—"'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."
"Not once?"
"No, not once. Three times you have done what the lovingest wife could do to save a husband's life; and I do greatly suspect there was a fourth and earlier time. Tell me, little one; was it not you who sent the Indian to Captain Forney to tell him a patriot spy was to be executed at day-dawn in the oak glade?"
She would not answer me direct.
"'Twas I who brought you to that pass," she said, speaking soft and low. "But for my riding down upon you one other morning in that same oak glade, you would not have had Sir Francis Falconnet's sword in your shoulder. And but for that sword wound, nothing that followed would have followed."