All at once Poppea was kneeling beside Philip, her arms tight about him, whispering, "I called you because I need you, shall always need you to help me to bear this."
Looking down into her upturned face, an almost holy light came into Philip's eyes as he repeated softly, "Sister? You are my sister? Then that is what it means that I have been feeling for you all these years. Oh, sister! I need you; I have always needed you to help me bear to live." In that young face with all its artistic capacity for intense joy as well as suffering there was stamped already the knowledge that in such affection alone could he find place, that the barrier of his infirmity stood forever between him and the other love of woman.
As they spoke thus together John Angus waited for a moment, considering them critically. Noticing the little blemish on Poppea's ear, he involuntarily raised his hand to his own ear bearing the same mark.
Poppea had all the first fresh beauty of his wife Helen, that after the days of courtship he had thought to possess forever by mere force of will and legal right; but in Poppea he saw much of the strength of his own resolution with this, to him, incomprehensible cross,—Poppea knew what love meant, but Angus understood only the power of ambition and authority. There she was, his daughter, yet only the unwilling kin of flesh, always to be a stranger in spirit. Then as he saw that the two had forgotten his presence, he left the room to seek his own chamber and pace up and down in a half-physical attempt to readjust himself to the circumstances that had overtaken him.
After all, he argued, thanks to the Feltons, his daughter was an accomplished woman with many friends. At last he would have some one to make his house a social centre, and probably she would after a time make a brilliant marriage. He had heard that Bradish Winslow had admired her—there would now be no reason on his part why he might not follow the game to a suitable finish. Toward Oliver Gilbert, however, his old-time resentment, instead of diminishing, was increased. How was it that this humble man always managed to come between? How utterly abominable to be obliged to assume an attitude of obligation!
Had his wife Helen directed in the case of her death that the child be left with Gilbert as a sort of spite to himself? Or was it a mistake and the intention been to leave her at his house on Windy Hill?
In either case he held Gilbert to blame, for he, in his comparative poverty, had supported the child and naturally (from Angus's standpoint) would expect recompense, while the very act had deprived Angus of rearing his own child. In this way he worked himself into a commendable fit of righteous indignation, entirely forgetting that had Poppea been left at his door, without the subsequent evidence, he would have been the first, on principle, to have sent her to the town farm.
As Poppea made her way up the hill, Stephen Latimer opened the door of Oliver Gilbert's workshop. Gilbert put down the bit of work at which he had been tinkering, and leaning back, hands behind head, prepared to enjoy a comfortable dish of talk with the dominie, who could always move satisfactorily from books and the political outlook to farming and local news, without either exertion to himself or condescension toward the listener, and then, first and last, he was always ready to speak of Poppea.
After delivering the girl's message that she would soon return, the consolidation of the two towns under the name of West Harbor, now practically an accomplished fact, was discussed, then the burning of the railway station naturally followed.