[Sidenote:  Miriam’s Jealousy]

And, as always, the dead Constance, mute, accusing, bitterly reproachful, haunted her dreams.  Her fear of it became an obsession.  As Barbara grew daily more to resemble her mother, Miriam’s position became increasingly difficult and complex.

Sometimes she waited outside the door until she could summon courage to go in to Barbara, who lay, helpless, in the very room where her mother had died.  Miriam never entered without seeing upon the dressing table those two envelopes, one addressed to Ambrose North and one to herself.  Her own envelope was bulky, since it contained two letters beside the short note which might have been read to anybody.  These two, with seals unbroken, were safely put away in Miriam’s room.

One was addressed to Laurence Austin.  Miriam continually told herself that it was impossible for her to deliver it—­that the person to whom it was addressed was dead.  She tried persistently to forget the five years that had intervened between Constance’s death and his.  For five years, he had lived almost directly across the street and Miriam saw him daily.  Yet she had not given him the letter, though the vision of Constance, dumbly pleading for some boon, had distressed her almost every night until Laurence Austin died.

After that, there had been peace—­but only for a little while.  Constance still came, though intermittently, and reproached Miriam for betraying her trust.

[Sidenote:  The One Betrayal]

As Barbara’s twenty-second birthday approached, Miriam sometimes wondered whether Constance would not cease to haunt her after the other letter was delivered.  She had been faithful in all things but one—­surely she might be forgiven the one betrayal.  The envelope was addressed, in a clear, unfaltering hand:  “To My Daughter Barbara.  To be opened upon her twenty-second birthday.”  In her brief note to Miriam, Constance had asked her to destroy it unopened if Barbara should not live until the appointed day.

She had said nothing, however, about the other letter—­had not even alluded to its existence.  Yet there it was, apparently written upon a single sheet of paper and enclosed in an envelope firmly sealed with wax.  The monogram, made of the interlaced initials “C.N.,” still lingered upon the seal.  For twenty years and more the letter had waited, unread, and the hands that once would eagerly have torn it open were long since made one with the all-hiding, all-absolving dust.

* * * * *

[Sidenote:  At Supper]

At supper, Ambrose North still had his fine linen and his Satsuma cup.  Miriam sat at the other end, where the coarse cloth and the heavy dishes were.  She used the fine china for Barbara, also, washing it carefully six times every day.

The blind man ate little, for he was lonely without the consciousness that Barbara sat, smiling, across the table from him.