"When your father asked where she was, I lied to him, not only then, but many times. I wasn't screening her—I was shielding him. It went on for over a year, then she took the laudanum. She left four notes—one to me, one to your father, one to you, and one to Laurence Austin. I never delivered that, even though she haunted me almost every night for five years. After he died, she still haunted me, but it was less often, and different.
"When you sent me into your father's room after that letter he had in his pocket, I took time to read it. She said, there, that she didn't trust me, and that I had always loved your father. It was true enough, but I didn't know she knew it.
"After you took the letter out, I put in the one to Laurence Austin. I'd opened it and read it some little time back. I thought it was time he knew her as she was, and I never thought about no name being mentioned in it.
"When he tore off the bandages, he read that letter, and never knew that it wasn't meant for him. Then, when you came in in that old dress of your mother's, he thought it was her come back to him, and never knew any different."
There was a long pause. "Well?" said Barbara, wearily. It did not seem as if anything mattered.
"I just want you to know that I've hated your mother all my life, ever since she came home from school. I've hated you because you look like her. I've hated your father because he talked so of her all the time, and hated myself for loving him. I've hated everybody, but I've done my duty, as far as I know. I've scrubbed and slaved and taken care of you and your father, and done the best I could.
"When I put that letter into his pocket, I intended for him to know that Constance was in love with another man. I'd have read it to him long ago if I'd had any idea he'd believe me. When he thought it was for him, I was just on the verge of telling him different when you came in and stopped me. You looked so much like your mother I thought Constance had taken to walking down here daytimes instead of back and forth in my room at night.
"I suppose," Miriam went on, in a strange tone, "that I've killed him—that there's murder on my hands as well as hate in my heart. I suppose you'll want to make some different arrangements now—you won't want to go on living with me after I've killed your father."
A Wonderful Joy
"Aunt Miriam," said Barbara, calmly, "I've known for a long time almost everything you've told me, but I didn't know how father got the letter. I thought he must have found it somewhere in the desk or in his own room, or even in the attic. You didn't kill him any more than I did, by coming into the room in mother's gown. What he really died of was a great, wonderful joy that suddenly broke a heart too weak to hold it. And, even though I've wanted my father to see me, all my life long, I'd rather have had it as it was, and he would, too. I'm sure of that.