"That you shall tell Philip what I am as decidedly as you once told him—what I was not."
If it had been possible for Angus to be abashed, one might have said that he was so now. In the suddenness of it all this phase had not occurred to him, but his dominant will soon overcame what he put down to the momentary physical weakness that had overcome him many times during the past year, and he said, with his old air of conferring a favor:—
"I will explain to my son to-morrow. I mean when do you wish to come—" (he was about to say home, and then the hollowness of the term even to his comprehension changed the words) "up here to live?"
Ignoring the second part of the sentence wholly, Poppea repeated:—
"Philip must know now, to-night. Suppose for one of the three to-morrow should not come? I hear him on the stairs. Will you not call him in?"
There was something in Poppea's suppressed passion that froze John Angus and caused his faculties to work more slowly than their wont. As he hesitated, trying to frame some moderate and dignified phrase, Poppea, unable to stand the strain of being alone with him any longer, finding her self-control vanishing and rash words pressing at her very lips, called:—
"Philip, Philip, come here to the library—It is I—Poppea!"
The slow steps quickened at the unexpected cry, and pushing the door open so vigorously that it crashed back against a piece of furniture, Philip came in—glanced at Poppea and his father both standing—remembered the latter's fury on the day that he had broken the plaster bust. Straightway going to Poppea, he threw one arm about her, and then turning, said:—
"What are you saying to her, Father? Why did she call me as if she were afraid?"
With the air of one to whom Philip's coming was at precisely the desired moment, Angus replied, "She called you that I might tell you that she is your half-sister, Philip; the daughter of my first wife."