"I guess it might be as well to have that door shut," he said.

"If you wish," said Merril. "Still, there is nobody in this part of the house."

"Well," said the other man, who crossed the room, "I fancied I heard somebody a moment or two ago."

He closed the door, and when he sat down Merril commenced again, and the member of the Provincial Legislature had to listen to a good many things that did not please him. The rest also spoke bitterly, in lower tones now; but it was in one respect unfortunate they had not displayed that caution earlier, for the man who had fancied he heard a footstep was, as it happened, not mistaken.

CHAPTER XX
ANTHEA MAKES A DISCOVERY

While Merril discussed the prospects of the pulp-mill with his companions, Anthea sat by the open window of an upper room. There was an open book on her knee, but it lay face downward, and she leaned back in a cane chair, looking out upon the Inlet across the clustering roofs of the city. The still water lay shining under the evening light, with a broad smear of smoke trailing athwart it from the steamer which had just vanished behind the dark pines that overhang The Narrows. It drifted across the tall spars of the Agapomene, and through it a big passenger boat's tier of deck-houses showed dimly white. Further up the Inlet another dingy cloud drifted out from behind the piles of stacked lumber about the Hastings mill, while the clatter of an Empress liner's winches came up through the clear evening air with the tolling of locomotive bells and the grind of freight-car wheels.

All this had a certain interest as well as a significance for Anthea Merril. In England the business man, as a rule, endeavors to leave his commercial affairs behind him when he turns his back on the city; but it is different in the West, where he has no privacy and his calling is his life. Mills and mines, freight rates and timber rights, are seldom debarred as topics at social functions, and Anthea had acquired a considerable knowledge of these things, though she had not lived very long in that city. It was, of course, also evident to her that her father was regarded as a man of influence and one who had a share in directing the activities of the Province, and this afforded her a certain pleasure. Several expressions overheard and facts that had lately been forced on her attention might, perhaps, have rudely dissipated that satisfaction had she not resolutely endeavored to attach a more favorable meaning to them than a good many people would have considered justifiable. She had spent most of her life with her mother's relatives in the East, and it was not altogether astonishing that there was a good deal in her father's character with which she was unacquainted. Merril had a desire to stand well with his daughter, and he had sufficient ability to accomplish what he wished, in most cases.

By and by, as she glanced at the shining Inlet, the fading smoke-trail led Anthea's thoughts away to the man who was then doubtless standing on the Shasta's bridge, and her eyes softened curiously. She could now admit that she knew what he felt for her, because, although he had never told her, there had been occasions when his face had, perhaps against his will, made it very plain. What the result of it would be, she did not know, but she could wait, and be sure of his steadfastness, in the meanwhile, for circumstances which were unpropitious now might change, as, indeed, they were rather apt to do with almost disconcerting suddenness in that country. Then she tried to reconstruct the interview she had had with his sister, an occupation in which she had indulged somewhat frequently of late, although it troubled her; and that, by a natural transition, once more led her thoughts back to her father.

It was impossible to doubt that Eleanor Wheelock believed she had grounds for bitterness against him, and a curious something in her brother's manner had once or twice suggested that he shared it too; but Anthea endeavored to assure herself that they had merely adopted their father's views without sufficient investigation. She was aware that men who failed were frequently apt to blame somebody else for it instead of their own supineness, while it was clear that both parties could not always expect a bargain to be advantageous. For all that, the girl's assertions had been startling, and once more Anthea wished that she had not heard them. They vaguely troubled her, since she would not have her father's probity left open to doubt.