their later years, had taken refuge, and from which Helen had been
removed to the roof of Mr. Fielden. By accident he heard the name, and,
his curiosity leading to further inquiries, learned that Helen was made
an heiress by the will of her grandfather. With this knowledge came a
thought of the most treacherous, the most miscreant, and the vilest crime
that even he yet had perpetrated; so black was it that for a while he
absolutely struggled against it. But in guilt there seems ever a
Necessity that urges on, step after step, to the last consummation.
Varney received a letter to inform him that the last surviving trustee
was no more, that the trust was therefore now centred in his son and
heir, that that gentleman was at present very busy in settling his own
affairs and examining into a very mismanaged property in Devonshire which
had devolved upon him, but that he hoped in a few months to discharge,
more efficiently than his father had done, the duties of trustee, and
that some more profitable investment than the Bank of England would
probably occur.

This new trustee was known personally to Varney,--a contemporary of his
own, and in earlier youth a pupil to his uncle. But, since then, he had
made way in life, and retired from the profession of art. This younger
Stubmore he knew to be a bustling, officious man of business, somewhat
greedy and covetous, but withal somewhat weak of purpose, good-natured in
the main, and with a little lukewarm kindness for Gabriel, as a quondam
fellow-pupil. That Stubmore would discover the fraud was evident; that
he would declare it, for his own sake, was evident also; that the bank
would prosecute, that Varney would be convicted, was no less surely to be
apprehended. There was only one chance left to the forger: if he could
get into his hands, and in time, before Stubmore's bustling interference,
a sum sufficient to replace what had been fraudulently taken, he might
easily manage, he thought, to prevent the forgery ever becoming known.