"I—I think about it—it's quite unaccountable—all this." Lord Verney was looking at the stranger as he spoke, and groping with his left hand for the old-fashioned bell-rope which used to hang near him in the library in Verney House, forgetting that there was no bell of any sort within his reach at that moment.
"I'm not going to take poor dear Arthur's mallet out of my pocket, for the least tap of it would make all England ring and roar, sir. No, I'll make no noise; you and I, sir, tête-à-tête. I'll have no go-between; no Larkin, no Levi, no Cleve; you and I'll settle it alone. Your brother was a great Grecian, they used to call him Οδυσσευσ --Ulysses. Do you remember? I said I was the great Greek merchant? We have made an exchange together. You must pay. What shall I call myself, for Dingwell isn't my name. I'll take a new one--To μεν πρωτον Ουτιν ῾εαυτον επικαλει--επειδανδε διεφεuγε και εξω ην βελους Οδυσσυν ονομαζεσθαι εφη. In English--at first he called himself Outis--Nobody; but so soon as he had escaped, and was out of the javelin's reach, he said that he was named Odusseus--Ulysses, and here he is. This is the return of Ulysses!"
There had been a sudden change in Mr. Dingwell's Yankee intonation. The nasal tones were heard no more. He approached the window, and said, with a laugh, pulling the shutter more open—
"Why, Kiffyn, you fool, don't you know me?"
There was a silence.
"My great God! my great God of heaven!" came from the white lips of Lord Verney.
"Yes; God's over all," said Arthur Verney, with a strange confusion, between a sneer and something more genuine.
There was a long pause.
"Ha, ha, ha! don't make a scene! Not such a muff?" said Dingwell.
Lord Verney was staring at him with a face white and peaked as that of a corpse, and whispering still—"My God! my great God!" so that Dingwell, as I still call him, began to grow uneasy.