rders were here. There were in this
connection the documents concerning the Warden and the Latron
properties which her father had brought back with him from the Coast;
there were letters, now more than five years old, which concerned the
Government's promised prosecution of Latron; and, lastly, there were
the two envelopes which had just been sent to her father concerning the
present organization of the Latron properties.

She glanced through these and the others with them. She had felt
always the horror of this violent and ruthless side of the men with
whom her father dealt; but now she knew that actual appreciation of the
crimes that passed as business had been far from her. And, strangely,
she now realized that it was not the attacks on Mr. Warden and her
father--overwhelming with horror as these had been--which were bringing
that appreciation home to her. It was her understanding now that the
attack was not meant for her father but for Eaton.

For when she had believed that some one had meant to murder her father,
as Mr. Warden had been murdered, the deed had come within the class of
crimes comprehensible to her. She was accustomed to recognize that, at
certain times and under special circumstances, her father might be an
obstacle to some one who would become desperate enough to attack; but
she had supposed that, if such an attack were delivered, it must be
made by a man roused to hate his victim, and the deed would be
palliated, as far as such a crime could be, by an overwhelming impulse
of terror or antipathy at the moment of striking the blow. But she had
never contemplated a condition in which a man might murder--or attempt
to murder--without hate of his victim. Yet now her father had made it
clear that this was such a case. Some one on that train in
Montana--acting for himself or for another--had found this stranger,
Eaton, an obstacle in his way. And merely as removing an obstacle,
that man had tried to murder Eaton. And when, instead, he had injured
Basil Santoine, apparently fatally, he had been satisfied so that his
animus against Eaton had lapsed until the injured man began to recover;
and then, when Eaton was out on the open road beside her, that
pitiless, passionless enemy had tried again to kill. She had seen the
face of the man who drove the motor down upon Eaton, and it had been
only calm, determined, businesslike--though the business with which the
man had been engaged was murder.

Thou