thing can really hurt me in these obsolete
aspersions and this vague scandal. The inquest acquitted me, and the
world will be charitable to the mother of him who has wealth and rank
and that vigorous genius which, if proved in obscurity, shall command
opinion in renown."

"You are now, then, disposed at once to proceed to action. For Helen
all is prepared,--the insurances are settled, the trust for which I hold
them on your behalf is signed and completed. But for Percival St. John
I await your directions. Will it be best first to prove your son's
identity, or when morally satisfied that that proof is forthcoming, to
remove betimes both the barriers to his inheritance? If we tarry for the
last, the removal of St. John becomes more suspicious than it does at
a time when you have no visible interest in his death. Besides, now we
have the occasion, or can make it, can we tell how long it will last?
Again, it will seem more natural that the lover should break his heart
in the first shock of--"

"Ay," interrupted Lucretia, "I would have all thought and contemplation
of crime at an end when, clasping my boy to my heart, I can say, 'Your
mother's inheritance is yours.' I would not have a murder before my eyes
when they should look only on the fair prospects beyond. I would cast
back all the hideous images of horror into the rear of memory, so that
hope may for once visit me again undisturbed. No, Gabriel, were I to
speak forever, you would comprehend not what I grasp at in a son. It
is at a future! Rolling a stone over the sepulchre of the past, it is
a resurrection into a fresh world; it is to know again one emotion not
impure, one scheme not criminal,--it is, in a word, to cease to be as
myself, to think in another soul, to hear my heart beat in another form.
All this I covet in a son. And when all this should smile before me
in his image, shall I be plucked back again into my hell by the
consciousness that a new crime is to be done? No; wade quickly through
the passage of blood, that we may dry our garments and breathe the air
upon the bank where sun shines and flowers bloom!"

"So be it, then," said Varney. "Before the week is out, I must be under
the same roof as St. John. Before the week is out, why not all meet in
the old halls of Laughton?"

"Ay, in the halls of Laughton. On the hearth of our ancestors the deeds
done for our descendants look less dark."

"And first, to prepare the way, Helen should sicken in these