them, continue for a single generation, and then shrink into a printer's
bracket with the formal laconism, "Died without issue." Back, then, in
the pedigree would turn the eye of some curious descendant, and see the
race continue in the posterity of Lucretia Clavering.

With all her ineffable vices, mere cupidity had not, as we have often
seen, been a main characteristic of this fearful woman; and in her design
to endow, by the most determined guilt, her son with the heritage of her
ancestors, she had hitherto looked but little to mere mercenary
advantages for herself: but now, in the sight of that venerable and broad
domain, a covetousness, absolute in itself, broke forth. Could she have
gained it for her own use rather than her son's, she would have felt a
greater zest in her ruthless purpose. She looked upon the scene as a
deposed monarch upon his usurped realm,--it was her right. The early
sense of possession in that inheritance returned to her.

Reluctantly would she even yield her claims to her child. Here, too, in
this atmosphere she tasted once more what had long been lost to her,--the
luxury of that dignified respect which surrounds the well-born. Here she
ceased to be the suspected adventuress, the friendless outcast, the needy
wrestler with hostile fortune, the skulking enemy of the law. She rose
at once, and without effort, to her original state,--the honoured
daughter of an illustrious house. The homeliest welcome that greeted her
from some aged but unforgotten villager, the salutation of homage, the
bated breath of humble reverence,--even trifles like these were dear to
her, and made her the more resolute to retain them. In her calm,
relentless onward vision she saw herself enshrined in those halls, ruling
in the delegated authority of her son, safe evermore from prying
suspicion and degrading need and miserable guilt for miserable objects.
Here, but one great crime, and she resumed the majesty of her youth!