'Twas but a passing gust
of the tempest of disloyalty, and I was not swept wholly from my
moorings. Nay, when she came to sit on the hassock at my feet, as she
used to do in that other halcyon-time of convalescence, I was myself
again and could look upon her sweet face with eyes that saw beyond her
to the camp or battle-field where my dear lad was spending himself.
For a time we sat in silence, and 'twas she who spoke first.
"My father has been with you," she said. "I hope you did not quarrel
with him."
"No," I denied, salving my conscience with the remembering that it takes
two to make a quarrel; and I had done none of the cursing. "He came to
give me this," I added, handing her the will.
She opened the folded parchment, reading a line of it here and there
softly to herself.
--"'Being of sound mind, doth bequeath and devise to his loving wife,
Margery--' Ah, had you been writing it you would not have written it so,
would you, Monsieur John?"
"'Tis but a form," I would say. "All wives are 'loving' in lawyers'
speech."
She smiled up at me so like an innocent and fearless child that for the
moment I could figure her no otherwise. Yet her rejoinder was a woman's.
"I say you would not have written it so; is not that the truth?"
I would not let her pin me down.
"If I should write it now, it should be written in great letters, dear
lady. Though it is but a form, though that which followed was but
another form, you have not failed in any wifely duty, Mistress Margery.
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