Stephen Latimer, as soon as might be, communicated with the few people that Poppea considered had a right to know of the solving of the mystery of the name, and these were the Felton ladies, Satira and 'Lisha Potts, and Hugh Oldys. He wrote the details to Miss Felton and 'Lisha, but called upon Miss Emmy and Hugh the same evening.

If there is aught in the saying that bad news spreads like fire in dry grass, while good news requires three kindlings, then the news concerning Poppea must have been considered very bad indeed. Owing probably to the eavesdropping of the butler, accounts more or less garbled appeared within two days, not only in the local and county papers, but in the New York journals as well. It was only in the latter, however, that anything was attempted like writing up the matter as a streak of good luck, upon which the heroine, as Poppea was called, was to be congratulated; one paper adding optimistically that she would, the coming season, open her father's house to those who had the past winter welcomed and entertained her solely on account of her incomparable charm coupled with her vocal ability.

The way in which those nearest to her took the change was the greatest possible proof of their single-hearted love for herself alone.

'Lisha received an unexpected rating from Satira, who told him he'd have better let Beaver Brook wash out the whole railroad company than have fished out that box of misery. Miss Emmy took a more conventional view of the matter, but ended by saying with a sigh, "As long as Poppea could not have grown up with the knowledge, it was better unknown."

Hugh Oldys alone remained absolutely silent; finally, Poppea, who was waiting with feverish eagerness for him to make some sign, received these few lines from him.

"I am glad for you if you are glad, little comrade. Yet oftentimes lately it has seemed to me that the positive knowledge of a thing is so much harder to bear than the vague lack of it, that I have ceased to ask, Why?

"As ever your friend,

"Hugh."

Over these few words Poppea pondered long and sadly, seated in the window of her little bedroom with the warm air of late May again bringing the fragrance of apple blossoms with it. It was not yet a year since they two had walked home together and she had hidden her heart that with the first lift of its wings was poised, ready to fly to Hugh, and at the same time she proffered him friendship. Her motives, surely, had been of the most unselfish, and, as she then thought, far-seeing, but now how insignificant they seemed compared to her loss that lay in Hugh's acceptance of them. If she could have felt one pulse of the old pressure in his hand-clasp when they met, or read the faintest inclination toward a need of her between the lines of the brief note, how quickly she would have revealed herself. Not only had she ceased to be a necessity, but rather it seemed were their meetings becoming a strain upon him, where even his cordial outward friendship was forced.

Ah, back, far back, her thoughts flew, no longer the strains of the motive of the Mystery of the Name sang to her brain; like Elsa, in the pursuit of the mystery, she had not gained but lost. Moreover, though she was happy in the fact that she might now see Philip without restraint or reproach, her joy must be pale compared to his, for to him she was all.

For a week or more John Angus had made no move other than to see that a proper statement of the facts of her birth was added to the village record, writing tersely to Poppea that he had communicated with his London solicitor to have all possible details traced out; then he waited.

The second week brought another note addressed to Miss Angus, asking her to fix the time of her coming home, as there were some necessary preparations to be made.

This note remained unanswered for several days, not because of anything contemptuous or insolent in Poppea's attitude, but for the reason that she did not know how to word her refusal in order to make it final without first consulting Stephen Latimer, and yet if she did so, she feared that he might, from his high impersonal standpoint, try to dissuade her; until, as she was about to write, the New York lawyer of John Angus called at the post-office house.

He was a polished man of the world as well as a legal light, but all the subtly drawn pictures of advantage presented with the intricacies of his calling were shattered upon the bare rock of her simple statement, "This is my home, and I shall not leave Daddy or drop this name that has sheltered me so long."

Utterly baffled, the lawyer's admiration for the girl's firmness did not prevent his returning to Angus and imparting something of the bitter and sarcastic mood that opposition develops in legal temperaments. So that while Angus ceased his attempts to bring Poppea to him, he brooded over the matter to such an extent that he really came to believe that he alone was wronged. If he had been physically able, he would have again closed the house and gone away, but he could no longer hide his increasing feebleness even from himself; consequently he had lost the first field in his effort to conceal his condition from others. Besides, Philip, once more established at his work, was now to be reckoned with,—Philip with a man's spiritual courage and his newly acquired strength of having kin, no longer bearing that brand of utter desolation,—the being the last of one's race.

All the other outlets being closed, John Angus fell back upon the law for solace, and with its advice constructed a will under which, outside of the cautionary sum of one hundred dollars, Poppea was to benefit in no way by his estate. This was so tied up that Philip also would lose his rights if he attempted in any way to share with his sister, and the document being duly signed, sealed, was stowed away in the little safe inserted in the wall by his bed head. He would not be within hearing of criticism when the paper went into effect, so Angus, wearing his usual air of inscrutability, took up his life much as before, save that he suddenly announced that, owing to Philip's love of the sea, he would build a midsummer home for him with a studio attached, on a strip of land that he owned on the west side of Quality Hill, where the Moosatuck joins the bay; and almost before the community had grasped the news the quaintly gabled house was under way.

