“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.”