Nay, if Stubmore, roused into strict personal investigation by the new
power of attorney which a new investment in the bank would render
necessary, should ascertain what had occurred, his liabilities being now
indemnified, and the money replaced, Varney thought he could confidently
rely on his ci-devant fellow-pupil's assent to wink at the forgery and
hush up the matter. But this was his only chance. How was the money to
be gained? He thought of Helen's fortune, and the last scruple gave way
to the imminence of his peril and the urgency of his fears.

With this decision, he repaired to Lucretia, whose concurrence was
necessary to his designs. Long habits of crime had now deepened still
more the dark and stern colour of that dread woman's sombre nature. But
through all that had ground the humanity from her soul, one human
sentiment, fearfully tainted and adulterated as it was, still struggled
for life,--the memory of the mother. It was by this, her least criminal
emotion, that Varney led her to the worst of her crimes. He offered to
sell out the remainder of the trust-money by a fresh act of forgery, to
devote such proceeds to the search for her lost Vincent; he revived the
hopes she had long since gloomily relinquished, till she began to
conceive the discovery easy and certain. He then brought before her the
prospect of that son's succession to Laughton: but two lives now between
him and those broad lands,--those two lives associated with just cause of
revenge. Two lives! Lucretia till then did not know that Susan had left
a child, that a pledge of those nuptials, to which she imputed all her
infamy, existed to revive a jealousy never extinguished, appeal to the
hate that had grown out of her love. More readily than Varney had
anticipated, and with fierce exultation, she fell into his horrible
schemes.

Thus had she returned to England and claimed the guardianship of her