She smiled, tossed back the coronet of curls from her forehead—her proud, pure forehead, that would have worn a coronet of jewels more meekly than it now wore the unadorned honour of being John Halifax's wife. I wished he could have seen her.
That minute he re-appeared.
"Here, Ursula, is all I have of my parents. No one has seen it, except Phineas there, until now."
He held in his hand the little Greek Testament which he had showed me years before. Carefully, and with the same fond, reverent look as when he was a boy, he undid the case, made of silk, with ribbon strings—doubtless a woman's work—it must have been his mother's. His wife touched it, softly and tenderly. He showed her the fly-leaf; she looked over the inscription, and then repeated it aloud.
"'Guy Halifax, gentleman.' I thought—I thought—"
Her manner betrayed a pleased surprise: she would not have been a woman, especially a woman reared in pride of birth, not to have felt and testified the like pleasure for a moment.
"You thought that I was only a labourer's son: or—nobody's. Well, does it signify?"
"No," she cried, as, clinging round his neck and throwing her head back, she looked at him with all her heart in her eyes. "No, it does NOT signify. Were your father the king on his throne, or the beggar in the streets, it would be all the same to me; you would still be yourself—MY husband—MY John Halifax."
"God bless thee—my own wife that He has given me!" John murmured, through his close embrace.
They had altogether forgotten any one's presence, dear souls! so I kept them in that happy oblivion by slipping out to Jenny in the kitchen, and planning with her how we could at least spare Jem Watkins two days a week to help in the garden, under Mr. Halifax's orders.