principally of the moiety of her portion which, at Dalibard's death, had
passed to herself as survivor, and partly of the share in her deceased
husband's effects which the French law awarded to her, and with the
proceeds of this sum she purchased an annuity for her victims. Was this
strange generosity the act of mercy, the result of repentance? No; it
was one of the not least subtle and delicious refinements of her revenge.
To know him who had rejected her, the rival who had supplanted, the
miserable pensioners of her bounty, was dear to her haughty and
disdainful hate. The lust of power, ever stronger in her than avarice,
more than reconciled her to the sacrifice of gold. Yes, here she, the
despised, the degraded, had power still; her wrath had ruined the
fortunes of her victim, blasted the repute, embittered and desolated
evermore the future,--now her contemptuous charity fed the wretched lives
that she spared in scorn. She had no small difficulty, it is true, in
persuading Susan to accept this sacrifice, and she did so only by
sustaining her sister's belief that the past could yet be retrieved, that
Mainwaring's energies could yet rebuild their fortunes, and that as the
annuity was at any time redeemable, the aid therefore was only temporary.
With this understanding, Susan, overwhelmed with gratitude, weeping and
broken-hearted, departed to join the choice of her youth. As the men
deputed by the auctioneer to arrange and ticket the furniture for sale
entered the desolate house, Lucretia then, with the step of a conqueror,
passed from the threshold.

"Ah!" she murmured, as she paused, and gazed on the walls, "ah, they were
happy when I first entered those doors,--happy in each other's tranquil
love; happier still when they deemed I had forgiven the wrong and abjured
the past! How honoured was then their home! How knew I then, for the
first time, what the home of love can be! And who had destroyed for me,
upon all the earth, a home like theirs? They on whom that home smiled