Lucretia's brow fell. "It is another torture," she said, "even to own my
marriage with a low-born hypocrite. But I can endure it for the cause,"
she added, more haughtily. "Nothing can really hurt me in these obsolete
aspersions and this vague scandal. The inquest acquitted me, and the
world will be charitable to the mother of him who has wealth and rank and
that vigorous genius which, if proved in obscurity, shall command opinion
in renown."

"You are now, then, disposed at once to proceed to action. For Helen all
is prepared,--the insurances are settled, the trust for which I hold them
on your behalf is signed and completed. But for Percival St. John I
await your directions. Will it be best first to prove your son's
identity, or when morally satisfied that that proof is forthcoming, to
remove betimes both the barriers to his inheritance? If we tarry for the
last, the removal of St. John becomes more suspicious than it does at a
time when you have no visible interest in his death. Besides, now we
have the occasion, or can make it, can we tell how long it will last?
Again, it will seem more natural that the lover should break his heart in
the first shock of--"

"Ay," interrupted Lucretia, "I would have all thought and contemplation
of crime at an end when, clasping my boy to my heart, I can say, 'Your
mother's inheritance is yours.' I would not have a murder before my eyes
when they should look only on the fair prospects beyond. I would cast
back all the hideous images of horror into the rear of memory, so that
hope may for once visit me again undisturbed. No, Gabriel, were I to
speak forever, you would comprehend not what I grasp at in a son. It is
at a future! Rolling a stone over the sepulchre of the past, it is a
resurrection into a fresh world; it is to know again one emotion not
impure, one scheme not criminal,--it is, in a word, to cease to be as