With Poppea the matter was not to be allowed to rest so soon. Letters came to her from all quarters, congratulating her, giving invitations for visits, the sudden desire for her company all too evidently the result of her supposedly changed condition. Gloria Hooper wrote more than cordially, while Mrs. Hewlett, the well-meaning but very dense mother of the two susceptible sons, ended her letter with this dubious sentence, "I take great credit to myself, dear child, for always having believed that you were not what you seemed to be."

Others yet asked her plans and prospects in the most direct language, with all their social training missing the fine reticence in this matter that had marked the neighborhood people of Harley's Mills.

In early June Poppea went up to visit Miss Emmy for a few days. Brave as this little lady had been, the complete breaking up of the family arrangements of years, and the lack of Miss Felton's strong personality against which to lean, was telling upon her sadly. Her idea of a summer abroad, once abandoned, was now again under discussion. A summer of long periods of rest rather than hasty travel, with Nora for maid and Poppea for companion, was the doctor's advice, and at the same time he said that when the July heat came, it would be necessary for Miss Felton and her charge to leave the city, and where else could they be so comfortable as the great house on Quality Hill.

Miss Emmy had been talking over the journey with Poppea, who at last had consented to go with her, the final inducement being that she could visit Hampshire, and in learning any possible facts concerning her mother's life and death there, bring her nearer as a reality.

The third week in July was the time now set, and the Normanic, with its popular captain, the ship chosen, after much debate. That other time, in the sixties, when Miss Emmy had been on the verge of breaking away, the Scotia, with its ponderous side-wheels, had been the only vessel to which women of sensibility felt that they could trust themselves.

Jeanne Latimer had come up for afternoon tea, and the two sat upon the broad piazza overlooking the rose garden, already showing the golden yellow of the scentless, old-fashioned, half-double brier roses contrasting with the vivid crimson and rich perfume of the Jacqueminots.

Each one of the three women was in a reflective mood, in which, strange to say, the thought focussed about each other rather than about themselves.

"Where is Mr. Latimer?" asked Poppea. "This morning, when I met him on the village road, he promised that he would surely come up this afternoon to help us plan the English end of our journey; besides that, he was to explain to me the best way for Daddy to write to Washington concerning the new post-office. He cannot, of course, resign from an office that will cease to exist the first of next January and he hopes to hold it to the end. But he wishes to write in such a way that it will be clearly seen that he does not desire the new West Harbor position. Not that they would give it to so old a man, but it satisfies his pride not to allow himself to be merely dropped.

"Think of it, Aunt Emmy, very soon Poppea of the Post-Office must give up the name you gave her, not that she leaves it, but it will drop away from her."

"Why not take your mother's name, then?" said Jeanne Latimer. "Helen is more fitting to the woman than Poppea, though of course to us you will be Poppy for all time."

"That also is one of the things about which I wanted to speak to Mr. Latimer. Do you think that he is coming?"

"He started with me, but as we were waiting at the church to see the men who are doing something to the water-power that works the organ, Will Burt, one of the young doctors from the Bridgeton Hospital, came past on horseback, riding like mad. Stephen waved to him, for as a boy he had been one of his music pupils, and he stopped short. It seems that he was on his way to the Rectory on an errand that he had undertaken for its very strangeness.

"Late last night a short, thick-set man was brought into the hospital, a brakeman from one of the through freights, and apparently a new hand on the road, for he did not know of the low bridge at Moosatuck Junction, or understand the signal lights. He was swept off and crushed against the pier. Though hurt to death, he had remained conscious, and early this afternoon, when rallied to the utmost by drugs, asked to speak to one of the physicians alone. Burt, chancing through the ward, was appealed to. There was something about the man that struck him at once; past fifty, and bearing the signs of dissipation and recent neglect of his person, he did not come of the grade who keep to the road at his age. When he spoke, his words confirmed the impression.

"'What place am I in, Doctor?' he began.

"'Bridgeton, Connecticut,' Burt answered.

"The man repeated the name to himself several times, and then asked:—

"'Would that be near a little place called Harley's Mills?'

"'The next town to it.'

"'Is there a clergyman hereabout who would, think you, do an errand for a man that, being already dead in his legs, cannot do it for himself, a matter of—well, we'll say business rather than religion?'

"Burt told him that there was a Roman Catholic priest always within call, besides ministers of other denominations that could be had; but the man sighed, hesitated, and finally said: 'I'm English born, though I've long ago sold out my birthright, yet there's that much left of it that makes me want to say what I must to the one that's the nearest like him that used to teach us our duty in the little church betwixt the wheat fields over there. I want the one that has the white robe, the book, and the law behind him; but maybe, sir, you do not understand?'

