"Yes; he says his blindness was used by them to make him think so. So now he is very angry; he says no one who had anything to do with it shall escape. He figured it all out—most wonderfully—that it must have been Latron in the study. He has been working all night—they have already made several arrests and every port on the lake is being watched for the boat they got away on."
"Is that true, Edith? Lawrence, is it true?"
"Yes; quite true, Hugh!" Hillward choked and turned away.
Eaton sank back against his pillows; his eyes—dry, bright and filled still with questioning for a time, as, he tried to appreciate what he just had heard and all that it meant to him—dampened suddenly as he realized that it was over now, that long struggle to clear his name from the charge of murder—the fight which had seemed so hopeless. He could not realize it to the full as yet; concealment, fear, the sense of monstrous injustice done him had marked so deeply all his thoughts and feelings that he could not sense the fact that they were gone for good. So what came to him most strongly now was only realization that he had been set right with Santoine—Santoine, whom he himself had misjudged and mistrusted. And Harriet? He had not needed to be set right with her; she had believed and trusted him from the first, in spite of all that had seemed against him. Gratitude warmed him as he thought of her—and that other feeling, deeper, stronger far than gratitude, or than anything else he ever had felt toward any one but her, surged up in him and set his pulses wildly beating, as his thought strained toward the future.
"Where is—Miss Santoine?" he asked.
His sister answered. "She has been helping her father. They left word they were to be sent for as soon as you woke up, and I've just sent for them."
Eaton lay silent till he heard them coming. The blind man was unfamiliar with this room; his daughter led him in. Her eyes were very bright, her cheeks which had been pale flushed as she met Eaton's look, but she did not look away. He kept his gaze upon her.
Santoine, under her guidance, took the chair Hillward set beside the bed for him. The blind man was very quiet; he felt for and found Eaton's hand and pressed it. Eaton choked, as he returned the pressure. Then Santoine released him.
"Who else is here?" the blind man asked his daughter.
"Miss Overton and Mr. Hillward," she answered.