“I’m going to ask you still another favor,” she said.

Bud returned her look with a bitter smile.

“What is it?”

“You have learned about this—­this land matter and—­”

“Oh, yes!  I can guess.  You want me to keep quiet about it—­to hush it up,” a shade of scorn in his tone.

“I only asked this so that you would not disgrace me,” she pleaded.

Disillusioned at last, robbed of his lifelong optimism, shorn of his ideals, even his love—­for he began to despise this beautiful, misguided woman—­Haines sat broken in spirit, thinking how quickly the brightness of life fades to blackness.

“Very well,” he said sadly.  “I suppose you are innocent.  I’ll save you.  If they’re all—­your father, too—­crooked, why shouldn’t I be crooked?  All right; I won’t say anything.”

“I only ask you not to disgrace me,” pleaded the girl.  “You will promise that?”

“It’s a promise.”

She sighed in relief.

“Father will be coming back soon,” she said.  “You won’t want to see him.”

Haines arose.

“No, I won’t want to see him.  Give him this note.  I’ll have to come back while he’s away to clear up some things.  Good-by.”

Haines bowed and hurried from the room through a side doorway just as Senator Langdon came in through the main entrance.

“Bud!  Bud!” he called, but the secretary did not halt.

Carolina Langdon stood with Haines’ note in her hand, wondering at what she had done.  She regretted having become entangled in the wars of men in Washington.  She saw that the man’s game was played too strongly, too furiously fast, for most women to enter, yet she rejoiced that the coveted fortune had not been lost.  She was sorry that her means of saving it had not been less questionable.  She saw that ambition and honesty, ambition and truth, with difficulty follow the same path.

Senator Langdon’s face was unusually grave as he came to greet Carolina.  Lines showed in his face that the daughter had never noticed before.

She saw Norton and Randolph, who had followed him, exchange significant glances—­jubilant glances—­and wondered what new development they had maneuvered.

“He’s gone without a word,” the Senator sighed.  “Well, perhap’s that’s best.”

“He left a note for you,” said the girl, handing him the letter which Haines had given her.

Langdon opened it and read: 

“I am giving up the job.  You can understand why.  The least said about it between us the better.  I am sorry.  That’s all.  Bud Haines.”

Slowly he read the letter a second time.

“And he was making the best kind of a secretary, I thought.”

Divining that something against Haines had been told her father, Carolina glanced at Norton.

“I told your father how we caught Mr. Haines,” he spoke as an answer to her.