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.
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