Miriam repeatedly told herself that Constance had wronged her—that Ambrose North had belonged to her until the younger girl came from school with her pretty, laughing ways. He had never had eyes for Miriam after he had once seen Constance, and, in an incredibly short time, they had been married.
Miriam had been forced to stand by and see it; she had made dainty garments for Constance's trousseau, and had even been obliged to serve as maid of honour at the wedding. She had seen, day by day, the man's love increase and the girl's fancy wane, and, after his blindness came upon him, Constance would often have been cruelly thoughtless had not Miriam sternly held her to her own ideal of wifely duty.
Now, when she had taken a mother's place to Barbara, and worked for the blind man as his wife would never have dreamed of doing, she saw the faithless one worshipped almost as a household god. The power to disillusionise North lay in her hands—of that she was very sure. What if she should come to him some day with the letter Constance had left for another man and which she had never delivered? What if she should open it, at his bidding, and read him the burning sentences Constance had written to another during her last hour on earth? Knowing, beyond doubt, that Constance was faithless, would he at last turn to the woman he had deserted for the sake of a pretty face? The question racked Miriam by night and by day.
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.
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.