"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.