"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.