Early in the afternoon of the day after the fire, as Stephen Latimer sat writing in his study, a shadow that did not shift fell across his paper. Glancing up, he saw Poppea, who, coming in the door behind, stood looking at him as intently as though she would force him to yield up his thoughts without the medium of words. Latimer, who knew that it would be a trying interview, sought vainly to gauge her mood by the expression of her face. When he thought, by the wistful lines of the mouth, that tenderness was uppermost, the calm and searching look from her eyes revealed indomitable pride, the trait of her later development.

"Will you stay here?" he said, trying to gain time and turning Jeanne's special low chair with its back to the bright light, "or would you rather go down into the sitting room?"

"Here, if you please," she replied, yet making no move toward the chair. Then, as he sat fumbling with the papers, she took two or three steps forward so that she could steady herself by resting her hands on the table.

"Please do not try to be ceremoniously polite, nor look away from me. I know that you have something to tell me that you think I shall not like to hear, perhaps cannot bear. Be it so, but remember you are making it less hard by telling me yourself. Now you must speak at once, for I think if this uncertainty lasts another hour, my heart will stop through dread."

Latimer stood up and faced her, moistening his lips the while, as if trying to grip his words.

"It is mainly good news, not bad, dear child," he said at last. "It is the uncertainty of how best to begin coupled with fatigue of nerves that makes me hesitate. Perhaps you would better read the papers first"—pointing to the packages on the table.

"Where did you get them?"

Latimer told her as briefly as might be.

"No, I cannot read them until I know; the printed words would prolong that,—my brain is already on fire, I think. If I question, will you answer, Mr. Latimer?"

"Yes," and he pointed once more to the chair, feeling that he himself had not strength to stand.

Poppea, always alert to the needs of others, realized this and seated herself, grasping the arms of the chair with a tension that made the blood settle about her finger nails.

"You know who my parents are?"

"Yes."

"Were they married?"

"Yes."

"Are they living?"

"Your mother is not."

"I think that I knew that; she would not have left me on a doorstep. Is the miniature in the locket my mother's portrait?"

"Your mother at nineteen."

"Ah, then, at least, I need not give up that idea! I have been telling her so many things these last years that I could not let her cast me off, and I could not leave her," Poppea murmured, looking over Latimer's head out through the open door.

"Would you not better read these papers now?" Latimer almost pleaded. He had been at many death-beds, and had once walked beside a murderer to the gallows without flinching, exalted by his calling, and able to impart his confidence to others; now not only were his sympathies worked to their highest pitch, but there was a complicated moral aspect about the case that might at any moment be turned at him in a way to render him speechless.

"Only one more question before I touch the papers," and Poppea crossed the room and again stood by the table facing the clergyman.

"Who was my mother?"

Now that the moment had come, Latimer's perturbation vanished, and rising and resting his hands also upon the table, he faced her, holding her eyes by the firmness of his own.

"Your mother was Helen Dudleigh, the first wife of John Angus."

For a moment Poppea did not speak; she was communing with memory; when she did, the voice was but an echo of her own.

"Helen Angus, the roseleaf wife that Daddy has often told me about, who went away alone and died far off; who stopped to speak to him at the shop and have her watch fixed when she was leaving. I wonder if Daddy has not dreamed of this, for he has told me of her over and over again."

Then Poppea's wistful expression changed to one of new uncertainty. "But how can that be, Mr. Latimer? The roseleaf wife never was divorced from John Angus, Daddy says, and so she could not have been married to my father. Was he mistaken, or are you?"

"Neither of us, my child; do you not understand?"

Putting one hand to her forehead, she thought with knitted brows, then gave a sharp cry and started back.

"You don't mean—you can't mean me to think that John Angus is my father! No, God couldn't be so cruel to Daddy and to me. Anything, any one but that man! I would rather have never known at all or have had my mother alone and closed my eyes to all the rest."

"Think what you say, Poppea!"

