices.
The amount paid to us on her death will be 15,000 pounds. It will be
paid (and here I have followed the best legal advice) in trust to me for
your benefit. Hence, therefore, even if our researches fail us, if no
son of yours can be found, with sufficient evidence to prove, against
the keen interests and bought advocates of heirs-at-law, the right to
Laughton, this girl will repay us well, will replace what I have
taken, at the risk of my neck, perhaps,--certainly at the risk of the
hulks,--from the capital of my uncle's legacy, will refund what we have
spent on the inquiry; and the residue will secure to you an independence
sufficing for your wants almost for life, and to me what will purchase
with economy," and Varney smiled, "a year or so of a gentleman's idle
pleasures. Are you satisfied thus far?"

"She will die happy and innocent," muttered Lucretia, with the growl of
demoniac disappointment.

"Will you wait, then, till my forgery is detected, and I have no power
to buy the silence of the trustees,--wait till I am in prison, and on
a trial for life and death? Reflect, every day, every hour, of delay
is fraught with peril. But if my safety is nothing compared to the
refinement of your revenge, will you wait till Helen marries Percival
St. John? You start! But can you suppose that this innocent love-play
will not pass rapidly to its denouement? It is but yesterday that
Percival confided to me that he should write this very day to his
mother, and communicate all his feelings and his hopes; that he waited
but her assent to propose formally for Helen. Now one of two things must
happen. Either this mother, haughty and vain as lady-mothers mostly
are, may refuse consent to her son's marriage with the daughter of
a disgraced banker and the niece of that Lucretia Dalibard whom her
husband would not admit beneath his roof--"

"Hold, sir!" exclaimed Lucretia, haughtily; and amidst all the passions
that darkened her countenance and degraded her soul, some flash of her
ancestral