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