Page:The Blind Man's Eyes (July 1916).pdf/169

Rh to explain alone, he motioned with a hand in dismissal. "That is all." Then, almost immediately: "No; wait! . . . Harriet, has he made any sign while I have been talking?"

"Not much, if any," Harriet answered. "When you said he might not have had anything to do with the attack upon you, but in that case he must know who it was that struck you, he shut his eyes and wet his lips."

"That is all, Mr. Eaton," Santoine repeated.

Eaton started back to his compartment. As he turned, Harriet Santoine looked up at him and their eyes met; and her look confirmed to him what he had felt before—that her father, now taking control of the investigation of the attack upon himself, was not continuing it with prejudice or predisposed desire to damage Eaton, except as the evidence accused him. And her manner now told, even more plainly than Santoine's, that the blind man had viewed the evidence as far from conclusive against Eaton; and as Harriet showed that she was glad of that, Eaton realized how she must have taken his side against Avery in reporting to her father.

For Santoine must have depended entirely upon circumstances presented to him by Avery and Connery and her; and Eaton was very certain that Avery and Connery had accused him; so Harriet Santoine—it could only be she—had opposed them in his defense. The warmth of his gratitude to her for this suffused him as he bowed to her; she returned a frank, friendly little nod which brought back to him their brief companionship on the first day on the train.

And as Eaton went back to his compartment through the open car, Dr. Sinclair looked up at him, but