Graham then retreated into his bedroom, and in a few minutes reappeared so changed, that Renard at first glance took him for a stranger. He had doffed his dress--which habitually, when in Capitals, was characterized by the quiet, indefinable elegance that to a man of the great world, high-bred and young, seems "to the manner born"--for one of those coarse suits which Englishmen are wont to wear in their travels, and by which they are represented in French or German caricatures,--loose jacket of tweed with redundant pockets, waistcoat to match, short dust-coloured trousers. He had combed his hair straight over his forehead, which, as I have said somewhere before, appeared in itself to alter the character of his countenance, and, without any resort to paints or cosmetics, had somehow or other given to the expression of his face an impudent, low- bred expression, with a glass screwed on to his right eye,--such a look as a cockney journeyman, wishing to pass for a "swell" about town, may cast on a servant-maid in the pit of a suburban theatre. "Will it do, old fellow?" he exclaimed, in a rollicking, swaggering tone of voice, speaking French with a villanous British accent. "Perfectly," said Renard, laughing. "I offer my compliments, and if ever you are ruined, Monsieur, I will promise you a place in our police. Only one caution,--take care not to overdo your part." "Right. A quarter to nine; I'm off." CHAPTER VI. There is generally a brisk exhilaration of spirits in the return to any special amusement or light accomplishment associated with the pleasant memories of earlier youth; and remarkably so, I believe, when the amusement or accomplishment has been that of the amateur stage-player. Certainly I have known persons of very grave pursuits, of very dignified character and position, who seem to regain the vivacity of boyhood when disguising look and voice for a part in some drawing-room comedy or charade. I might name statesmen of solemn repute rejoicing to raise and to join in a laugh at their expense in such travesty of their habitual selves. The reader must not therefore be surprised, nor, I trust, deem it inconsistent with the more serious attributes of Graham's character, if the Englishman felt the sort of joyful excitement I describe, as, in his way to the cafe Jean Jacques, he meditated the role he had undertaken; and the joyousness was heightened beyond the mere holiday sense of humouristic pleasantry by the sanguine hope that much to effect his lasting happiness might result from the success of the object for which his disguise was assumed. It was just twenty minutes past nine when he arrived at the cafe Jean Jacques. He dismissed the _fiacre_ and entered.