Besides, the family is to be enriched by the insurances on his
life, and is thereby to be allied with royal blood; but the money will
be lost if the suicide be detected. Randolph therefore returns and
blossoms into a popular candidate.
'For a time he is led to abandon his original plans by the appearance
of Maude Cibras; he hopes that _she_ may be made to destroy the earl;
but when she fails him, he recurs to it--recurs to it all suddenly, for
Lord Pharanx's condition is rapidly becoming critical, patent to all
eyes, could any eye see him--so much so that on the last day none of
the servants are allowed to enter his room. We must therefore regard
Cibras as a mere addendum to, an extraneous element in, the tragedy,
not as an integral part of it. She did not shoot the noble lord, for
she had no pistol; nor did Randolph, for he was at a distance from the
bed of death, surrounded by witnesses; nor did the imaginary burglars.
The earl therefore shot himself; and it was the small globular silver
pistol, such as this'--here Zaleski drew a little embossed Venetian
weapon from a drawer near him--'that appeared in the gloom to the
excited Hester as a "ball of cotton," while it was being drawn upward
by the Atwood's machine.
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