d
reporting to him what she saw, she felt that he found many
insignificant things in her reports which were hidden from herself; and
she never had had that feeling more strongly than just now as she was
telling him about the attack made on Eaton. So she knew that the blind
man's thought in regard to Eaton had taken some immense stride; but she
did not know what that stride had been, or what was coming now when her
father saw Eaton.

She went on slowly down the stairs, and when halfway down, she saw
Eaton in the hall below her. He was standing beside the table which
held the bronze antique vase; he seemed to have taken something from
the vase and to be examining it. She halted again to watch him; then
she went on, and he turned at the sound of her footsteps. She could
see, as she approached him, what he had taken from the vase, but she
attached no importance to it; it was only a black button from a woman's
glove--one of her own, perhaps, which she had dropped without noticing.
He tossed it indifferently toward the open fireplace as he came toward
her.

"Father wants to see you, Mr. Eaton," she said.

He looked at her intently for an instant and seemed to detect some
strangeness in her manner and to draw himself together; then he
followed her up the stairs.

CHAPTER XIV

IT GROWS PLAINER

Basil Santoine's bedroom, like the study below it, was so nearly
sound-proof that anything going on in the room could not be heard in
the hall outside it, even close to the double doors. Eaton, as they
approached these doors, listened vainly, trying to determine whether
any one was in the room with Santoine; then he quickened his step to
bring him beside Harriet.

"One moment, please, Miss Santoine," he urged.

She stopped. "What is it you want?"

"Your father has received some answer to the inquiries he has been
having made about me?"

"I don't know, Mr. Eaton."

"Is he alone?"

"Yes."

Eaton thought a minute. "That is all I wanted to know, then," he said.

Harriet opened the outer door and knocked on the inner one. Eaton
heard Santoine's voice at once calling them to come in, and as Harriet
opened the second door, he followed her into the room. The blind man
turned his sightless eyes toward them, and, plainly
aware--somehow--that it was Eaton and Harriet who had come in, and that
no one else was with them, he motioned Harriet to close the door and
set a chair for Eaton beside the bed. Eaton, underst