_Constance_, abandoning her refuge among the cushions, and coming forward to her father.--"No, mother, it was no mistake! I see now how wise and kind and merciful you have been, papa. You can never love me again, I've behaved so badly; but if you'll let me, I will try to live my gratitude for your mercy at a time when the whole truth would have killed me. Oh, papa! What shall I say, what shall I do to show how sorry and ashamed I am? Let me go down on my knees to thank you." Her father catches her to his heart, and fondly kisses her again and again. "I don't deserve it, papa! You ought to hate me, and drive me from you, and never let me see you again." She starts away from him as if to execute upon herself this terrible doom, when her eye falls upon the letter where she had thrown it on the floor. "To think how long I have been the fool, the slave of that--_felon_!" She stoops upon the paper with a hawk-like fierceness; she tears it into shreds, and strews the fragments about the room. "Oh, if I could only tear out of my heart all thoughts of him, all memory, all likeness!" In her wild scorn she has whirled unheedingly away toward Bartlett, whom, suddenly confronting, she apparently addresses in this aspiration; he opens wide his folded arms. _Bartlett._--"And what would you do, then, with this extraordinary resemblance?" The closing circle of his arms involves her and clasps her to his heart, from which beneficent shelter she presently exiles herself a pace or two, and stands with either hand pressed against his breast while her eyes dwell with rapture on his face. _Constance._--"Oh, _you're_ not like him, and you _never_ were!" _Bartlett_, with light irony: "Ah?" _Constance._--"If I had not been blind, blind, blind, I never could have seen the slightest similarity. Like _him_? Never!" _Bartlett._--"Ah! Then perhaps the resemblance, which we have noticed from time to time, and which has been the cause of some annoyance and embarrassment all round, was simply a disguise which I had assumed for the time being to accomplish a purpose of my own?" _Constance._--"Oh, don't jest it away! It's your soul that I see now, your true and brave and generous heart; and if you pardoned me for mistaking you a single moment for one who had neither soul nor heart, I could never look you in the face again!" _Bartlett._--"You seem to be taking a good provisional glare at me beforehand, then, Miss Wyatt. I've never been so nearly looked out of countenance in my life. But you needn't be afraid; I shall not pardon your crime." Constance abruptly drops her head upon his breast, and again instantly repels herself. _Constance._--"No, you must not if you could. But you can't--you can't care for me after hearing what I could say to my father"-- _Bartlett._--"That was in a moment of great excitement." _Constance._--"After hearing me rave about a man so unworthy of--any one--you cared for. No, your self-respect--everything--demands that you should cast me off."