“Yes, my lord, you did.”
“You have restated a fact which I maintained for the first time more than thirty years ago! In my paper on colours, read before the Royal Society in—I think it was ’96.”
Vaughan stared. His colour rose slowly. “Indeed?” he said, in a tone from which he vainly strove to banish incredulity.
“You have perhaps read the paper?”
“Yes, I have.”
The Chancellor chuckled. “And found nothing of the kind in it?” he said.
Vaughan coloured still more deeply. He felt that the position was unpleasant. “Frankly, my lord, if you ask me, no.”
“And you think yourself,” with a grin, “the first discoverer?”
“I did.”
Brougham sprang like a boy to his feet, and whisked his long, lank body to a distant bookshelf. Thence he took down a much-rubbed manuscript book. As he returned he opened this at a place already marked, and, laying it on the table, beckoned to the young man to approach. “Read that,” he said waggishly, “and confess, young sir, that there were chiefs before Agamemnon.”