er ruthless purpose. She looked upon the scene
as a deposed monarch upon his usurped realm,--it was her right. The
early sense of possession in that inheritance returned to her.

Reluctantly would she even yield her claims to her child. Here, too,
in this atmosphere she tasted once more what had long been lost
to her,--the luxury of that dignified respect which surrounds the
well-born. Here she ceased to be the suspected adventuress, the
friendless outcast, the needy wrestler with hostile fortune, the
skulking enemy of the law. She rose at once, and without effort, to
her original state,--the honoured daughter of an illustrious house.
The homeliest welcome that greeted her from some aged but unforgotten
villager, the salutation of homage, the bated breath of humble
reverence,--even trifles like these were dear to her, and made her the
more resolute to retain them. In her calm, relentless onward vision she
saw herself enshrined in those halls, ruling in the delegated authority
of her son, safe evermore from prying suspicion and degrading need and
miserable guilt for miserable objects. Here, but one great crime, and
she resumed the majesty of her youth! While thus dwelling on the future,
her eye did not even turn from those sunlit towers to the forms below,
and more immediately inviting its survey. On the very spot where, at
the opening of this tale, sat Sir Miles St. John sharing his attention
between his dogs and his guest, sat now Helen Mainwaring; against the
balustrade where had lounged Charles Vernon, leaned Percival St. John;
and in the same place where he had stationed himself that eventful
evening, to distort, in his malignant sketch, the features of his
father, Gabriel Varney, with almost the same smile of irony upon his
lips, was engaged in transferring to his canvas a more faithful likeness
of the heir's intended bride. Helen's countenance, indeed, exhibited
comparatively but little of the ravages which the pernicious aliment,
administered so noiselessly, made upon the frame. The girl's eye, it is
true, had sunk, and there was a languid heaviness in its look; but
the contour of the cheek was so naturally rounded, and the features so
delicately fine, that the fall of the muscles was less evident; and the
bright, warm hue of the complexion, and the pearly sparkle of the
teeth, still gave a fallacious freshness to the aspect. But as yet the
poisoners had forborne those ingredients which invade the springs of
life