"is your choice of an executor. I have
no desire to influence your decision; but I may, without impropriety,
remind you that a wise choice means, in other words, the choice of an
old and tried friend whom you know that you can trust."

"It means the admiral, I suppose?" said Noel Vanstone.

Mrs. Lecount bowed.

"Very well," he continued. "The admiral let it be."

There was plainly some oppression still weighing on his mind. Even under
the trying circumstances in which he was placed it was not in his nature
to take Mrs. Lecount's perfectly sensible and disinterested advice
without a word of cavil, as he had taken it now.

"Are you ready, sir?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Lecount dictated the first paragraph from the Draft, as follows:

"This is the last Will and Testament of me, Noel Vanstone, now living
at Baliol Cottage, near Dumfries. I revoke, absolutely and in every
particular, my former will executed on the thirtieth of September,
eighteen hundred and forty-seven; and I hereby appoint Rear-Admiral
Arthur Everard Bartram, of St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex, sole executor
of this my will."

"Have you written those words, sir?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Lecount laid down the Draft; Noel Vanstone laid down the pen. They
neither of them looked at each other. There was a long silence.

"I am waiting, Mr. Noel," said Mrs. Lecount, at last, "to hear what
your wishes are in respect to the disposal of your fortune. Your _large_
fortune," she added, with merciless emphasis.

He took up the pen again, and began picking the feathers from the quill
in dead silence.

"Perhaps your existing will may help you to instruct me, sir," pursued
Mrs. Lecount. "May I inquire to whom you left all your surplus money,
after leaving the eighty thousand pounds to your wife?"

If he had answered that question plainly, he must have said: "I have
left the whole surplus to my cousin, George Bartram"--and the implied
acknowledgment that Mrs. Lecount's name was not mentioned in the will
must then have followed in Mrs. Lecount's presence. A much bolder man,
in his situation, might have felt the same oppression and the same
embarrassment which he was feeling now. He picked the last morsel of
feather from the quill; and, desperately leaping the pitfall under his
feet, advanced to meet Mrs. Lecount's claims on him of his own accord.

"I would rather not talk of any will but the will I am making now," he
said uneasily. "The first thing, Lecount--" He hesitated