retreating steps were still audible.

"Oh!"

Rose had half-risen from her seat as he put his hand to the knob and her
tone of alarm arrested him. Instead of flinging open the door he dropped
his bag into a corner. His face flushed with sudden anger.

"I didn't suppose you'd mind my doing a little extra work out of hours,
Mr. Harwood. Colonel Ramsay was in the office to see Mr. Bassett this
afternoon and asked me to take some dictation for him. I guess it's
about time for me to go home."

She pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter with a sharp _brrrrr_
and dropped it into a drawer with a single deft twist of the wrist.

"The Colonel didn't mention it to me," remarked Dan, feigning
indifference and not looking at her. "He was making a speech at Terre
Haute to-night when I left there."

He tried to minimize the disagreeable aspects of the matter. Rose had
been employed by Bassett as stenographer to one of his legislative
committees before Dan's relations with the politician began. Since
Harwood employed her Bassett had made use of her constantly in the
writing of letters. There would have been nothing extraordinary in his
calling her to the office for an evening's work; it was the girl's
falsehood about Ramsay and the quiet closing of the door of Bassett's
inner room that disturbed Harwood. He passed into the library and Rose
left without saying good-night. The incident annoyed Dan; Bassett's step
had been unmistakable, and the girl's confusion had its disagreeable
significance. He had not thought this of Bassett; it was inconsonant
with the character of man he still believed Morton Bassett to be.

In winding up the receivership of the paper company Bassett had treated
Harwood generously. Dan was out of debt; he had added forty acres of
good land to his father's farm, and he kept a little money in bank. He
had even made a few small investments in local securities that promised
well, and his practice had become quite independent of Bassett: almost
imperceptibly Bassett had ceased to be a factor in his prosperity. The
office in the Boordman Building remained the same, and Bassett spent a
good deal of time there. There were days when he seemed deeply
preoccupied, and he sometimes buried himself in his room without
obvious reason; then after an interval he would come out and throw his
leg over a corner of Dan's desk and talk to him with his earlier
frankness. Once he suggested that Dan might like to leave the Bo