they
received a mysterious note, concluding:--"pardon me gentlemen but I
did not wish any-one to know where I was staying with my family. And
was much annoyed to see you all here." Lady Tichborne herself had
failed to recognise in the letters from Wagga-Wagga the handwriting
of her son, and Mr. Gosford was equally unsuccessful. The party
therefore left the house after warning the landlord that he had for a
guest an "impostor and a rogue." Still the idea that his old friend,
who had made him his executor and the depositary of his most secret
wishes, could have come back again alive, however changed, was too
pleasing to be abandoned by Mr. Gosford, even on such evidence.
Accordingly, by arrangement with an attorney named Holmes, he went
down again, and, more successful this time, had conversation with the
stranger who called himself Roger. But nothing about the features of
the man brought back to him any recollection, and subsequent
interviews but confirmed the first impression.

Meanwhile, Lady Tichborne had learned that he whom she called Roger
had arrived in England; and she wrote letters imploring him to come to
her, to which the Claimant, who had not been in London more than a
fortnight, answered, that he was "prevented by circumstances!" and
added, "Oh! Do come over and see me at once." On the very day after
the date of this letter, however, he arrived in Paris, accompanied by
a man whose acquaintance he had made in a billiard room, and by Mr.
Holmes, the attorney to whom his casual acquaintance had introduced
him. The party put up at an hotel in the Rue St. Honore. They knew Lady
Tichborne's address in the Place de la Madeleine, scarcely five
minutes' walk from their hotel; but they had arrived somewhat late,
and "Sir Roger" paid no visit to his mother that day. Lady Tichborne
had in the meantime consulted her brother and others on the subject,
but though the opinions given by them were adverse to the claims of
the impostor, she only became more fixed in her ideas. Early the
morning after the Claimant's arrival, she sent her Irish servant, John
Coyne, to the hotel in the Rue St. Honore with a pressing message, but
was told that "Sir Roger" was not well; his mistress, dissatisfied
with that message, sent him again, whereupon "Sir Roger" came out of
his bedroom and walked past him "slowly and with his head down,"
bidding him at the same time go and tell his mamma that he was not
able to come to her; and his mistress