"Will you see what Mr. Avery is doing?" she said to the maid.
The girl went out and returned in a few moments. "He is with Mr.
Santoine."
"Thank you."
At seven Harriet went in to dinner with her father. The blind man was
now alone; he had been awaiting her, and they were served at once. All
through the dinner she was nervous and moody; for she knew she was
going to do something she had never done before: she was going to
conceal something from her father. She told herself it was not really
concealment, for Donald must have already told him. It was no more,
then, than that she herself would not inform upon Eaton, but would
leave that to Avery. So she told of Eaton's reception at the country
club, and of his taking part in the polo practice and playing badly;
but of her own impression that Eaton knew the game and her present
conviction that Donald Avery had seen even more than that, she said
nothing. She watched her father's face, but she could see there no
consciousness that she was omitting anything in her account.
An hour later, when after reading aloud to him for a time, he dismissed
her, she hesitated before going.
"You've seen Donald?" she asked.
"Yes."
"What did he tell you?"
"The same as you have told, though not quite so fully."
She was outside the door and in the hall before realization came to her
that her father's reply could mean only that Donald, like herself, had
concealed his discovery of Eaton's ability to play polo. She turned
back suddenly to return to her father; then again she hesitated,
stopped with her hand upon the blind man's door by her recollection of
Donald's enmity to Eaton. Why Donald had not told, she could not
imagine; the only conclusion she could reach was that Donald's silence
in some way menaced Eaton; for--suddenly now--it came to her what this
must mean to Eaton. All that Eaton had been so careful to hide
regarding himself and his connections must be obtainable by Avery now.
Why Eaton had played at all; why he had been afraid to refuse the
invitation to play, she could not know; but sympathy and fear for him
swept over her, as she comprehended that it was to Avery the betrayal
had been made and that Avery, for some purpose of his own, was
withholding this betrayal to make use of it as he saw fit.
She moved once more to return to her father; again she stopped; then,
swiftly, she turned and went downstairs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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