A few lots were sold, but the rumor that the International Packing Company might come was persistent and deadly; from any point of view, save that of a foreign population neighborhood, the enterprise was a failure.
To say that Lester was greatly disheartened by this blow is to put it mildly.
Practically fifty thousand dollars, two-thirds of all his earthly possessions, outside of his stipulated annual income, was tied up here; and there were taxes to pay, repairs to maintain, actual depreciation in value to face.
He suggested to Ross that the area might be sold at its cost value, or a loan raised on it, and the whole enterprise abandoned; but that experienced real estate dealer was not so sanguine.
He had had one or two failures of this kind before.
He was superstitious about anything which did not go smoothly from the beginning. If it didn't go it was a hoodoo—a black shadow—and he wanted no more to do with it.
Other real estate men, as he knew to his cost, were of the same opinion.
Some three years later the property was sold under the sheriff's hammer.
Lester, having put in fifty thousand dollars all told, recovered a trifle more than eighteen thousand; and some of his wise friends assured him that he was lucky in getting off so easily.
CHAPTER L
While the real estate deal was in progress Mrs. Gerald decided to move to Chicago.
She had been staying in Cincinnati for a few months, and had learned a great deal as to the real facts of Lester's irregular mode of life.
The question whether or not he was really married to Jennie remained an open one.
The garbled details of Jennie's early years, the fact that a Chicago paper had written him up as a young millionaire who was sacrificing his fortune for love of her, the certainty that Robert had practically eliminated him from any voice in the Kane Company, all came to her ears.
She hated to think that Lester was making such a sacrifice of himself.
He had let nearly a year slip by without doing anything.
In two more years his chance would be gone.
He had said to her in London that he was without many illusions.
Was Jennie one?
Did he really love her, or was he just sorry for her?
Letty wanted very much to find out for sure.
The house that Mrs. Gerald leased in Chicago was a most imposing one on Drexel Boulevard.
"I'm going to take a house in your town this winter, and I hope to see a lot of you," she wrote to Lester.
"I'm awfully bored with life here in Cincinnati.
After Europe it's so—well, you know.
I saw Mrs. Knowles on Saturday. She asked after you.
You ought to know that you have a loving friend in her.
Her daughter is going to marry Jimmy Severance in the spring."
Lester thought of her coming with mingled feelings of pleasure and uncertainty.
She would be entertaining largely, of course.
Would she foolishly begin by attempting to invite him and Jennie?
Surely not.
She must know the truth by this time.
Her letter indicated as much.
She spoke of seeing a lot of him. That meant that Jennie would have to be eliminated.
He would have to make a clean breast of the whole affair to Letty. Then she could do as she pleased about their future intimacy.
Seated in Letty's comfortable boudoir one afternoon, facing a vision of loveliness in pale yellow, he decided that he might as well have it out with her. She would understand.
Just at this time he was beginning to doubt the outcome of the real estate deal, and consequently he was feeling a little blue, and, as a concomitant, a little confidential.
He could not as yet talk to Jennie about his troubles.
"You know, Lester," said Letty, by way of helping him to his confession—the maid had brought tea for her and some brandy and soda for him, and departed—"that I have been hearing a lot of things about you since I've been back in this country.
Aren't you going to tell me all about yourself?
You know I have your real interests at heart."
"What have you been hearing, Letty?" he asked, quietly.
"Oh, about your father's will for one thing, and the fact that you're out of the company, and some gossip about Mrs. Kane which doesn't interest me very much.
You know what I mean.
Aren't you going to straighten things out, so that you can have what rightfully belongs to you?
It seems to me such a great sacrifice, Lester, unless, of course, you are very much in love.
Are you?" she asked archly.
Lester paused and deliberated before replying.
"I really don't know how to answer that last question, Letty," he said.