would be shocked at my indiscretion. You know how helpless her aunt is.
Well, Helen, who is entitled, when of age, to a moderate competence, has
persuaded me to insure her life and accept a trust to hold the moneys (if
ever unhappily due) for the benefit of my mother-in-law, so that Madame
Dalibard may not be left destitute if her niece die before she is twenty-
one. How like Helen, is it not?"

Percival was too overcome to answer.

Varney resumed: "I entreat you not to mention this to Helen; it would
offend her modesty to have the secret of her good deeds thus betrayed by
one to whom alone she confided them. I could not resist her entreaties,
though, entre nous, it cripples me not a little to advance for her the
necessary sums for the premiums. Apropos, this brings me to a point on
which I feel, as the vulgar idiom goes, 'very awkward,'--as I always do
in these confounded money-matters. But you were good enough to ask me to
paint you a couple of pictures for Laughton. Now, if you could let me
have some portion of the sum, whatever it be (for I don't price my
paintings to you), it would very much oblige me."

Percival turned away his face as he wrung Varney's hand, and muttered,
with a choked voice: "Let me have my share in Helen's divine forethought.
Good Heavens! she, so young, to look thus beyond the grave, always for
others--for others!"

Callous as the wretch was, Percival's emotion and his proposal struck
Varney with a sentiment like compunction. He had designed to appropriate
the lover's gold as it was now offered; but that Percival himself should
propose it, blind to the grave to which that gold paved the way, was a
horror not counted in those to which his fell cupidity and his goading