“What do you mean?” demanded Aunt Philomela.
“I mean that Mr. Van Patten is getting very much better. I mean that he may see more than we think he sees.”
“His eyesight is returning?” exclaimed the girl, “Oh, that is too good to be true.”
“His eyesight,” gasped Aunt Philomela flushing red, “you mean—you mean he may yet detect us in this fraud?”
“For all I know he may already have done so,” answered Barnes.
The girl rose to her elbow. Aunt Philomela looked upon the point of jumping from the window. “I’ve noticed,” stammered the latter, “that he has made me very uncomfortable these last few days.”
“That may be only your conscience,” suggested Barnes. “But I—I have no conscience and yet he has made me very uncomfortable.”
“Dr. Merriweather knows this?” asked the girl.
“He has suspected it. He left it for me to tell you.”
“Why, it would be like getting Dad home from a foreign land,” cried the girl.