“Is she asleep?” he asked, of Miriam.

“Yes.”

“She hasn’t had her supper yet, has she?”

“No.”

“When she wakes, will you let me take it up to her?”

“Yes, if you want to.”

“Miriam, tell me—­does Barbara look like her mother?” His voice was full of love and longing.

“There may be a slight resemblance,” Miriam admitted.

“But how much?”

[Sidenote:  The Same Old Question]

A curious, tigerish impulse possessed Miriam.  He had asked her this same question many times and she had always eluded him with a vague generalisation.

“How much does she resemble her mother?” he insisted.  “You told me once that they were ‘something alike.’”

“That was a long time ago,” answered Miriam.  She was breathing hard and her eyes glittered.  “Barbara has changed lately.”

“Don’t hide the truth for fear of hurting me,” he pleaded.  “Once for all I ask you—­does Barbara resemble her mother?”

For a moment Miriam paused, then all her hatred of the dead woman rose up within her.  “No,” she said, coldly.  “Their hair and eyes are nearly the same colour, but they are not in the least alike.  Why?  What difference does it make?”

“None,” sighed the blind man.  “But I am glad to have the truth at last, and I thank you.  Sometimes I have fancied, when Barbara spoke, that it was Constance talking to me.  It would have been a great satisfaction to me to have had my baby the living image of her mother, since I am to see again, but it is all right as it is.”

Since he was to see!  Miriam had not counted upon that possibility, and she clenched her hands in swift remorse.  If he should discover that she had lied to him, he would never forgive her, and she would lose what little regard he had for her.  He had a Puritan insistence upon the literal truth.

“How beautiful Constance was,” he sighed.  An inarticulate murmur escaped from Miriam, which he took for full assent.

“Did you ever see anyone half so beautiful, Miriam?”

Her throat was parched, but Miriam forced herself to whisper, “No.”  This much was truth.

[Sidenote:  A Beautiful Bride]

“How sweet she was and what pretty ways she had,” he went on.  “Do you remember how lovely she was in her wedding gown?”

Again Miriam forced herself to answer, “Yes.”

“Do you remember how people said we were mismated—­that a man of fifty could never hope to keep the love of a girl of twenty, who knew nothing of the world?”

“I remember,” muttered Miriam.

“And it was false, wasn’t it?” he asked, hungering for assurance.  “Constance loved me—­do you remember how dearly she loved me?”

[Sidenote:  Beloved Constance]

A thousand words struggled for utterance, but Miriam could not speak just then.  She longed, as never before, to tear open the envelope addressed to Laurence Austin and read to North the words his beloved Constance had written to another man before she took her own life.  She longed to tell him how, for months previous, she had followed Constance when she left the house, and discovered that she had a trysting-place down on the shore.  He wanted the truth, did he?  Very well, he should have it—­the truth without mercy.