n
the hollow vows of love; let him live to wrong and abandon her by
forgetfulness, though even in the grave; to laugh at his boyish
dreams,--to sully her memory in the arms of harlots! Oh, if the dead can
suffer, let him live, that she may feel beyond the grave his inconstancy
and his fall. Methinks that that thought will comfort me if Vincent be
no more, and I stand childless in the world!"

"It is so settled, then," said Varney, ever ready to clinch the business
that promised gold, and relieve his apprehensions of the detection
of his fraud. "And now to your noiseless hands, as soon as may be, I
consign the girl; she has lived long enough!"

CHAPTER XI. LOVE AND INNOCENCE.

During this conference between these execrable and ravening birds of
night and prey, Helen and her boy-lover were thus conversing in
the garden; while the autumn sun--for it was in the second week of
October--broke pleasantly through the yellowing leaves of the tranquil
shrubs, and the flowers, which should have died with the gone summer,
still fresh by tender care, despite the lateness of the season, smiled
gratefully as their light footsteps passed.

"Yes, Helen," said Percival,--"yes, you will love my mother, for she is
one of those people who seem to attract love, as if it were a property
belonging to them. Even my dog Beau (you know how fond Beau is of me!)
always nestles at her feet when we are at home. I own she has pride,
but it is a pride that never offended any one. You know there are some
flowers that we call proud. The pride of the flower is not more harmless
than my mother's. But perhaps pride is not the right word,--it is rather
the aversion to anything low or mean, the admiration for everything pure
and high. Ah, how that very pride--if pride it be--will make her love
you, my Helen!"

"You need not tell me," said Helen, smiling seriously, "that I shall
love your mother,--I love her already; nay, from the first moment you
said you had a mother, my heart leaped to her. Your mother,--if ever
you are really jealous, it must be of her! But that she should love
me,--that is what I doubt and fear. For if you were my brother,
Percival, I should be so ambitious for you. A nymph must rise from the
stream, a sylphid from the rose, before I could allow another to steal
you from my side. And if I think I should feel this only as your sister,
what can be precious enough to satisfy a mother?"

"You, and you only," answered Percival, wi