"Post it yourself, will you, Phineas? I would not have it miscarry, or be late in its arrival, on any account."
No, for I saw it was to her son, at Paris.
"It will be the last letter I shall need to write," she added, again lingering over it, to be certain that all was correct—the address being somewhat illegible for that free, firm hand of hers. "My boy is coming home."
"Guy coming home! To the marriage?"
"No; but immediately after. He is quite himself now. He longs to come home."
"And his mother?"
His mother could not speak. Like light to her eyes, like life to her heart, was the thought of Guy's coming home. All that week she looked ten years younger. With a step buoyant as any girl's she went about the marriage preparations; together with other preparations, perhaps dearer still to the motherly heart, where, if any preference did lurk, it was for the one for whom—possibly from whom—she had suffered most, of all her children.
John, too, though the father's joy was graver and not unmixed with some anxiety—anxiety which he always put aside in his wife's presence—seemed eager to have his son at home.
"He is the eldest son," he repeated more than once, when talking to me of his hope that Guy would now settle permanently at Beechwood. "After myself, the head of the family."
After John! It was almost ridiculous to peer so far into the future as that.