"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?"
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.
"Constance," she began, huskily, "Constance loved——"
"I know," interrupted Ambrose North. "I know how dearly she loved me up to the very last. Even Barbara, baby that she was, felt it. She remembers it still."
Barbara's bell tinkled upstairs while he said the last words. "She wants us," he said, his face illumined with love. "If you will prepare her supper, Miriam, I will take it up."
The room swayed before Miriam's eyes and her senses were confused. She had drawn her dagger to strike and it had been forced back into its sheath by some unseen hand. "But I will," she repeated to herself again and again as her trembling hands prepared Barbara's tray. "He shall know the truth—and from me."
"Barbara," said the old man, as he entered the room, "your Daddy has brought up your supper."