"All right!" he cried. "If it's an open fight I'll enlist. I'll give them all a run. What are your orders?"
"I don't know that I have any particular orders, sir knight, except to see that my father does all he can for the Altacoola naval base."
Haines paused, seized by a sudden tremor.
"The Altacoola naval base?" he stammered. "Well, all I can say is that the Senator will do what he thinks right. That might bring power and fame--a right decision in this case--but it can't bring money."
"Money?" She laughed with affected carelessness. "Well, we'll have to let the money take care of itself for a time. But I do want him to vote for Altacoola, because I believe that will be the best for him. You believe in Altacoola, don't you?"
"Well, between the two sites merely as sites Altacoola seems to me rather better."
Miss Langdon held out her hand impulsively.
"Then it will be Altacoola!" she cried. "Thank you, Mr. Haines. We are partners, then, for Altacoola."
The young man grasped her hand earnestly.
"I'd like to be your partner for good, Carolina!" he cried.
They stood there close together, holding each other's hands, looking into each other's eyes, when the door opened and in came Charles Norton.
Congressman Norton was startled at the sight of Carolina and Haines apparently so wrapped up in each other. Perhaps she was getting interested in the handsome, interfering secretary. That a woman sometimes breaks her promise to wed he well knew. Plainly Carolina was carrying things too far for a girl who was the promised wife of another.
Carolina and Haines showed surprise at Norton's entrance.
The Congressman advanced and spoke sneeringly, his demeanor marking him to be in a dangerous mood.
"Do I intrude?" he drawled, deliberately.
Carolina drew away her hands from Haines and faced the newcomer.
"Intrude!" she exclaimed, contemptuously, in a tone that Norton construed as in his favor and Haines in his own.
"Intrude!" Haines laughed, sarcastically, feeling that now he was leader in the race for love against this Mississippi representative, who was, he knew, a subservient tool and a taker of bribes. "You surely do intrude, Norton. Wouldn't any man who had interrupted a tête-á-tête another man was having with Miss Langdon be intruding?"