"It is because I am thinking that I say it; I would rather for myself alone have been born outside of what is called wedlock; it would have been more natural and less horrible!"

"But it is not for yourself alone, remember that. If the end lay with ourselves and we could bear all the penalty, there would be many a law that every one of us in our time would push aside or shatter. But we are of the race on whom the charge is laid, Thou shalt not! and when we throw it off, the next in line, who has not felt the pressure of our motive, bears the penalty."

"I am the next and the end, and if I had to suffer, it would be alone."

"Read, little one; read the papers and think awhile in quiet. Then sleep on it; to-morrow you may feel differently."

"To-morrow? There is no to-morrow to hate. You yourself told me years ago that love is the only thing that owns to-morrow."

For a moment Latimer winced, but only for a moment.

"Yes, and love will make the to-morrow yours, the love of your brother Philip!"

"Philip—he? Philip, my brother! Oh, God, have mercy and forgive me. I had not thought of him," and Poppea crouched by the table, burying her face in her hands.

Quietly and firmly Stephen Latimer raised her. Leading her to his chair, he pointed again to the papers; then, saying, "Jeanne and I will be in the room below; if you wish either of us, knock on the floor," he left the room, closing the door behind him.

At intervals during the afternoon there was a sound of rapid footsteps overhead, as though Poppea was pacing the floor, but all else was silent. It was almost supper-time when they heard steps upon the stairs, and Poppea came slowly into the sitting room, the papers gathered into a bundle in her arms.

Jeanne went to her, clasped her arms about her neck and kissed her; she then slipped out, saying she would hurry tea and that Poppea must stay to take the meal with them.

When Poppea, having wrapped her bundle in the light shawl she had brought, came toward him, Latimer was again surprised at the change in her whole bearing. Passion and tension had alike disappeared from her face, and though she was pale and her eyelids showed traces of tears, the eyes were clear and calm. When she spoke, there was no uncertainty or vacillation in her tone, but a quiet resolve that seemed as though it should have come through the experience and self-control of years instead of a single afternoon.

"Jeanne is very good, but I think I would best go home now; there are several things that I must do to-night."

"What are they, Poppea? I should think that you would need to rest first of all. Stay with us now, and after supper we will walk home with you."

"If you will do that, I will wait, for then you will stop and tell it all to Daddy while I do—the other thing. Oh nothing, nothing you could do would help more than telling Daddy, Mr. Latimer, for I think it will be easier for him as it was for me to hear it from you. I only wish this had not happened while he is here, now he must know; yet after all, what he thinks will be the only difference it can make."

"What is the other thing, my child, that you must do to-night?" Latimer persisted.

"Go up to see John Angus and show him these," and from her loose blouse she pulled three papers, the certificate of her birth, baptism, and the sealed letter.

"But, Poppea, you must not do this yourself; suppose he will not listen, does not believe, or, possibly, in his bewilderment, should say something hard for you to bear and impossible for you to forget."

"He has already done that more than once."

"Be reasonable, my child; this is a matter for a lawyer, who will take the case from its legal aspect only and see to it that your claims are publicly maintained."

"My mother did not have a lawyer when she went away; she made no public claims, neither shall I."

"Then let me go to Angus as your friend, or else Hugh Oldys, who would be both friend and lawyer; you cannot possibly realize the position in which you may place yourself or, for that matter, place us all, through your suffering."

"I do not mean to be wilful, but this that I must do to-night and what I have to ask concerns only we three,—my mother, Philip, and myself,—so I must go alone; a half hour will be more than enough, and there will be no trouble. Will you not also tell Miss Emmy and Hugh? He has tried so hard in every way to find out what this fire has made known, purely for my sake, because he knew how much it meant to me, not that he cared. I want him to know before any one else but Daddy, and I hope—I pray that he will be very glad," and a look crossed Poppea's face that she did not know was there, but Latimer saw it, and his heart sank as he replied:—

"In these dark days Hugh Oldys keeps both joy (of which he has little) and sorrow to himself, as if the sharing of either might divert him from his fixed purpose concerning his mother."

