Miriam felt that a reckoning was due somewhere, on earth, or in heaven, or in hell. Mysterious balances must be made before things were right, and her endeavours to get what she had conceived to be her own just due had all failed.
She wondered why. Constance had wronged her and she was entitled to pay Constance back in her own coin. But the opportunity had been taken out of her hands, every time. Even at the last, her subtle revenge had been transmuted into further glory for Constance. Why?
The answer flashed upon her like words of fire—"Vengeance is mine; I will repay."
Then, suddenly, from some unknown source, the need of confession came pitilessly upon her soul. Her lined face blanched in the candle-light and her worn, nervous hands clutched fearfully at the arm of her chair.
The Still Small Voice
"Confess," she repeated to herself scornfully as though in answer to some imperative summons. "To whom?"
There was no answer, but, in her heart, Miriam knew. Only one of the blood was left and to that one, if possible, payment must be made. And if anything was due her, either from the dead or the living, it must come to her through Barbara.
Miriam laughed shrilly and then bit her lips, thinking the others might hear. Roger heard—and wondered—but said nothing.
After he went home, Barbara still sat by the fire, in that surcease which comes when one is unable to sustain grief longer and it steps aside, to wait a little, before taking a fresh hold. She could wonder now about the letter, in her mother's writing, that she had picked up from the floor, and which her father had found, and very possibly read. She hesitated to ask Miriam anything concerning either her father or her mother.