"Nor I; but I suppose you all get them—all ticketed—eh? and I'd write the epitaph, only putting in essentials, though, egad! in such a life it would be as long as a newspaper."
"I've already expressed my opinion, and—and things, and I have nothing to add."
"Then the tombstone comes to the ground also?"
"Anything more, sir?"
"But, my lord, he showed an immense consideration for you."
"I don't exactly recollect how."
"By dying—you've got hold of everything, don't you see, and you grudge him a tablet in the little church of Penruthyn, by gad! I told your nephew he wished it, and I tell you he wished it; it's not stinginess, it's your mean pride."
"You seem, Mr. Dingwell, to fancy that there's no limit to the impertinence I'll submit to."
"I'm sure there's none almost—you better not ring the bell—you better think twice—he gave me that message, and he also left me a mallet—quite a toy—but a single knock of it would bring Verney House, or Ware, or this place, about your ears."
The man was speaking in quite another voice now, and in the most awful tones Lord Verney had ever heard in his life, and to his alarmed and sickly eyes it seemed as if the dusky figure of his visitor were dilating in the dark like an evoked Genii.