h expended.
Upon these sums Varney had lived very pleasantly, and he saw with a deep
sigh the approaching failure of so facile a resource.

In one of the melancholy moods engendered by this reflection, Varney
happened to be in the very town in France in which the Mainwarings,
in their later years, had taken refuge, and from which Helen had been
removed to the roof of Mr. Fielden. By accident he heard the name, and,
his curiosity leading to further inquiries, learned that Helen was made
an heiress by the will of her grandfather. With this knowledge came
a thought of the most treacherous, the most miscreant, and the vilest
crime that even he yet had perpetrated; so black was it that for a while
he absolutely struggled against it. But in guilt there seems ever a
Necessity that urges on, step after step, to the last consummation.
Varney received a letter to inform him that the last surviving trustee
was no more, that the trust was therefore now centred in his son and
heir, that that gentleman was at present very busy in settling his own
affairs and examining into a very mismanaged property in Devonshire
which had devolved upon him, but that he hoped in a few months to
discharge, more efficiently than his father had done, the duties of
trustee, and that some more profitable investment than the Bank of
England would probably occur.

This new trustee was known personally to Varney,--a contemporary of his
own, and in earlier youth a pupil to his uncle. But, since then, he had
made way in life, and retired from the profession of art. This younger
Stubmore he knew to be a bustling, officious man of business, somewhat
greedy and covetous, but withal somewhat weak of purpose, good-natured
in the main, and with a little lukewarm kindness for Gabriel, as
a quondam fellow-pupil. That Stubmore would discover the fraud was
evident; that he would declare it, for his own sake, was evident also;
that the bank would prosecute, that Varney would be convicted, was no
less surely to be apprehended. There was only one chance left to the
forger: if he could get into his hands, and in time, before Stubmore's
bustling interference, a sum sufficient to replace what had been
fraudulently taken, he might easily manage, he thought, to prevent
the forgery ever becoming known. Nay, if Stubmore, roused into strict
personal investigation by the new power of attorney which a new
investment in the bank would render necessary, should ascertain what had
occ