Then Stephen Latimer ceased urging and they went to the supper table, all three creating talk merely to avoid the strain of silence.

It was a little past eight o'clock, the hour for closing, when Poppea and Stephen Latimer reached the post-office; the only light other than from the street lantern came from Oliver Gilbert's workshop. Going softly to the farther window, Poppea looked in, beckoning Latimer to follow her.

Gilbert sat at his desk, with all his little relics spread before him, the daguerreotype of Mary, a little black paper profile of Marygold, the shoes Poppea had first worn, and various photographs of her, from one taken at the county fair in company with Hugh Oldys, to the rather dramatic picture by Sarony in her first concert gown. Then putting these back into their drawer, he drew out the old ledger, read his Lincoln letters through, touching them lovingly. After putting these also away, he crossed the room to the work bench, lighted both lamps, and, in spite of the sultriness of the evening, began to work, now and then glancing first at the clock and then at the door, with a sigh.

"I wonder of what he is thinking," said Poppea. "Please go in, Mr. Latimer, and tell him that I am coming very soon. If I should go to him now, even for a minute, I should stay and these papers would be burned," and Poppea pressed her hand to her bosom as if to brace herself by the knowledge of what she carried.

"No, do not come with me, it is only a step up the hill and the moon is rising." So saying, Poppea turned the corner of the post-office and went up the hill road.

When she reached the massive gate, she paused before she laid her hand upon the latch, which, in all these years of proximity, she had never before touched. It yielded easily, and she found herself walking toward the house, guided on her way by the long beds of heavily scented hyacinth and narcissus that outlined the path.

A bronze lamp hung in the porch, the front door stood partly open, and Poppea could see lights in the long hall beyond. She was surprised at her own calmness. When she pulled the bell that jangled sharply through the great rooms, she felt no less at ease than if she had rung at the Feltons' door.

The butler, who answered the summons, was the one to evince surprise, or perhaps dismay is the apter term, for the feud as it was regarded between the great house and the post-office was well known below stairs, and of course mightily exaggerated in its details.

Poppea said very quietly, "Please ask if Mr. John Angus can see Miss Gilbert on business."

The butler, however, wishing to take no risks, motioned Poppea to follow him, and throwing open the door of one of the rooms on the left of the long hall, announced in ringing tones, "Miss Gilbert to see Mr. Angus on business!" then promptly disappeared down the corridor only to slip back into the adjoining room where he could be a party to what was, to his mind, an occasion where anything including murder might happen.

As Poppea advanced into the room which was John Angus's library, he arose slowly from one of the deep chairs in which he had been half dozing, half reading. For a minute she thought that he had not heard her name.

John Angus, whatever his feelings might be, always kept up at least the external traditions of courtesy in the ceremonious rooms of his own house. Coming forward, but without asking her to be seated, in coldly civil tones he asked her what he could do for her, at the same time trying to gain an advantage by guessing her errand. Had she, possibly, laid to him the scheme of consolidating the two post-offices under a new name? Was she come to either beg or offer quarter in the shape of the original bit of land he coveted? Or, the feeling of apprehension that had come over him the night that he had seen her personate Sylvaine returned with redoubled force, but he pushed it aside as being too improbable.

Seeing that she was looking at him fixedly and did not reply, he repeated the question, motioning carelessly to a chair as he did so.

Poppea remained standing, and drawing two of the papers from her dress, she held them towards him, saying, "Read those."

There was no insolence in her words or manner, but there was that quality in her that precluded any idea of refusal. Without even feeling surprised, he took the papers and carrying them to his reading lamp, unfolded them deliberately.

The minutes passed slowly; when perhaps five had elapsed, he turned an ashy face toward Poppea, and asked curtly:—

"Where did you obtain these papers, and how long have you had them?"

Poppea answered with equal brevity, then there was another pause.

