father forbade me the house that was my heritage! I have but to lift a
finger and breathe a word, and, desolate as I am, I thrust from that home
the son! The spoiler left me the world,--I leave his son the grave!"

"But," said Varney, doggedly pursuing his dreadful object, "why force me
to repeat that his is not the only life between you and your son's
inheritance? St. John gone, Helen still remains. And what, if your
researches fail, are we to lose the rich harvest which Helen will yield
us,--a harvest you reap with the same sickle which gathers in your
revenge? Do you no longer see in Helen's face the features of her
mother? Is the perfidy of William Mainwaring forgotten or forgiven?"

"Gabriel Varney," said Lucretia, in a hollow and tremulous voice, "when
in that hour in which my whole being was revulsed, and I heard the cord
snap from the anchor, and saw the demons of the storm gather round my
bark; when in that hour I stooped calmly down and kissed my rival's
brow,--I murmured an oath which seemed not inspired by my own soul, but
by an influence henceforth given to my fate: I vowed that the perfidy
dealt to me should be repaid; I vowed that the ruin of my own existence
should fall on the brow which I kissed. I vowed that if shame and
disgrace were to supply the inheritance I had forfeited, I would not
stand alone amidst the scorn of the pitiless world. In the vision of my
agony, I saw, afar, the altar dressed and the bride-chamber prepared; and
I breathed my curse, strong as prophecy, on the marriage-hearth and the
marriage-bed. Why dream, then, that I would rescue the loathed child of
that loathed union from your grasp? But is the time come? Yours may be
come: is mine?"

Something so awful there was in the look of his accomplice, so intense in
the hate of her low voice, that Varney, wretch as he was, and