herself one day in the midst of the streets of London, half-famished and
in rags; and before her suddenly, now grown into vigorous youth,--
blooming, sleek, and seemingly prosperous,--stood Gabriel Varney. By her
voice, as she approached and spoke, he recognized his stepmother; and
after a short pause of hesitation, he led her to his home. It is not our
purpose (for it is not necessary to those passages of their lives from
which we have selected the thread of our tale) to follow these two, thus
united, through their general career of spoliation and crime. Birds of
prey, they searched in human follies and human errors for their food:
sometimes severed, sometimes together, their interests remained one.
Varney profited by the mightier and subtler genius of evil to which he
had leashed himself; for, caring little for luxuries, and dead to the
softer senses, she abandoned to him readily the larger share of their
plunder. Under a variety of names and disguises, through a succession of
frauds, some vast and some mean, but chiefly on the Continent, they had
pursued their course, eluding all danger and baffling all law.

Between three and four years before this period, Varney's uncle, the
painter, by one of those unexpected caprices of fortune which sometimes
find heirs to a millionnaire at the weaver's loom or the labourer's
plough, had suddenly, by the death of a very distant kinsman whom he had
never seen, come into possession of a small estate, which he sold for
6,000 pounds. Retiring from all his profession, he lived as comfortably
as his shattered constitution permitted upon the interest of this sum;
and he wrote to his nephew, then at Paris, to communicate the good news
and offer the hospitality of his hearth. Varney hastened to London.
Shortly afterwards a nurse, recommended as an experienced, useful person
in her profession, by Nicholas Grabman, who in many a tortuous scheme had
been Gabriel's confederate, was installed in the poor painter's house.
From that time his infirmities increased. He died, as his doctor said,