"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?"