Poppea stopped, her hands twisting at a flower that had fallen to her lap, and then looked quietly at Winslow as though waiting for his answer. As for him, he was completely taken out of himself and his acquired stoicism in regard to all things feminine. The spectacle of the beautiful young woman pleading the cause with such unconscious dignity swept him from his feet and made him feel until he tingled.
"Well?" she queried at last.
"You have made it as plain as if I had seen the whole business myself, and I'm no end grateful for the trouble you've taken. This meeting seems to have been quite providential for the post-office family; all I need do is to take a look at them to-morrow and leave. Let me think quickly; there is so much more I wanted to say to you. I see the musical dominie coming our way, and they are drawing the curtains on the last tableau."
"Yes, it was providential your coming, but there is one thing more to be said, and I must say it before you go to the office to-morrow. Look at this," and bending toward him, she held out the locket on its chain that had lain concealed in the folds of her waist, pressing the spring that opened it as she did so.
Winslow looked and then grew bewildered.
"Read," she said. "'Poppea, 1850.'"
"Then you are—Impossible!"
"Poppea of the post-office, whom you have heard accused, and have tried, and, I hope, acquitted for her Daddy's sake." But the eyes that she turned so bravely to meet his reassuring ones were full of tears that could not be recalled.
"What a brute I have been," he said, standing with bent head.
Then Stephen Latimer came to lead her in.