back at him from the door and saw his
troubled face and his fingers nervously pressing together, she
recognized that it was not any definite distrust of Avery that had
moved him, but only his deeper trust in herself. Blind and obliged to
rely on others always in respect of sight, and now still more obliged
to rely upon them because he was confined helpless to his bed, Santoine
had felt ever since the attack on him some unknown menace over himself
and his affairs, some hidden agency threatening him and, through him,
the men who trusted him. So, with instinctive caution, she saw now, he
had been withdrawing more and more his reliance upon those less closely
bound to him--even Avery--and depending more and more on the one he
felt he could implicitly trust--herself. As realization of this came
to her, she was stirred deeply by the impulse to rush back to him and
throw herself down beside him and assure him of her love and fealty;
but seeing him again deep in thought, she controlled herself and went
out.

CHAPTER XV

DONALD AVERY IS MOODY

Harriet went down the stair into the study; she passed through the
study into the main part of the house and found Donald and sent him to
her father; then she returned to the study. She closed and fastened
the doors, and after glancing about the room, she removed the books in
front of the wall-safe to the right of the door, slid back the movable
panel, opened the safe and took out a bundle of correspondence. She
closed safe and panel and put back the books; and carrying the
correspondence to her father's desk, she began to look over it.

This correspondence--a considerable bundle of letters held together
with wire clips and the two envelopes bound with tape which she had put
into the safe the day before--made up the papers of which her father
had spoken to her. These letters represented the contentions of
willful, powerful and sometimes ruthless and violent men. Ruin of one
man by another--ruin financial, social or moral, or all three
together--was the intention of the principals concerned in this
correspondence; too often, she knew, one man or one group had carried
out a fierce intent upon another; and sometimes, she was aware, these
bitter feuds had carried certain of her father's clients further even
than personal or family ruin: fraud, violence and--twice now--even
murder were represented by this correspondence; for the papers relating
to the Warden and the Latron mu