And Cora had been giving her aunt a very fine time indeed, which is easy if anybody makes a god of their food and you happen to be a peerless cook. She was a heaven-born hand at food, was Cora, and Mrs. Dene, loving her food next to her hope of salvation, revelled in her niece's kitchen art. In fact, Cora went from strength to strength in that particular; and a thousand other things she'd done during the last month to endear herself to her aunt.
Her craft was to plant in old Sarah Dene's mind the picture of a helpmate very much out of the common; and she done so, and on the night before James White came along, Cora's aunt had gone so far as to admit it would be a dark day for her when the girl was wed and had took her many gifts to Hartland.
So that's how it stood when Jimmy lighted off his pony, and two minutes later he was holding the amber heart under his sweetheart's astonished eyes.
"Good morning, James," she said. "You'm early."
"What's this?" he asked, wasting no words in politeness.
She was a play-actor to the roots of her being, Cora was, and she started and stared.
"Not another, my dear man, surely?" she asked.
"No," he answered. "Not another. But what I'd like to know is, where be yours?"
"In your hand, thank God," she answered, and put out her fingers to take it; but he wasn't giving it back to her no more.
He commanded her to tell him how it come about that his gift to her—a sacred heirloom evermore—come to be on his sister's neck that morning, and she marvelled at a tale so strange and wondered what the world was coming to.