"Why, you have had long enough surely to think over it. I have not troubled you soon."
"Well, I cannot exactly say you have, but, somehow or another, I don't think very fast, and I have an unfortunate propensity after a time of coming exactly round to where I began."
"Then, to tell the truth, uncle, you can come to no sort of conclusion."
"Only one."
"And what may that be?"
"Why, that you are right in one thing, Charles, which is, that having sent a challenge to this fellow of a vampyre, you must fight him."
"I suspect that that is a conclusion you had from the first, uncle?"
"Why so?"
"Because it is an obvious and a natural one. All your doubts, and trouble, and perplexities, have been to try and find some excuse for not entertaining that opinion, and now that you really find it in vain to make it, I trust that you will accede as you first promised to do, and not seek by any means to thwart me."
"I will not thwart you, my boy, although in my opinion you ought not to fight with a vampyre."