"We may count on seeing you in Eaton Square, then, at eight o’clock?" "If I am alive you may be sure I shall be there. Must you really go? Then good-bye, and many thanks for meeting me." His lordship having left the house, Simon Carne went upstairs to his dressing room, which it was to be noticed he found without inquiry, and rang the electric bell, beside the fireplace, three times. While he was waiting for it to be answered he stood looking out of the window at the long line of carriages in the street below. "Everything is progressing admirably," he said to himself. "Amberley does not suspect any more than the world in general. As a proof he asks me to dinner to-morrow evening to meet his brother and sister-in-law, two of his particular friends, and above all Her Grace of Wiltshire. Of course I shall go, and when I bid Her Grace good-bye it will be strange if I am not one step nearer the interest on Liz’s money." At this moment the door opened, and his valet, the grave and respectable Belton, entered the room. Carne turned to greet him impatiently. "Come, come, Belton," he said, "we must be quick. It is twenty minutes to twelve, and if we don’t hurry the folk next door will become impatient. Have you succeeded in doing what I spoke to you about last night?" "I have done everything, sir." "I am glad to hear it. Now lock that door and let us get to work. You can let me have your news while I am dressing." Opening one side of the massive wardrobe, that completely filled one end of the room, Belton took from it a number of garments. They included a well-worn velvet coat, a baggy pair of trousers--so old that only a notorious pauper or a millionaire could have afforded to wear them--a flannel waistcoat, a Gladstone collar, a soft silk tie, and a pair of embroidered carpet slippers upon which no old clothes man in the most reckless way of business in Petticoat Lane would have advanced a single half-penny. Into these he assisted his master to change. "Now give me the wig, and unfasten the straps of this hump," said Carne, as the other placed the garments just referred to upon a neighboring chair. Belton did as he was ordered and then there happened a thing the like of which no one would have believed. Having unbuckled a strap on either shoulder, and slipped his hand beneath the waistcoat, he withdrew a large papier-mâché hump, which he carried away and carefully placed in a drawer of the bureau. Relieved of his burden, Simon Carne stood up as straight and well-made a man as any in Her Majesty’s dominions. The malformation, for which so many, including the Earl and Countess of Amberley, had often pitied him, was nothing but a hoax intended to produce an effect which would permit him additional facilities of disguise.