der, because she was still under the
vague illusion that, in the end, she might escape. When she left him
she knew that he would come back. She knew, in spite of herself that
she wanted him to do so. Yet she felt that she must not yield, she
must go on leading her straitened, humdrum life. This was her
punishment for having made a mistake. She had made her bed, and she
must lie on it.

The Kane family mansion at Cincinnati to which Lester returned
after leaving Jennie was an imposing establishment, which contrasted
strangely with the Gerhardt home. It was a great, rambling, two-story
affair, done after the manner of the French chateaux, but in red brick
and brownstone. It was set down, among flowers and trees, in an almost
park-like inclosure, and its very stones spoke of a splendid dignity
and of a refined luxury. Old Archibald Kane, the father, had amassed a
tremendous fortune, not by grabbing and brow-beating and unfair
methods, but by seeing a big need and filling it. Early in life he had
realized that America was a growing country. There was going to be a
big demand for vehicles--wagons, carriages, drays--and he
knew that some one would have to supply them. Having founded a small
wagon industry, he had built it up into a great business; he made good
wagons, and he sold them at a good profit. It was his theory that most
men were honest; he believed that at bottom they wanted honest things,
and if you gave them these they would buy of you, and come back and
buy again and again, until you were an influential and rich man. He
believed in the measure "heaped full and running over." All through
his life and now in his old age he enjoyed the respect and approval of
every one who knew him. "Archibald Kane," you would hear his
competitors say, "Ah, there is a fine man. Shrewd, but honest. He's a
big man."

This man was the father of two sons and three daughters, all
healthy, all good-looking, all blessed with exceptional minds, but
none of them so generous and forceful as their long-living and
big-hearted sire. Robert, the eldest, a man forty years of age, was
his father's right-hand man in financial matters, having a certain
hard incisiveness which fitted him for the somewhat sordid details of
business life. He was of medium height, of a rather spare build, with
a high forehead, slightly inclined to baldness, bright, liquid-blue
eyes, an eagle nose, and thin, firm, even lips. He was a man of few
words, rather slow to ac