‘Yes, yes,’ cried Arthur Gride, shading his eyes with his hand, ‘it is a man, and not a spirit. It is a man. Robbers! robbers!’
‘For what are these cries raised? Unless indeed you know me, and have some purpose in your brain?’ said the stranger, coming close up to him. ‘I am no thief.’
‘What then, and how come you here?’ cried Gride, somewhat reassured, but still retreating from his visitor: ‘what is your name, and what do you want?’
‘My name you need not know,’ was the reply. ‘I came here, because I was shown the way by your servant. I have addressed you twice or thrice, but you were too profoundly engaged with your book to hear me, and I have been silently waiting until you should be less abstracted. What I want I will tell you, when you can summon up courage enough to hear and understand me.’
Arthur Gride, venturing to regard his visitor more attentively, and perceiving that he was a young man of good mien and bearing, returned to his seat, and muttering that there were bad characters about, and that this, with former attempts upon his house, had made him nervous, requested his visitor to sit down. This, however, he declined.
‘Good God! I don’t stand up to have you at an advantage,’ said Nicholas (for Nicholas it was), as he observed a gesture of alarm on the part of Gride. ‘Listen to me. You are to be married tomorrow morning.’
‘N—n—no,’ rejoined Gride. ‘Who said I was? How do you know that?’
‘No matter how,’ replied Nicholas, ‘I know it. The young lady who is to give you her hand hates and despises you. Her blood runs cold at the mention of your name; the vulture and the lamb, the rat and the dove, could not be worse matched than you and she. You see I know her.’
Gride looked at him as if he were petrified with astonishment, but did not speak; perhaps lacking the power.
‘You and another man, Ralph Nickleby by name, have hatched this plot between you,’ pursued Nicholas. ‘You pay him for his share in bringing about this sale of Madeline Bray. You do. A lie is trembling on your lips, I see.’