"But it must be a mistake then of the stone-cutters, that we've never noticed before because of the vines; it should be 1861, the year that I was born and Mother died, so that I never saw her.
"Don't you think that is the way of it, Hugh? Why don't you speak? What ails you?"
Again she turned from the stone to look him in the face. Something she saw there struck a chill into her more penetrating than the icy ground on which she continued to kneel.
Poor Hugh Oldys! What avail was his athletic strength or moral courage? If his playmate had been drowning, burning, or in any other form of physical peril, he could have dashed through anything, or even killed men to rescue her from harm, but now—He stood facing the intangible, with bent head, helplessly groping for some way of escape, not so much for himself as for Poppea. The truth lay bare before them, and he knew that it could no longer be veiled. The protective instinct of manhood told him to get her home quickly and under cover, that the blow need not seem so brutal as in the open cold. While he was trying to collect himself and form a plan, Poppea's intuition, keyed almost to second sight, was reading his mind through his eyes.
"You do not think the date is a mistake, but you don't know what to say!"
The words came out so slowly that her lips hardly seemed to form them; then Poppea faced the stone once more, her hands pressed to the sides of her face.
"If 1851 is right, then 'Mary, beloved wife of Oliver G. Gilbert' can't be my mother. Do you understand, Hugh? Not my mother. Why don't you speak? Oh, do say something, Hugh; that is, if you understand!"
Stumbling to her feet, Poppea went to the little stone and, pulling away the vine, exposed the other date, 1852!
"Then Marygold isn't my sister either! Who was my mother, Hugh? And Daddy—isn't Daddy my father? Tell me, you must!"
Grasping Hugh by the shoulders, half to steady herself, half in frenzy, she shook him as she swayed to and fro.