"Have you any other proof of this claim that you are making?" Angus asked, his hand shaking so that he laid the papers on the table with difficulty.

"I am making no claim for myself; I am merely acting for my mother," she replied, never taking her eyes from his face. "As to further proof, I have this letter that my mother left for you, should you raise the question."

Angus took the letter in his hand, saw the address in the characteristic writing of his first wife, and the words below in the corner. Crushing the envelope in an effort not to drop it, he said quickly:—

"I did not say that I disputed your claim to be the daughter of Helen Dudleigh, for you resemble her very closely, now that I see you for the first time face to face."

"Ah! you see it then; was that why you left the room so suddenly the night that I sang in the dress of the miniature?"

"Yes, it was," replied Angus, amazed at his direct answer, yet unable to hold it back.

"If it is not that but the other part that is in dispute, then you must read the letter!"

John Angus looked at her, then at the envelope, an angry flash in his eyes, the color surging back to his face until it was suffused with a deep, veiny red.

"And if I do not choose to read it? if I prefer to set a match to it, instead of troubling myself with what might be the clever scheme of an—" here Angus paused as though he were conscious of being swept farther than he cared or dared to go.

"Adventuress," said Poppea, "the same name that you gave me a year ago in your complaint to the government about the post-office." Angus's eyes dropped before the unexpected accusation, and Poppea continued:—

"You are perfectly at liberty to burn the letter, but you will not until you have read it, because you are more anxious to know its contents than to justify my mother or me."

It is always the unexpected that subdues a man of John Angus's fibre, who lives by carefully made and guarded plans and prides himself on the fact of never changing his mind, and Poppea's quiet persistence, void of either impertinence, threat, or beseeching, was the last thing he had ever dreamed of encountering. Slowly he broke open the seal and envelope, having some difficulty in unfolding the single sheet that it contained, as the moistened ink had become sticky and in drying had left an offset that made the letter difficult to decipher. As he read he turned toward the light and Poppea could not see his face, but after he had refolded the paper and put it in his pocket, he continued sitting in the same position until, the silence becoming more than she could bear, she closed her eyes and tried to call up the picture of Daddy poring over his little relics at his desk in the shop, to give her relief.

When a slight noise caused her to open them, Angus was standing before her, his breath coming spasmodically, the drawn look having again driven the color from his face.

"What do you wish?" he asked abruptly. Poppea knew then that a more complete verbal explanation was unnecessary. In that brief sentence and its intonation lay the acknowledgment that she sought, while, at the same time, her comprehension of his moods, in spite of her dislike of the man, proved the bond of fundamental relationship.

"What do you wish?" he repeated.

"That you shall tell Philip what I am as decidedly as you once told him—what I was not."

If it had been possible for Angus to be abashed, one might have said that he was so now. In the suddenness of it all this phase had not occurred to him, but his dominant will soon overcame what he put down to the momentary physical weakness that had overcome him many times during the past year, and he said, with his old air of conferring a favor:—

"I will explain to my son to-morrow. I mean when do you wish to come—" (he was about to say home, and then the hollowness of the term even to his comprehension changed the words) "up here to live?"

Ignoring the second part of the sentence wholly, Poppea repeated:—

"Philip must know now, to-night. Suppose for one of the three to-morrow should not come? I hear him on the stairs. Will you not call him in?"

There was something in Poppea's suppressed passion that froze John Angus and caused his faculties to work more slowly than their wont. As he hesitated, trying to frame some moderate and dignified phrase, Poppea, unable to stand the strain of being alone with him any longer, finding her self-control vanishing and rash words pressing at her very lips, called:—

"Philip, Philip, come here to the library—It is I—Poppea!"

The slow steps quickened at the unexpected cry, and pushing the door open so vigorously that it crashed back against a piece of furniture, Philip came in—glanced at Poppea and his father both standing—remembered the latter's fury on the day that he had broken the plaster bust. Straightway going to Poppea, he threw one arm about her, and then turning, said:—

"What are you saying to her, Father? Why did she call me as if she were afraid?"

