“Yes, I am very fond of my profession. It is meat and drink to me.” “Then you will get on. Any man of moderate abilities is bound to succeed in any profession which he loves with a heart-whole love; and your abilities are much better than moderate.” There was a little pause in the talk while Lord Cheriton threw on a fresh log and lighted a second cigar. “I have been meditating a good deal upon Sir Godfrey’s murder,” said Theodore, “and I am perplexed by the utter darkness which surrounds the murderer and his motive. No doubt you have some theory upon the subject.” “No, I have no theory. There is really nothing upon which to build a theory. Churton, the detective, talked about a vendetta—suggested poacher, tenant, tramp, gipsy, any member of the dangerous classes who might happen to consider himself aggrieved by poor Godfrey. He even went so far as to make a very unpleasant suggestion, and urged that there might be a woman at the bottom of the business, speculated upon some youthful intrigue of Godfrey’s. Now, from all I know of that young man, I believe his life had been blameless. He was the soul of honour. He would never have dealt cruelly with any woman.” “And you, Lord Cheriton,” said Theodore, hardly following the latter part of his cousin’s speech in his self-absorption. His kinsman started and looked at him indignantly. “And you—in your capacity of judge, for instance—have you never made a deadly foe?” “Well, I suppose the men and women I have sentenced have hardly loved me; but I doubt if the worst of them ever had any strong personal feeling about me. They have taken me as a part of the machinery of the law—of no more account than the iron door of a cell or a beam of the scaffold.” “Yet there have been instances of active malignity—the assassination of Lord Mayo, for instance.” “Oh, the assassin in that case was an Indian, and a maniac. We live in a different latitude. Besides, it is rather too far-fetched an idea to suppose that a man would shoot my son-in-law in order to avenge himself upon me.” “The shot may have been fired under a misapprehension. The figure seated reading in the lamplight may have been mistaken for you.” “The assassin must have been uncommonly short-sighted to make such a mistake. I won’t say such a thing would be impossible, for experience has taught me that there is nothing in this life too strange to be true; but it is too unlikely a notion to dwell upon. Indeed, I think, Theodore, we must dismiss this painful business from our minds. If the mystery is ever to be cleared up, it will be by a fluke; but even that seems to me a very remote contingency. Have you not observed that if a murderer is not caught within three months of his crime he is hardly ever caught at all? I might almost say if he is not caught within one month. Once let the scent cool and the chances are a hundred to one in his favour.” “Yet Juanita has set her heart upon seeing her husband avenged.”