arbara resemble her mother?"

For a moment Miriam paused, then all her hatred of the dead woman rose
up within her. "No," she said, coldly. "Their hair and eyes are nearly
the same colour, but they are not in the least alike. Why? What
difference does it make?"

"None," sighed the blind man. "But I am glad to have the truth at last,
and I thank you. Sometimes I have fancied, when Barbara spoke, that it
was Constance talking to me. It would have been a great satisfaction to
me to have had my baby the living image of her mother, since I am to see
again, but it is all right as it is."

Since he was to see! Miriam had not counted upon that possibility, and
she clenched her hands in swift remorse. If he should discover that she
had lied to him, he would never forgive her, and she would lose what
little regard he had for her. He had a Puritan insistence upon the
literal truth.

"How beautiful Constance was," he sighed. An inarticulate murmur escaped
from Miriam, which he took for full assent.

"Did you ever see anyone half so beautiful, Miriam?"

Her throat was parched, but Miriam forced herself to whisper, "No." This
much was truth.

[Sidenote: A Beautiful Bride]

"How sweet she was and what pretty ways she had," he went on. "Do you
remember how lovely she was in her wedding gown?"

Again Miriam forced herself to answer, "Yes."

"Do you remember how people said we were mismated--that a man of fifty
could never hope to keep the love of a girl of twenty, who knew nothing
of the world?"

"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?"

[Sidenote: 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