urred, his liabilities being now indemnified, and the money replaced,
Varney thought he could confidently rely on his ci-devant fellow-pupil's
assent to wink at the forgery and hush up the matter. But this was
his only chance. How was the money to be gained? He thought of Helen's
fortune, and the last scruple gave way to the imminence of his peril and
the urgency of his fears.

With this decision, he repaired to Lucretia, whose concurrence was
necessary to his designs. Long habits of crime had now deepened still
more the dark and stern colour of that dread woman's sombre nature.
But through all that had ground the humanity from her soul, one human
sentiment, fearfully tainted and adulterated as it was, still struggled
for life,--the memory of the mother. It was by this, her least criminal
emotion, that Varney led her to the worst of her crimes. He offered to
sell out the remainder of the trust-money by a fresh act of forgery, to
devote such proceeds to the search for her lost Vincent; he revived
the hopes she had long since gloomily relinquished, till she began to
conceive the discovery easy and certain. He then brought before her the
prospect of that son's succession to Laughton: but two lives now between
him and those broad lands,--those two lives associated with just cause
of revenge. Two lives! Lucretia till then did not know that Susan had
left a child, that a pledge of those nuptials, to which she imputed all
her infamy, existed to revive a jealousy never extinguished, appeal to
the hate that had grown out of her love. More readily than Varney had
anticipated, and with fierce exultation, she fell into his horrible
schemes.

Thus had she returned to England and claimed the guardianship of her
niece. Varney engaged a dull house in the suburb, and looking out for a
servant not likely to upset and betray, found the nurse who had watched
over his uncle's last illness; but Lucretia, according to her invariable
practice, rejected all menial accomplices, reposed no confidence in
the tools of her black deeds. Feigning an infirmity that would mock all
suspicion of the hand that mixed the draught, and the step that stole to
the slumber, she defied the justice of earth, and stood alone under the
omniscience of Heaven.

Various considerations had delayed the execution of the atrocious deed
so coldly contemplated. Lucretia herself drew back, perhaps more daunted
by conscience than she herself was distinctly aware, and disguis