With the air of one to whom Philip's coming was at precisely the desired moment, Angus replied, "She called you that I might tell you that she is your half-sister, Philip; the daughter of my first wife."

All at once Poppea was kneeling beside Philip, her arms tight about him, whispering, "I called you because I need you, shall always need you to help me to bear this."

Looking down into her upturned face, an almost holy light came into Philip's eyes as he repeated softly, "Sister? You are my sister? Then that is what it means that I have been feeling for you all these years. Oh, sister! I need you; I have always needed you to help me bear to live." In that young face with all its artistic capacity for intense joy as well as suffering there was stamped already the knowledge that in such affection alone could he find place, that the barrier of his infirmity stood forever between him and the other love of woman.

As they spoke thus together John Angus waited for a moment, considering them critically. Noticing the little blemish on Poppea's ear, he involuntarily raised his hand to his own ear bearing the same mark.

Poppea had all the first fresh beauty of his wife Helen, that after the days of courtship he had thought to possess forever by mere force of will and legal right; but in Poppea he saw much of the strength of his own resolution with this, to him, incomprehensible cross,—Poppea knew what love meant, but Angus understood only the power of ambition and authority. There she was, his daughter, yet only the unwilling kin of flesh, always to be a stranger in spirit. Then as he saw that the two had forgotten his presence, he left the room to seek his own chamber and pace up and down in a half-physical attempt to readjust himself to the circumstances that had overtaken him.

After all, he argued, thanks to the Feltons, his daughter was an accomplished woman with many friends. At last he would have some one to make his house a social centre, and probably she would after a time make a brilliant marriage. He had heard that Bradish Winslow had admired her—there would now be no reason on his part why he might not follow the game to a suitable finish. Toward Oliver Gilbert, however, his old-time resentment, instead of diminishing, was increased. How was it that this humble man always managed to come between? How utterly abominable to be obliged to assume an attitude of obligation!

Had his wife Helen directed in the case of her death that the child be left with Gilbert as a sort of spite to himself? Or was it a mistake and the intention been to leave her at his house on Windy Hill?

In either case he held Gilbert to blame, for he, in his comparative poverty, had supported the child and naturally (from Angus's standpoint) would expect recompense, while the very act had deprived Angus of rearing his own child. In this way he worked himself into a commendable fit of righteous indignation, entirely forgetting that had Poppea been left at his door, without the subsequent evidence, he would have been the first, on principle, to have sent her to the town farm.

As Poppea made her way up the hill, Stephen Latimer opened the door of Oliver Gilbert's workshop. Gilbert put down the bit of work at which he had been tinkering, and leaning back, hands behind head, prepared to enjoy a comfortable dish of talk with the dominie, who could always move satisfactorily from books and the political outlook to farming and local news, without either exertion to himself or condescension toward the listener, and then, first and last, he was always ready to speak of Poppea.

After delivering the girl's message that she would soon return, the consolidation of the two towns under the name of West Harbor, now practically an accomplished fact, was discussed, then the burning of the railway station naturally followed.

"Has 'Lisha Potts been in to-day?" Latimer inquired.

"No, but he'll be down to-morrow; Satiry insists that she's coming to bake us up once a week or so. Poppy don't want it, but I must look to it she don't overdo her strength; you see she isn't in body one of our hard-working race, Mr. Latimer. I sort of think her mother was a rather delicate woman."

With this for the entering wedge, Mr. Latimer saw his way to going farther.

"Then you have some idea about her mother? I have thought this for some time. I have an idea also, more than an idea; suppose we compare them," and he told briefly of the trunk of papers and 'Lisha finding them.

