ercival turned away his face as he wrung Varney's hand, and
muttered, with a choked voice: "Let me have my share in Helen's divine
forethought. Good Heavens! she, so young, to look thus beyond the grave,
always for others--for others!"

Callous as the wretch was, Percival's emotion and his proposal struck
Varney with a sentiment like compunction. He had designed to appropriate
the lover's gold as it was now offered; but that Percival himself should
propose it, blind to the grave to which that gold paved the way, was a
horror not counted in those to which his fell cupidity and his goading
apprehensions had familiarized his conscience.

"No," he said, with one of those wayward scruples to which the blackest
criminals are sometimes susceptible,--"no. I have promised Helen to
regard this as a loan to her, which she is to repay me when of age. What
you may advance me is for the pictures. I have a right to do as I please
with what is bought by my own labour. And the subjects of the pictures,
what shall they be?"

"For one picture try and recall Helen's aspect and attitude when you
came to us in the garden, and entitle your subject: 'The Foreboding.'"

"Hem!" said Varney, hesitatingly. "And the other subject?"

"Wait for that till the joy-bells at Laughton have welcomed a bride, and
then--and then, Varney," added Percival, with something of his natural
joyous smile, "you must take the expression as you find it. Once under
my care, and, please Heaven, the one picture shall laughingly upbraid
the other!"

As this was said, the cabriolet stopped at Percival's door. Varney dined
with him that day; and if the conversation flagged, it did not revert to
the subject which had so darkened the bright spirits of the host, and so
tried the hypocrisy of the guest. When Varney left, which he did as
soon as the dinner was concluded, Percival silently put a check into
his hands, to a greater amount than Varney had anticipated even from his
generosity.

"This is for four pictures, not two," he said, shaking his head; and
then, with his characteristic conceit, he added: "Well, some years hence
the world shall not call them overpaid. Adieu, my Medici; a dozen such
men, and Art would revive in England."

When he was left alone, Percival sat down, and leaning his face on both
hands, gave way to the gloom which his native manliness and the delicacy
that belongs to true affection had made him struggle not to indulge in
the presence of anoth