other conclusion, that he had forsaken
her--and so stood there, a meditative, helpless figure.

"Gone!" she thought.

At this moment his footsteps sounded on the stairs. He came in with
his derby hat pulled low over his broad forehead, close to his sandy
eyebrows, and with his overcoat buttoned up closely about his neck. He
took off the coat without looking at Jennie and hung it on the rack.
Then he deliberately took off his hat and hung that up also. When he
was through he turned to where she was watching him with wide
eyes.

"I want to know about this thing now from beginning to end," he
began. "Whose child is that?"

Jennie wavered a moment, as one who might be going to take a leap
in the dark, then opened her lips mechanically and confessed:

"It's Senator Brander's."

"Senator Brander!" echoed Lester, the familiar name of the dead but
still famous statesman ringing with shocking and unexpected force in
his ears. "How did you come to know him?"

"We used to do his washing for him," she rejoined simply--"my
mother and I."

Lester paused, the baldness of the statements issuing from her
sobering even his rancorous mood. "Senator Brander's child," he
thought to himself. So that great representative of the interests of
the common people was the undoer of her--a self-confessed
washerwoman's daughter. A fine tragedy of low life all this was.

"How long ago was this?" he demanded, his face the picture of a
darkling mood.

"It's been nearly six years now," she returned.

He calculated the time that had elapsed since he had known her, and
then continued:

"How old is the child?"

"She's a little over five."

Lester moved a little. The need for serious thought made his tone
more peremptory but less bitter.

"Where have you been keeping her all this time?"

"She was at home until you went to Cincinnati last spring. I went
down and brought her then."

"Was she there the times I came to Cleveland?"

"Yes," said Jennie; "but I didn't let her come out anywhere where
you could see her."

"I thought you said you told your people that you were married," he
exclaimed, wondering how this relationship of the child to the family
could have been adjusted.

"I did," she replied, "but I didn't want to tell you about her.
They thought all the time I intended to."

"Well, why didn't you?"

"Because I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"I didn't know what was going to become of me when I went with you,
Lester.