wn room and sat down to
think.

Her mirror reflected her face and the unbecoming dressing-gown. The
candlelight, however, was kind. It touched gently upon the grey in her
hair, hid the dark hollows under her eyes, and softened the lines in her
face. It lent a touch of grace to her work-worn hands, moving nervously
in her lap.

After twenty-one years, this was what Constance had to say to
Barbara--that she loved another man, that Ambrose North was not to know
it, and that she did not quite trust Miriam. Also that Miriam had loved
Ambrose North and had never quite forgiven Constance for taking him
away from her.

Out of the shadow of the grave, Miriam's secret stared her in the face.
She had not dreamed, until she read the letter, that Constance knew.
Barbara knew now, too. Miriam was glad that Barbara had the letter, for
she knew that, in all probability, she would destroy it.

[Sidenote: A Crumbling Structure]

The elaborate structure of deceit which they had so carefully reared
around the blind man was crumbling, even now. If he recovered his sight,
it must inevitably fall. He would know, in an instant of revelation,
that Miriam was old and ugly and not beautiful, as she had foolishly led
him to believe, years ago, when he asked how much time had changed her.
She looked pitifully at her hands, rough and knotted and red through
untiring slavery for him and his.

She and Barbara would be sacrificed--no, for he would forgive Barbara
anything. She was the only one who would lose through his restored
vision, unless Constance might, in some way, be revealed to him as she
was.

_"I do not quite trust Miriam. She loved your father and I took him away
from her."_ The cruel sentences moved crazily before her as in letters
of fire.

The letter was gone. Ambrose North would never see the evidence of
Constance's distrust of her, nor come, without warning, upon Miriam's
pitiful secret which, with a woman's pride, she would hide from him at
all costs. None the less, Constance had stabbed her again. A ghostly
hand clutching a dagger had suddenly come up from the grave, and the
thrust of the cold, keen steel had been very sure.

[Sidenote: Scheming Miriam]

For twenty years and more, she had been tempted to read to the blind man
the letter Constance had written to Laurence Austin just before she
died. For that length of time, her desire to blacken Constance, in the
hope that the grief-stricken heart might once more turn t