scarcely touched his food, continued to boast, in his
queer humility, of the blind man and of the blind man's friendship for
him. He checked himself only when Harriet Santoine appeared in the
doorway. He and Eaton at once were on their feet.

"My dear! He wants to see me now?" the tall man almost pleaded. "He
wants me to be with him this morning?"

"Of course, Cousin Wallace," the girl said gently, almost with
compassion.

"You will excuse me then, sir," Blatchford said hastily to Eaton and
hurried off. The girl gazed after him, and when she turned the next
instant to Eaton her eyes were wet.

"Good morning!"

"Good morning, Miss Santoine. You are coming to breakfast?"

"Oh, no; I've had my breakfast; I was going out to see that things
outside the house have been going on well since we have been away."

"May I go with you while you do that?" Eaton tried to ask casually.
Important to him as was the plan of the house, it was scarcely less
essential for him to know the grounds.

She hesitated.

"I understand it's my duty at present to stay wherever I may be put;
but I'd hardly run away from you while inside your own grounds."

This did not seem to be the question troubling her. "Very well," she
said at last. The renewed friendliness--or the reservation of judgment
of him--which she had let him see again after the interview with her
father in the car the morning before, was not absent; it seemed only
covered over with responsibilities which came upon her now that she was
at home. She was abstracted as they passed through the hall and a man
brought Eaton's overcoat and hat and a maid her coat. Harriet led the
way out to the terrace. The day was crisp, but the breeze had lost the
chill it had had earlier in the morning; the lake was free from ice;
only along the little projecting breakwaters which guarded the bluff
against the washing of the waves, some ice still clung, and this was
rapidly melting. A graveled path led them around the south end of the
house.

"Your father is still better this morning?" Eaton asked.

"What did you say?" she asked.

He repeated his question. Was her constraint, he wondered, due to her
feeling, somehow, that for the first time in their short acquaintance
he was consciously "using" her, if only for the purpose of gaining an
immediate view of the grounds? He felt that; but he told himself he
was not doing the sort of thing he had refused to do when, on the
train, he