IT is hardly necessary to say that when Randolph Pym left Peterborough he was entirely ignorant of the fact that his dastardly plot had been discovered. He had always believed himself to be supremely clever, but his cleverness had overreached itself at last. His mother, with the blindness peculiar to mothers, had never been able to see any failings in him; and his father—good easy man—was so occupied with his “epicureanism,” to say nothing of his being frequently, and for long periods, away from his home, troubled himself but little, if at all, about Randolph’s comings in and goings out. He had been very pleased to learn that his own son and his neighbour’s daughter were to be united. He rather looked down—for the baronet was an excessively proud man—on Mr. Lacey, whom he had been heard to
