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. Though Harriet had never believed that Eaton had been concerned in the attack upon her father, her denial of it had been checked and stilled because he would not even defend himself. She had not known what to think; she had seemed to herself to be waiting with her thoughts in abeyance; until he should be cleared, she had tried not to let herself think more about Eaton than was necessary. Now that her father himself had cleared Eaton of that suspicion, her feelings had altered from mere disbelief that he had injured her father to recollection that Mr. Warden had spoken of him only as one who himself had been greatly injured. Eaton was involved with her father in some way; she refused to believe he was against her father, but clearly he was not with him. How could he be involved, then, unless the injury he had suffered was some such act of man against man as these letters and statements represented? She looked carefully through all the contents of the envelopes, but she could not find anything which helped her.