nly
postpone the inevitable reckoning.

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.

[Sidenote: 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.

[Sidenote: Miriam's Confession]

But, while she sat there, Miriam came into the room, urged by goading
impulses without number and one insupportable need. She stood near
Barbara for several minutes without speaking; then she began, huskily,
"Barbara----"

The girl turned, wearily. "Yes?"

"I've got something to say and I don't know but what to-night is as good
a time as any. Neither of us are likely to sleep much."

Barbara did not answer.

"I hated your mother," said Miriam, passionately. "I always hated her."

"I guessed that," answered Barbara, with a sigh.

"Your father was in love with me when she came from school, with her
doll-face and pretty ways. She t