Could he bring her to Cincinnati?
What a scandal if it were ever found out!
Could he install her in a nice home somewhere near the city?
The family would probably eventually suspect something.
Could he take her along on his numerous business journeys?
This first one to New York had been successful.
Would it always be so?
He turned the question over in his mind.
The very difficulty gave it zest.
Perhaps St. Louis, or Pittsburg, or Chicago would be best after all.
He went to these places frequently, and particularly to Chicago.
He decided finally that it should be Chicago if he could arrange it.
He could always make excuses to run up there, and it was only a night's ride.
Yes, Chicago was best.
The very size and activity of the city made concealment easy.
After two weeks' stay at Cincinnati Lester wrote Jennie that he was coming to Cleveland soon, and she answered that she thought it would be all right for him to call and see her.
Her father had been told about him.
She had felt it unwise to stay about the house, and so had secured a position in a store at four dollars a week.
He smiled as he thought of her working, and yet the decency and energy of it appealed to him.
"She's all right," he said.
"She's the best I've come across yet."
He ran up to Cleveland the following Saturday, and, calling at her place of business, he made an appointment to see her that evening.
He was anxious that his introduction, as her beau, should be gotten over with as quickly as possible.
When he did call the shabbiness of the house and the manifest poverty of the family rather disgusted him, but somehow Jennie seemed as sweet to him as ever.
Gerhardt came in the front-room, after he had been there a few minutes, and shook hands with him, as did also Mrs. Gerhardt, but Lester paid little attention to them.
The old German appeared to him to be merely commonplace—the sort of man who was hired by hundreds in common capacities in his father's factory.
After some desultory conversation Lester suggested to Jennie that they should go for a drive.
Jennie put on her hat, and together they departed.
As a matter of fact, they went to an apartment which he had hired for the storage of her clothes.
When she returned at eight in the evening the family considered it nothing amiss.
CHAPTER XXV
A month later Jennie was able to announce that Lester intended to marry her.
His visits had of course paved the way for this, and it seemed natural enough.
Only Gerhardt seemed a little doubtful.
He did not know just how this might be.
Perhaps it was all right. Lester seemed a fine enough man in all conscience, and really, after Brander, why not?
If a United States Senator could fall in love with Jennie, why not a business man?
There was just one thing—the child.
"Has she told him about Vesta?" he asked his wife.
"No," said Mrs. Gerhardt, "not yet."
"Not yet, not yet.
Always something underhanded.
Do you think he wants her if he knows?
That's what comes of such conduct in the first place.
Now she has to slip around like a thief.
The child cannot even have an honest name."
Gerhardt went back to his newspaper reading and brooding.
His life seemed a complete failure to him and he was only waiting to get well enough to hunt up another job as watchman.
He wanted to get out of this mess of deception and dishonesty.
A week or two later Jennie confided to her mother that Lester had written her to join him in Chicago.