Their colloquy had been longer than Sylvia found comfortable: every one knew Ba.s.sett; every one did not know her. She was a comparative stranger in the city, and it was not wholly kind in him to make her conspicuous; yet he seemed oblivious to his surroundings.

"You cast an excellent actor for an unworthy part, that's all."

"I was debasing him? Is that what you think?" he persisted.

"Yes," she answered steadily, meeting his eyes.

"You like him; you believe in him?"

"He has ability," she answered guardedly.

"Then I've done nothing to thwart him in the use of it. He's the best advertised young man in the state in either political party. He's in a place now where he can make good."

His smile was grave; it was impossible to answer him in the key of social small talk.

"The 'Advertiser' seems to think that he's in the legislature to do what you tell him to."

"He doesn't have to do it, does he? He owes me nothing--absolutely nothing. He can kick me down stairs to-morrow if he wants to. It was understood when he came into my office that he should be free to quit me whenever he liked. I'd like you to know that."

She was embarra.s.sed by the direct look that accompanied this. Her opinions could not interest him one way or another, and he was going far in a.s.suming that she was deeply concerned in Harwood's welfare. The incongruity of their talk was emphasized by the languorous strains of the newest popular waltz that floated over them from the ballroom.

"If it were any of my affair--which it certainly isn't--I should tell him to stand by you--to say no to you if need be and yet remain your friend."

"You think, then, that I am not beyond reclamation--that I might be saved--pulled out of the mire?"

"No man is beyond reclamation, is he? I think not; I believe not."

The music ceased; the dancers were demanding a repet.i.tion of the number.

Ba.s.sett stood his ground stubbornly.

"Well, I've asked him to do something for me--the only thing I have ever asked him to do that wasn't straight."

There was no evading this; she wondered whether he had deliberately planned this talk, and what it was leading to. In any view it was inexplicable. His brow knit and there was a curious gravity in his eyes as they sought hers searchingly.

"That's his affair entirely, Mr. Ba.s.sett," she replied coldly. "He and I are good friends, and of course I should hate to see him make a mistake."

"But the mistake may be mine; let us say that it is mine."

"I had an idea that you didn't make mistakes. Why should you make the serious mistake of asking a good man to do a bad thing?"

"The natural inference would be that I'm a bad man, wouldn't it?"

"It wouldn't be my way of looking at it. All you need is courage to be a great man--you can go far!"

He smiled grimly.

"I need only one thing, you say;--but what if it's the thing I haven't got?"

"Get it!" she replied lightly. "But your defiance in the convention wasn't worthy of you; it was only a piece of bravado. You don't deserve to be abused for that,--just scolded a little. That's why I laughed at you that afternoon; I'm going to laugh at you now!"

The music had ceased again and Allen and Marian flashed out upon them in the highest spirits.

"Well, I like this!" cried Marian. "What are you two talking so long about? Oh, I saw you through three dances at least!"

"Miss Garrison has been laughing at me," said Ba.s.sett, smiling at his daughter. "She doesn't take me at all seriously--or too seriously: I don't know which!"

"How could she take you seriously!" demanded Marian. "I never do!

Sylvia, where on earth is our little Daniel? It's nearly time for the cotillion. And if Dan Harwood doesn't show up for that I'll never forgive him in this world."

"The cotillion?" repeated Ba.s.sett, glancing at his watch. "Hasn't Dan got here yet? He had a committee meeting to-night, but it ought to have been over before now."

Sylvia noted that the serious look came into his eyes again for an instant.

"He oughtn't to have had a committe meeting on the night of my party.

And it's a holiday too."

"And after all the rehearsing we've done at Aunt Sally's the cherry-tree figure absolutely has to have him," said Allen. "Maybe I'd better send a scout to look him up or run over to the State House myself."

"Oh, he'll be here," murmured Sylvia.

Dan had undoubtedly intended to appear early at the dance, and she wondered whether his delay might not be due to the crisis in his relations with Ba.s.sett of which the politician had hinted. As she ran off with Allen to make sure the apparatus for the german was in order, she wished Ba.s.sett had not spoken to her of Harwood.

Sylvia and Allen had despaired of Dan when at a quarter of twelve he appeared. He met their reproaches cheerfully, and airily explained his delay.

"State's business! Can you imagine me fresh from Richelieu's cabinet, with a trail of dead horses on the road behind me? In plain prose I didn't get home to dress until eleven, and the snow makes it hard going."

He had dressed with care nevertheless and had never looked better.

Sylvia sent Allen ahead to begin clearing the floor for the cotillion, and followed more slowly with Harwood.

"I suppose," he remarked, half to himself, "that I really oughtn't to do it."

"What--you hesitate now after keeping the stage waiting!"

"It may be a case for an understudy. There are reasons why."

"Then--you have done it?"

They were at the turn of the stair and Sylvia paused. He was conscious of a quick catch in her breath. Her eyes met his for an instant searchingly.

"Yes; I have done it," he answered, and looked at her wonderingly.

A moment later he had made his peace with Mrs. Owen and paid his compliments to Mrs. Ba.s.sett at the favor table, heaped high with beribboned hatchets and bunches of cherries for the first figure.

Morton Ba.s.sett had heard praise of his daughter from many lips, but he watched her joyous course through the cherry-tree figure in the german with an attention that was not wholly attributable to fatherly pride.

Harwood's white-gloved hand led her hither and thither through the intricate maze; one must have been sadly lacking in the pictorial sense not to have experienced a thrill of delight in a scene so animate with grace, so touched with color. It was ungracious to question the sincerity of those who p.r.o.nounced Marian the belle of the ball when Colonel Ramsay, the supreme authority in Hoosier pulchritude, declared her to be the fairest rose in a rose-garden of girls. He said the same thing to the adoring parents of a dozen other girls that night. (The Colonel was born in Tec.u.mseh County, on our side of the Ohio, and just plays at being a Kentuckian!) Mothers of daughters, watching the dance with a jealous eye on their own offspring, whispered among themselves that as likely as not Marian's tall, broad-shouldered cavalier was the man chosen of all time to be her husband. He was her father's confidential man, and nothing could stay his upward course.

Ba.s.sett saw it all and guessed what they were thinking. Sylvia flashed across his vision now and then. He overheard people asking who she was, and he caught the answers, that she was a girl Mrs. Owen had taken up; a public school-teacher, they believed, the daughter of an old friend.

Sylvia, quite unconscious of this interest, saw that the figures she had done so much toward planning were enacted without a hitch. The last one, the Pergola, with real roses, if you must know, well deserved Colonel Ramsay's compliment. "You can't tell," said the Colonel in his best manner, "where the roses end and the girls begin!"