"Will you wait, then, till my forgery is detected, and I have no power to
buy the silence of the trustees,--wait till I am in prison, and on a
trial for life and death? Reflect, every day, every hour, of delay is
fraught with peril. But if my safety is nothing compared to the
refinement of your revenge, will you wait till Helen marries Percival St.
John? You start! But can you suppose that this innocent love-play will
not pass rapidly to its denouement? It is but yesterday that Percival
confided to me that he should write this very day to his mother, and
communicate all his feelings and his hopes; that he waited but her assent
to propose formally for Helen. Now one of two things must happen.
Either this mother, haughty and vain as lady-mothers mostly are, may
refuse consent to her son's marriage with the daughter of a disgraced
banker and the niece of that Lucretia Dalibard whom her husband would not
admit beneath his roof--"

"Hold, sir!" exclaimed Lucretia, haughtily; and amidst all the passions
that darkened her countenance and degraded her soul, some flash of her
ancestral spirit shot across her brow. But it passed quickly, and she
added, with fierce composure, "You are right; go on!"

"Either-and pardon me for an insult that comes not from me--either this
will be the case: Lady Mary St. John will hasten back in alarm to London;
she exercises extraordinary control over her son; she may withdraw him
from us altogether, from me as well as you, and the occasion now
presented to us may be lost (who knows?) forever,--or she may be a weak
and fond woman; may be detained in Italy by her sister's illness; may be
anxious that the last lineal descendant of the St. Johns should marry
betimes, and, moved by her darling's prayers, may consent at once to the
union. Or a third course, which Percival thinks the most probable, and