After another interval, he opened his eyes in his own character, and
said: "Don't move me, Sally, because of what I am going to say; I lie
quite easily. I think my time is come, I don't know how it may appear to
you, Sally, but--"
Insensibility fell upon him for a few minutes; he emerged from it once
more.
"--I don't know how it may appear to you, Sally, but so it appears to
me."
When he had thus conscientiously finished his favourite sentence, his
time came, and he died.
ACT II.
VENDALE MAKES LOVE
The summer and the autumn passed. Christmas and the New Year were at
hand.
As executors honestly bent on performing their duty towards the dead,
Vendale and Bintrey had held more than one anxious consultation on the
subject of Wilding's will. The lawyer had declared, from the first, that
it was simply impossible to take any useful action in the matter at all.
The only obvious inquiries to make, in relation to the lost man, had been
made already by Wilding himself; with this result, that time and death
together had not left a trace of him discoverable. To advertise for the
claimant to the property, it would be necessary to mention particulars--a
course of proceeding which would invite half the impostors in England to
present themselves in the character of the true Walter Wilding. "If we
find a chance of tracing the lost man, we will take it. If we don't, let
us meet for another consultation on the first anniversary of Wilding's
death.
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