Lucretia, Volume 4.

what steps have you really taken to meet the danger that menaces me,-to secure, if our inquiries fail, an independence for yourself? Months have elap

ut not with the mawkish fondness of a feeble mother. In a son, I shall live again,-transmigrate from this tortured and horrible life of mine; drink back my youth. In him I shall rise from my fall,-strong in his power, great in his grandeur. It is because I was born a woman,-had woman's poor passions and infirm weakness,-that I am what I am. I would transfer myself into the soul of man,-man, who has the strength to act, and the privilege to rise. Into the bron

of that most urgent danger, for your memory seems short and troubled, since you have learned only to hope the recovery of your son. If this man Stubmore, in whom the trust created by my uncle's will is now vested, once comes to town, once begins to bustle about his accursed projects of transferring the money from the Bank of England, I tell you again and again that my forgery on the bank will be detected, and that transportation will be the smallest penalty inflicted. Part of the forgery, as you know, was committed on your behalf, to find the moneys necessary for the research for your son,-committed on the clear understanding that our project on Helen

"the money you shall have,

s evening I shall see a man whom I have long lost sight of, but who has acquired in a lawyer's life the true scent after evidence: if that evidence exist, it shall be found. I have just learned his address. By tomorrow he shall be on the track. I have stinted myself to save from the results of the last forgery t

house that was my heritage! I have but to lift a finger and breathe a word, and, desolate as I

hn gone, Helen still remains. And what, if your researches fail, are we to lose the rich harvest which Helen will yield us,-a harvest you reap with the same si

my own soul, but by an influence henceforth given to my fate: I vowed that the perfidy dealt to me should be repaid; I vowed that the ruin of my own existence should fall on the brow which I kissed. I vowed that if shame and disgrace were to supply the inheritance I had forfeited, I would not stand alone amidst the scorn of the piti

the hate of her low voice, that Varney, wretch as he was, and contemplatin

somewhat softer tone, but soften

the inextricable hell,-from that hour fraud upon fraud, guilt upon guilt, infamy heaped on infamy, till I stand a marvel to myself that the thunderbolt falls not, that Nature thrusts not from her breast a living outrage on all her laws! Was I not ju

revenge on your riv

s came back upon me. Yes, I wept! But I had not destroyed their love. No, no; there I had miserably failed. A pledge of that love lived. I had left their hearth barren; Fate sent them a comfort which I had not foreseen. And suddenly my hate returned, my wrongs

then, to act?" cried Varn

elf there was little to remark or peculiarly apposite to the consciences of those who heard; yet in the extreme and touching purity of the voice, and in the innocence of the general spirit of the words, trite as might be th

N'S

r scent outlives the bloom! So, Father, may m

a healing cure The

d hopes endure In

ainly given The le

n sweets to Heaven,

ilent, till at length, shaking off the effect, wi

sin to suffer the world to mar it? You hear the prayer:

held death a blessing if death could have found me in youth such as Helen is? Ah, could she but live to suffer! Die! Well, since it must be, since my son requires the sacrifice, do as you will with the victim that death mercifully snatches from my grasp. I could have wished to prolong her life, to load it with some fragment of th

r opened and Helen herself stood unc