“I don’t like to see,” growled Harwood.  “It’s an ugly idea.”  And then, with sudden scorn for Thatcher’s views on man’s frailty, he said with emphasis:  “Now, Allen, it’s all right for you to talk to me about Marian, and your wish to marry her; but don’t mix scandal up in it.  I’m not for that.  I don’t want to hear any stories of that kind about Bassett.  Politics is rotten enough at best without tipping over the garbage can to find arguments.  I don’t believe your father is going to stoop to that.  To be real frank with you, I don’t think he can afford to.”

“You’ve got to hear it; you can’t desert me now.  I’m away up in the air this morning, and even if you do hate this kind of thing, you’ve got to see where dad’s hatred of Bassett puts Marian and me.”

“It puts you clean out of it; away over the ropes and halfway home!  That’s where it puts you,” boomed Harwood.

“Well, you’ve got to listen, and you’ve got to tell me what to do.  Dad had already investigated Bassett’s years in New York, when he was a young man studying in the law school down there.  But they could get about so far and no farther.  It’s a long time ago and all the people Bassett knew at that time had scattered to the far corners of the earth.  But that book struck dad all of a heap.  It fitted into what he had heard about Bassett as a dilettante book collector; even then Bassett was interested in such things.  And you know in that account of him you wrote in the ‘Courier’ that I told you I had read on the other side that first time we met?  Well, when dad and I went to the Adirondacks it was only partly on my account; he met a man up there who had been working up Bassett’s past, and dad went over all the ground himself.  It was most amazing that it should all come out that way, but he found the place, and the same man is still living at the house where the strange woman stayed that Ware told about.  I know it’s just as rotten as it can be, but dad’s sure Bassett was the man who took that woman there and deserted her.  It fits into a period when Bassett wasn’t in New York and he wasn’t at Fraserville.  They’ve found an old file of the Fraserville paper at the State Library that mentions the fact that Bassett’s father was very ill—­had a stroke—­and they had hard work locating Bassett, who was the only child.  There’s only one missing link in the chain of evidence, and that’s the woman herself, and her child that was born up there.  Ware told us that night how he failed to get track of them later, and dad lost the trail right there too.  But that’s all I need tell you about it.  That’s what I’ve got hanging over me.  And dad won’t promise not to use it on Bassett if he has to.”