CRAVEN HOTEL, October, 1831.
"Well, and are you not rejoiced?" said Lucretia, gazing surprised on
Varney's sullen and unsympathizing face.
"No! because time presses; because, even while discovering your son, you may fail in securing his heritage; because, in the midst of your triumph, I see Newgate opening to myself. Look you, I too have had my news,—less pleasing than yours. This Stubmore (curse him!) writes me word that he shall certainly be in town next month at farthest, and that he meditates, immediately on his arrival, transferring the legacy from the Bank of England to an excellent mortgage of which he has heard. Were it not for this scheme of ours, nothing would be left for me but flight and exile."
"A month,—that is a long time. Do you think, now that my son is found, and that son like John Ardworth (for there can be no doubt that my surmise was right), with genius to make station the pedestal to the power I dreamed of in my youth, but which my sex forbade me to attain,—do you think I will keep him a month from his inheritance? Before the month is out, you shall replace what you have taken, and buy your trustee's silence, if need be, either from the sums you have insured, or from the rents of Laughton."
"Lucretia," said Varney, whose fresh colours had grown livid, "what is to be done must be done at once. Percival St. John has heard from his mother. Attend." And Varney rapidly related the questions St. John had put to him, the dreaded arrival of Captain Greville, the danger of so keen an observer, the necessity, at all events, of abridging their visit, the urgency of hastening the catastrophe to its close.
Lucretia listened in ominous and steadfast silence.
"But," she said at last, "you have persuaded St. John to give this man the meeting in London,—to put off his visit for the time. St. John will return to us to-morrow. Well, and if he finds his Helen is no more! Two nights ago I, for the first time, mingled in the morning draught that which has no antidote and no cure. This night two drops more, and St. John will return to find that Death is in the house before him. And then for himself,—the sole remaining barrier between my son and this inheritance,—for himself, why, grief sometimes kills suddenly; and there be drugs whose effect simulates the death-stroke of grief."
"Yet, yet, this rapidity, if necessary, is perilous. Nothing in Helen's state forbodes sudden death by natural means. The strangeness of two deaths, both so young; Greville in England, if not here,—hastening down to examine, to inquire. With such prepossessions against you, there must be an inquest."
"Well, and what can be discovered? It was I who shrank before,—it is I who now urge despatch. I feel as in my proper home in these halls. I would not leave them again but to my grave. I stand on the hearth of my youth; I fight for my rights and my son's! Perish those who oppose me!"
A fell energy and power were in the aspect of the murderess as she thus spoke; and while her determination awed the inferior villany of Varney, it served somewhat to mitigate his fears.