One was addressed to Laurence Austin. Miriam continually told herself that it was impossible for her to deliver it--that the person to whom it was addressed was dead. She tried persistently to forget the five years that had intervened between Constance's death and his. For five years, he had lived almost directly across the street and Miriam saw him daily. Yet she had not given him the letter, though the vision of Constance, dumbly pleading for some boon, had distressed her almost every night until Laurence Austin died.
After that, there had been peace--but only for a little while. Constance still came, though intermittently, and reproached Miriam for betraying her trust.
As Barbara's twenty-second birthday approached, Miriam sometimes wondered whether Constance would not cease to haunt her after the other letter was delivered. She had been faithful in all things but one--surely she might be forgiven the one betrayal. The envelope was addressed, in a clear, unfaltering hand: "To My Daughter Barbara. To be opened upon her twenty-second birthday." In her brief note to Miriam, Constance had asked her to destroy it unopened if Barbara should not live until the appointed day.
She had said nothing, however, about the other letter--had not even alluded to its existence. Yet there it was, apparently written upon a single sheet of paper and enclosed in an envelope firmly sealed with wax. The monogram, made of the interlaced initials "C.N.," still lingered upon the seal. For twenty years and more the letter had waited, unread, and the hands that once would eagerly have torn it open were long since made one with the all-hiding, all-absolving dust.
At supper, Ambrose North still had his fine linen and his Satsuma cup. Miriam sat at the other end, where the coarse cloth and the heavy dishes were. She used the fine china for Barbara, also, washing it carefully six times every day.
The blind man ate little, for he was lonely without the consciousness that Barbara sat, smiling, across the table from him.
"She hasn't had her supper yet, has she?"
"When she wakes, will you let me take it up to her?"
"Miriam, tell me--does Barbara look like her mother?" His voice was full of love and longing.