Then, rising somewhat abruptly, she flung the book aside, and went down the wide cedar stairway to search for another that might, perhaps, hold her attention more firmly. When she reached the foot of it she turned into a corridor, and stopped a moment when she heard a murmur of angry voices. She was aware that a member of the Provincial Legislature had reached the house not long ago, and that the rest of her father's guests had come there to discuss something with him, while as the door of the room reserved for them had been left open a foot or so she could see within from where she stood.
The house stood high, and the sunlight still streamed into the room, while there was something in the pose of the men that seized and held her attention. She had heard nothing clearly yet, but the strung-up attitudes and intent faces had their dramatic suggestiveness, and she lingered. She could see her father sitting at the head of the table with one hand closed hard on the edge of it, and a grim smile that was quite new to her in his eyes; the member supporting himself by the big lounge and apparently shrinking from his gaze; and one of the others leaning forward in his seat with his fist clenched. In fact, the scene burned itself into her memory, and she never forgot the look in her father's face.
Then the voices suddenly became intelligible, and she heard Merril say, "It's rather a pity you didn't make sure of that before you took what we offered you."
She caught the legislator's answer, and saw the man who leaned forward shake his fist at him, while the latter's exclamation sent a little thrill of dismay through her.
"You know what you meant, and you got your price," he said.
This was sufficiently plain in connection with what had gone before it, and she waited in tense suspense to see whether her father would discountenance it, though she felt that he would not do so. She saw him make a little sign of concurrence, and once more was sensible of an enervating dismay when he flung his answer at the shrinking member of the Legislature.
"A perfectly understood bargain, and he got his price," he said. "He would never have been elected if we had not set certain influences to work."
Then she roused herself with an effort, and, thinking no more of the book she had come for, turned softly and flitted back up the stairway to the room she had left. She made sure the door was fast, with a vague, instinctive feeling that she must be quite alone, then sat down by the window again, a trifle colorless in face, with both hands clenched. She was a woman of keen intelligence, and realized that there was no room for doubt. Her father, the man she had endeavored to look up to, had openly condemned himself.
It was perhaps strange, considering that she was his daughter, that she had wholesome thoughts as well as mental ability, and that honesty formed a prominent part of her morality. The fact made the blow more cruel, for it was clear that her father and his associates had been engaged in an infamous conspiracy. They had bought a member of the Legislature—bribed him to betray the confidence the people had placed in him; and though she did not know whether the bribe had been actual money, that, as she recognized, scarcely affected the question. He had, at least, promised to do something that was against the interests of the country, for which, as one had declared, they cared nothing, and would evidently have kept his promise if circumstances had not been too strong for him. Anthea had sense enough to attach as little credence to his assertions as the others had done.
She supposed that things of the kind were sometimes done, but only by men without morality, and it was almost intolerable to realize that her father had been the instigator of one of them. The fact seemed to bear out all the newspaper had charged him with, and made it more than probable that Eleanor Wheelock's assertions, too, had been well-founded. It was with a little shiver that Anthea realized that in such a case the father of the man who loved her had in all probability been ruined by a nefarious conspiracy. His daughter had told her plainly that his death was the direct result of it, and if that were so, Jimmy must hold her father accountable. The thing was becoming altogether horrible.