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."

[Sidenote: 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.

"He told me once the three things he most wanted to see in the world
were mother's letter, saying that she loved him, then mother herself,
and, last of all, me. And for a long time his dearest dream has been
that I could walk and he could see. So when, in the space of five or
ten minutes, all the dreams came true, his heart failed."

"But," Miriam persisted, "I meant to do him harm." Her burning eyes were
keenly fixed upon Barbara's face.

"Sometimes," answered the girl, gently, "I think that right must come
from trying to do wrong, to make up for the countless times wrong comes
from trying to do right. Father could not have had greater joy, even in
heaven, than you and I gave him at the last, neither of us meaning to do
it."

[Sidenote: Human Sympathy and Love]

The stern barrier that had reared itself between Miriam and her kind
suddenly crumbled and fell. Warm tides of human sympathy and love came
into her numb heart and ice-bound soul. The lines in her face relaxed,
her hands ceased to tremble, and her burning eyes softened with the mist
of tears. Her mouth quivered as she said words she had not even dreamed
of saying for more than a quarter of a century:

"Will you--can you--forgiv