Instantly Gilbert's bent shoulders straightened, new life came to his eyes; leaning forward he sat in an attitude of such expectant certainty of what he was to hear that Latimer could not help smiling as he said, "Poppea's mother was—"

"Helen Angus, little Roseleaf, wife of that man who drove her to do what she did!" broke in Gilbert, unable to hold his conviction any longer. "No one who knew her could blame her,—I, who know what Angus is and was, least of all. Young Esterbrook was a dashing, taking blade, like many an army man, not steady like his uncle. I kept track of him for years one way or another; he never married, and was killed in Indian warfare near Cheyenne, so he would never have turned up; and yet, of course before the world this will be a blight upon Poppea. I wish 'Lisha Potts had dropped the papers in the bog; I wish to God he had, Mr. Latimer! Could you find it right in your conscience to burn the papers and let the past be buried? Need she know?"

"She knows already, Gilbert."

The old man groaned and struck his clenched hand on the table. "Ah, well," he said, "that takes it from my hands and the temptation with it, but it's hard, right hard, to feel, link by link, that my power to protect her from trouble is going. But," as an idea made him brighten again, "she can keep my name, can't she, dominie? It's hers, isn't it, by law?"

"Yes, Gilbert, it is hers for good unless she chooses to renounce it," Latimer replied fervently. "But stop a minute, old friend, think—suppose that young Esterbrook was not Poppea's father, and that the only wrong (though it was a virtue, not a fault) that Helen Angus did was in preferring to have her child born away from the atmosphere of tyranny that was crushing out her own life. Could you be glad? Not for yourself, not for ourselves, but for the law's full measure?"

For a while Gilbert sat so absolutely motionless that Latimer began to fear that he was suffering some sort of shock, while it was merely the slowness of his comprehension of what had never before occurred to him ever so remotely. A moment later, he started up with blazing eyes and all the fury of a madman.

"That! that! Oh, my God! Then he can take her from me in my old age, from me who have reared her. He can take her, but he cannot love her as I have nor make her love him! I withheld the bit of land, my birthright, that he coveted, and this is my punishment!

"Pray and pray quickly, dominie; it isn't the dying of the body that must soon come that I fear; no, nor even the craziness that is reaching out after me. I'm losing my hold on believing! It's all slipping and slipping until I'm going down out of sight of Mary and little Marygold. Help me! Stephen Latimer, help me keep my faith! Not in the everyday prayers from books or Bible; I want something nearer, something said by some one that has lived and suffered in the times that I have!

"There on that card that hangs under his picture—He knew,—he suffered. I've pieced his words together for my need, and said them every day and night these many years. Now all is a blank, I can't remember them," and Gilbert fell upon his knees, his head covered by his arms, strangled with sobs.

Following where Gilbert pointed, Latimer saw an old calendar card hanging below Lincoln's portrait. Seizing it, he found on the reverse side Gilbert's crooked writing, and straightway kneeling beside him, one arm about his shoulders, he read this prayer:—

"'Keep us free from giving offence, O Lord; neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us do our duty as we understand it to the end.'

"'Both of us read the same Bible and pray to the same God. Each invokes His aid against the other. The prayers of both cannot be answered—Thine it is to choose between us.

"'Thou hast Thine own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh." Through Thine aid keep us with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as it is given us to see the right; let us strive on to finish the work and to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Thee, O God, for the sake of Him who suffered to teach us how to bear suffering.'"

After Latimer's voice ceased, there was again a long silence, as if each man prayed alone. Then Gilbert pulled himself slowly to his chair, and with hands clasped upon his knees to hide their trembling, he said clearly, as if reading his own death sentence over in order to become used to the sound of it:—

"I must not forget! She will go to her own home and father upon the hill—"

"Daddy!" came the cry from the open door. A rush across the room and Poppea was clinging to the old man, laughing and sobbing at the same time.

"Daddy! dear Daddy! Don't you know that this is my home, and that you are my father, just as God is, because we love each other?"

Then it was Stephen Latimer's turn to steal away and turn his footsteps to where Jeanne was waiting with anxious eyes, straining to see through the dark.