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Rh how far Harriet Santoine believed him to have been concerned in the attack upon her father. And suddenly he found that he did not need to ask. He knew; and with this sudden realization he all at once understood why she had not been convinced in spite of the conviction of the others—why, as, flushing and paling, she had just now talked with him, her manner had been a continual denial of the suspicion against him.

To Avery and to Connery the attack upon Santoine was made a vital and important thing by the prominence of Santoine and their own responsibility toward him, but after all there was nothing surprising in there having been an attack. Even to Harriet Santoine it could not be a matter of surprise; she knew—she must know—that the father whom she loved and thought of as the best of men, could not have accomplished all he had done without making enemies; but she could conceive of an attack upon him being made only by some one roused to insane and unreasoning hate against him or by some agent wicked and vile enough to kill for profit. She could not conceive of its having been done by a man whom, little as she had known him, she had liked, with whom she had chatted and laughed upon terms of equality. The accusation of the second telegram had overwhelmed her for a time, and had driven her from the defense of him which she had made after he had admitted his connection with Gabriel Warden; but now, Eaton felt, the impulse in his favor had returned. She must have talked over with her father many times the matter of the man whom Warden had determined to befriend; and plainly she had become so satisfied that he deserved consideration rather than suspicion that Connery's identification of Eaton now was to his advan-