"By heavens!" ejaculated the exile, in delighted accents, "you've got there, Hopkins, you've got there. You'll go, of course?"
"Well, rather," returned Toppleton; "and to carry out the illusion, as well as to pique his interest in America, I'll wear a blue dress coat. But first let me reply."
"Dear Barncastle," he wrote. "I'll be there. Yours for keeps,—Toppleton."
"How's that?" he asked, reading it aloud to the exile.
"You're not going to send that, are you?" said the exile in disgust.
"I'm not, eh? Well just you watch me and see," said Toppleton. "Why, Edward, that will be the biggest coup of the lot. He will get that letter, and he will be amused by it, and the more he thinks of it the more he'll like it, and then he'll say to himself, 'why, this man is a character;' and then do you know what will happen, Chatford?"
"I'll be hanged if I do," growled the exile.
"Well, I'll tell you. He will invite all the high panjandrums he knows to that dinner to meet me, and he will tell them that I am an original, and they'll all come, Chatford, just as they would flock to see a seven-humped camel or a dwarf eight feet high, and then I will have Lord Barncastle of Burningford just where I want him. I could browbeat him for weeks alone and never frighten him, but once I let him know that I know his secret, in the presence of his wife and a brilliant company, he will be apprehensive, and, if I mistake not, will be more or less within my reach."
"Lady Barncastle is no longer living," said the exile. "His household is presided over by his daughter."