"The first question for you to decide, sir," said Mrs. Lecount, after a
preliminary glance at her Draft, "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.
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