"Burt did understand, however, and remembering that the rector of St. John's in Bridgeton was ill, came galloping over for Stephen. Why he did it, or put Stephen to the trouble, he himself could not say, for maimed railway men and similar requests are not uncommon in a hospital. Stephen borrowed a horse from Hugh Oldys and fully expected to be back again by six; it is after five now. Shall I make the tea, Miss Emmy? He would be vexed to have you wait."

How many odd moments as well as times of painful suspense the tea-tray has bridged over. Many a time the period of waiting for the kettle to boil has given the necessary pause to think that has changed a whole life, and the need of balancing a cup and saucer in the hand has made an excuse for looking down when looking up would have betrayed the whole.

As Jeanne pottered and poured, Poppea's wandering eyes caught upon a mere speck in the distance on the lower Bridgeton road. As it reached the great span over Moosatuck it took the shape of horse and wheels. Before it reached the turn below the hill, she knew rather than saw that it was Hugh Oldys's outfit with Stephen Latimer driving, and that he was in great haste.

Though she neither spoke of it nor betrayed the slightest interest, yet her heart pounded so that the hand that held the cup pulsed in response, and she shifted it to the table, where she deliberately stirred the sugar. Then, feeling that she could no longer sit still, she said, looking toward the roses:—

"What a superb flower that is on the third bush. May I have it, Miss Emmy?" and she swung herself lightly over the rail at the end of the porch opposite the steps and arrived at the head of the walk with her rose at the same time that Latimer drove in the gate.

Seeing her, he threw the reins over the dashboard and jumped out; he had the same pallor, coupled with the tension of suppressed excitement, that he had worn the day after the fire. Coming directly toward Poppea, he said:—

"Can you go through one more ordeal, the last?"

"Yes," she answered quietly. "I knew that it was coming half an hour ago. Is he dead? the man with the scar on his hand?"

Latimer, startled in spite of himself at her words, merely nodded his head for yes.

"I felt that it was he when Jeanne told me you had been sent for. Won't you please come and tell us all together, Jeanne and Miss Emmy? I have not the courage I once had; I cannot seem to bear things alone."

While Latimer walked slowly up the steps, his wife had time to gauge, in a degree, the scene he had been through, before Poppea, who was in advance of him, said, in answer to the questioning look upon the face of both women:—

"The man whom he went to see was the one who brought me to Daddy; now we shall know how," and dropping to a stool by Miss Emmy's side, she rested her head upon the elder woman's knees, as she was used in the old days of confidence before things began to happen.

Latimer took the cup of tea that Jeanne brought to him, and then another, before he drew his chair closer to the group of women and began, trying to compress his narrative as much as possible for the sake of all concerned, while he spoke as to Poppea alone.

"The man brought to the Bridgeton Hospital was Peter Randal, the son of Betty Randal, your grandfather Dudleigh's housekeeper and your mother's nurse. When your mother returned to Hampshire and you were born, Peter was away at sea, but came back soon after her death and married an old sweetheart, a pretty barmaid of the town. Betty Randal, though to all appearances in the prime of life and best of health, died suddenly a few months after your mother, without having had time to carry out any of her directions or safeguard you in any way, so that Peter and his wife found themselves left with you on their hands and the temptation of a snug fortune before them, because your little sum of money had been at the time entirely in Betty Randal's control.

"Peter's wife had a sister in Canada, who made great representations of the fortunes to be made there in farming if one only had money in hand; so after much persuading, Peter yielded doggedly to the scheme of keeping your money, which it would have been really difficult to prove did not belong to Betty herself.

"Peter, however, refused even to think of the plan of leaving you at some foundling asylum instead of taking you to your father, and insisted upon going to Canada by way of Boston, bringing you with them, and leaving you with John Angus en route. He also had sufficient family feeling to take with you the papers your mother had left, upon which he knew Betty had set such store.

"Knowing nothing of the country, they found upon their arrival that Boston was far east of their destination, and so, going to New York, worked their way backward, getting off in the confusion of the war excitement and the late train at Westboro, while the box, hastily addressed to John Angus, Harley's Mills, and not checked, was dropped off at this station, the tag evidently having been in some way mutilated in transit so that the place of destination only remained.

"On asking some chance loungers at the Westboro depot the direction of John Angus's house at Harley's Mills, Randal was told 'the first above the post-office,' and to that they drove, not realizing that their guides in this case considered the joined house and office as one building. In the fury of the storm the Randals only waited to be sure that the door was opened, and going to Bridgeton, were lost among many other travellers. For some time everything went well with the pair, and then luck turned. Peter's wife left him after securing the farm to herself, and first the man took to the road, trying in some way to return to the old country, but in spite of all, a bit of deep-down remorse made him wish to know what had become of the baby Helen on his way.—The rest you know."

"What will they do with him?" asked Poppea, softly.

"That which he asked of me," said Latimer.

"I must have known you would have thought of it, and yet there must be an odd touch of the same race feeling in me too. Thief as he was, his people were once loyal to mine, also I wish I might have thanked him for his mistake."

"I did it for you, child, and for us all," and in the look that Poppea turned on him he read a gratefulness beyond words.