ulprit
being discovered _en flagrant delit_, will escape every shadow of
suspicion." But, on the other hand, we know that the alteration was
made with Lord Pharanx's consent, most likely on his initiative--for he
leaves his favoured room during a whole day for that very purpose. So
with the letter to Cibras on the 8th--Randolph despatches it, but the
earl writes it. So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on
the 9th. There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the
suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner: Could
Randolph--finding now that Cibras has "left the country," that, in
fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him--could
he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants
of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get
abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might
lose his life? There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the
burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view
of that, by no means unreasonable. And yet, militating against it, is
our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who "_chose_" to gather the
jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the
attention of the servant to them. In the matter, at least, of the
little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you
surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches,
the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very
elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the _class_.
Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of _that_ seem natural.
But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even
the cooperation of Lord Pharanx. You have described the conspiracy of
quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in
that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes
a domestic tornado. But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in
clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair? The noise is terrible. The tramp
of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering
uncouthly together, would be insufferable. Yet Lord Pharanx seems to
have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own
mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles;
but we hear of no murmur from him. On the fatal day, too, the calm of
the house is rudely brok