"Have you no other name to which, perhaps, a better title you could urge?"
"Mr. Bannerworth, I can assure you that I am too proud of the name of the family to which I belong to exchange it for any other, be it what it may."
"How wonderfully like!"
"I grieve to see you so much distressed. Mr. Bannerworth. I presume ill health has thus shattered your nerves?"
"No; ill health has not done the work. I know not what to say, Sir Francis Varney, to you; but recent events in my family have made the sight of you full of horrible conjectures."
"What mean you, sir?"
"You know, from common report, that we have had a fearful visitor at our house."
"A vampyre, I have heard," said Sir Francis Varney, with a bland, and almost beautiful smile, which displayed his white glistening teeth to perfection.
"Yes; a vampyre, and—and—"
"I pray you go on, sir; you surely are far above the vulgar superstition of believing in such matters?"