No, she did not love him,—"By God, but she shall!" he cried, bringing his clenched hand down on the stand with a fervor that dashed the delicate porcelain cup and saucer to the floor in shivering fragments. "Life's been getting a sleepy nuisance these two years. What better to wake me up than to track her origin and find her name? Time, money, and grip I've got, if luck will only come in and take the fourth hand!
"What a conquest to remove her fantastic fortress and make her desire my love at one bound!"
This was the second time that a man had made this wish; a different man pitched in a different key.
This man, like the other, having made a resolution, went on his accustomed way, which in Winslow's case was to dress with unusual care, a dark red carnation, the prevailing flower for morning wear, in his buttonhole. His business affairs calling him down town but three days a week, he took a leisurely morning walk to the club, where he read the papers and listened to other news that would never appear in print. On some one's remarking upon the success that Miss Gilbert had achieved the previous night, that she had left early on account of Mr. Esterbrook's sudden illness before all the deserved congratulations had reached her, and that those who knew her best said that not less than two men of wealth were ready to back her for the study necessary to an operatic career, Winslow merely looked up, apparently only mildly interested, and observed in neutral tones:—
"Her voice has operatic capacity doubtless, but I should judge she lacked the physique. By the way, what is the news of poor old Esterbrook? A nice outlook ahead of us who grow old as bachelor dandies, I must say."
But what he thought was, "The cats have begun to weave their cradle for Poppea's undoing, and when they find she has gone, they will lay it to their strategy. Damn them!"
CHAPTER XVI
OUT OF THE ASHES
Poppea's chief wonder on her return home was in finding everything precisely as she had left it. A single winter does not witness a very great change in place or people, but to Poppea, so much having been crowded into those few months, it seemed as though the children of the village should have become men and women in her absence.