“Yours,

“CONSTANCE.”

In the letter was enclosed a long, silken tress of golden hair.  It curled around Miriam’s fingers as though it were alive, and she thrust it from her.  It was cold and smooth and sinuous, like a snake.  She folded up the letter, put it back in the envelope with the lock of hair, then returned it to its old hiding-place, with Barbara’s.

“So, Constance,” she said to herself, “you came for the letters?  Come and take them when you like—­I do not fear you now.”

[Sidenote:  The Evidence]

All of her suspicions were crystallised into certainty by this one page of proof.  Constance might not have violated the letter of her marriage vow—­very probably had not even dreamed of it—­but in spirit, she had been false.

“Come, Constance,” said Miriam, aloud; “come and take your letters.  When the hour comes, I shall tell him, and you cannot keep me from it.”

[Sidenote:  Triumph]

She was curiously at peace, now, and no longer afraid.  Her dark eyes blazed with triumph as she lay there in the candle light.  The tension within her had snapped when suspicion gave way to absolute knowledge.  Thwarted and denied and pushed aside all her life by Constance and her memory, at last she had come to her own.

XIII

“Woman Suffrage”

There was a shuffling step on the stairway, accompanied by spasmodic shrieks and an occasional “ouch.”  Roger looked up from his book in surprise as Miss Mattie made her painful way into the room.

“Why, Mother.  What’s the matter?”

[Sidenote:  Miss Mattie’s Back]

Miss Mattie sat down in the chair she had made out of a flour barrel and screamed as she did so.  “What is it?” he demanded.  “Are you ill?”

“Roger,” she replied, “my back is either busted, or the hinge in it is rusty from overwork.  I stooped over to open the lower drawer in my bureau, and when I come to rise up, I couldn’t.  I’ve been over half an hour comin’ downstairs.  I called you twice, but you didn’t hear me, and I knowed you was readin’, so I thought I might better save my voice to yell with.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.  “What can I do for you?”

“About the first thing to do, I take it, is to put down that book.  Now, if you’ll put on your hat, you can go and get that new-fangled doctor from the city.  The postmaster’s wife told me yesterday that he’d sent Barbara one of them souverine postal cards and said on it he’d be down last night.  As you go, you might stop and tell the Norths that he’s comin’, for they don’t go after their mail much and most likely it’s still there in the box.  Tell Barbara that the card has a picture of a terrible high buildin’ on it and the street is full of carriages, both horsed and unhorsed.  If he can make the lame walk and the blind see, I reckon he can fix my back.  I’ll set here.”