They found Donald Avery in front of the house looking for them as they came up. Eaton succeeded in walking without limping; but he could not conceal the marks on his clothes.
"Harriet, I've just come from your father; he wants you to go to him at once," Avery directed. "Good morning, Eaton. What's happened?"
"Carelessness," Eaton deprecated. "Got rather in the way of a motor and was knocked over for it."
Harriet did not correct this to Avery. She went up to her father; she was still trembling, still sick with horror at what she had seen--an attempt to kill one walking at her side. She stopped outside her father's door to compose herself; then she went in.
The blind man was propped up on his bed with pillows into almost a sitting position; the nurse was with him.
"What did you want, Father?" Harriet asked.
He had recognized her step and had been about to speak to her; but at the sound of her voice he stopped the words on his lips and changed them into a direction for the nurse to leave the room.
He waited until the nurse had left and closed the door behind her. Harriet saw that, in his familiarity with her tones and every inflection of her voice, he had sensed already that something unusual had occurred; she repeated, however, her question as to what he wanted.
"That does not matter now, Harriet. Where have you been?"
She hesitated. "Mr. Eaton was almost run down by a motor-car."
She hesitated again. She had seen on her father's face the slight heightening of his color which, with him, was the only outward sign that marked some triumph of his own mind; his blind eyes, abstracted and almost always motionless, never showed anything at all.
"Mr. Eaton said it was an accident," she answered.
"It did not look to me like an accident, Father. It--it showed intention."
"Yes; it was an attack. The man in the car meant to run Mr. Eaton down; he meant to kill him or to hurt him terribly. Mr. Eaton wasn't hurt. I called to him and pulled him--he jumped away in time."
She caught herself. "I--I don't know, Father. He certainly meant to injure Mr. Eaton. When I said kill him, I was telling only what I thought."
She watched her father's face; often when relating things to him, she was aware from his expression that she was telling him only something he already had figured out and expected or even knew; she felt that now.