Poppea straightened herself, opened her lips to speak, but no sound came; meanwhile Winslow, intent upon reciting the story word for word as he had had it from his cousin, paid no heed.
"Under ordinary circumstances a change would possibly have been made on the matter of age, but as the complainant is known to be a man of violent prejudices and the appointment was one of the few now existing made by Lincoln himself, extra trouble was taken in the matter. Examinations showed the accounts to be all straight, and there the affair halted on both sides.
"A month ago new complaints came from the same source in a different key; the young woman, called by the fantastic name of Poppea, it seems, was causing trouble among the youths of the town, and the complainant did not hesitate to call her a dangerous adventuress. A special sent to cast his eye over the ground brought back an unsatisfactory and garbled account. Now my point is, can you from an outside and perhaps kinder point of view set me straight upon this matter?"
It seemed to the woman sitting opposite that she had lived a lifetime while Winslow was speaking; shame and courage, despair and pride, were all struggling for the mastery, and courage, with the chance for justification, won.
"Yes, I know them both, the postmaster and his daughter, as well as John Angus, the man who has complained."
"Then his dislike is public property?"
"Most assuredly; he has harried Oliver Gilbert for years because he would not sell him his homestead to round out his own land."
"Very good, a motive proven; that settles one point," said Winslow, with legal brevity. "Now how about the girl?"
"That is—not, cannot be told in so few words," said Poppea, nerving herself with a visible effort. "It is true that she was a foundling left in a storm upon Oliver Gilbert's porch. He took her in for the sake of his dead wife and baby Marygold. Then he grew to love her until he quite forgot she was not his own, and she thought all the world of 'Daddy,' as she had learned to call him. By and by as he grew older she naturally helped him in the office until, as the business grew and she became of age, she was appointed his assistant.
"She tried, oh, so hard, to work steadily and not forget her place, but she could not help the fact that John Angus's son, a couple of years younger and a cripple, who had no one to be kind to him, liked to talk to her. She couldn't help being glad to find some one to help make up for the sisters and brothers she had never known, for all the real kin she had was an ivory miniature of a young woman with a wreath of poppies in her hair, that hung about her neck on a gold chain the night she came to Gilbert's. There was one word engraved upon the locket, 'Poppea' and a date, '1850.' So they two practised singing together with Mr. Latimer down at St. Luke's, Philip and she, and he made a bust of her, for he is studying to be a sculptor. But John Angus did not understand, and though no one but himself knows what he thought, it is bringing evil to Poppea, for the last man they sent from Washington dared to insult her. Yet all she asks is to be let work for her Daddy until his quarter century is out and he resigns; for it would kill him if he thought that any one could say anything against him or his that could take away the trust that Lincoln gave him."