I'm doing this, and I don't care what you think.
I have to take the blame. Don't bother about me."
"Well, I won't, I assure you," she flung back.
"It's quite plain that your family means nothing to you.
But if you had any sense of decency, Lester Kane, you would never let your sister be trapped into coming into a place like this.
I'm disgusted, that's all, and so will the others be when they hear of it."
She turned on her heel and walked scornfully out, a withering look being reserved for Jennie, who had unfortunately stepped near the door of the dining-room.
Vesta had disappeared.
Jennie came in a little while later and closed the door.
She knew of nothing to say.
Lester, his thick hair pushed back from his vigorous face, leaned back moodily on his pillow.
"What a devilish trick of fortune," he thought.
Now she would go home and tell it to the family.
His father would know, and his mother. Robert, Imogene, Amy all would hear.
He would have no explanation to make—she had seen.
He stared at the wall meditatively.
Meanwhile Jennie, moving about her duties, also found food for reflection.
So this was her real position in another woman's eyes.
Now she could see what the world thought.
This family was as aloof from her as if it lived on another planet.
To his sisters and brothers, his father and mother, she was a bad woman, a creature far beneath him socially, far beneath him mentally and morally, a creature of the streets.
And she had hoped somehow to rehabilitate herself in the eyes of the world.
It cut her as nothing before had ever done. The thought tore a great, gaping wound in her sensibilities.
She was really low and vile in her—Louise's—eyes, in the world's eyes, basically so in Lester's eyes.
How could it be otherwise?
She went about numb and still, but the ache of defeat and disgrace was under it all.
Oh, if she could only see some way to make herself right with the world, to live honorably, to be decent.
How could that possibly be brought about?
It ought to be—she knew that. But how?
CHAPTER XXXIII
Outraged in her family pride, Louise lost no time in returning to Cincinnati, where she told the story of her discovery, embellished with many details.
According to her, she was met at the door by a "silly-looking, white-faced woman," who did not even offer to invite her in when she announced her name, but stood there "looking just as guilty as a person possibly could."
Lester also had acted shamefully, having outbrazened the matter to her face.
When she had demanded to know whose the child was he had refused to tell her.
"It isn't mine," was all he would say.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Kane, who was the first to hear the story.
"My son, my Lester!
How could he have done it!"
"And such a creature!" exclaimed Louise emphatically, as though the words needed to be reiterated to give them any shadow of reality.
"I went there solely because I thought I could help him," continued Louise.
"I thought when they said he was indisposed that he might be seriously ill.
How should I have known?"
"Poor Lester!" exclaimed her mother.
"To think he would come to anything like that!"
Mrs. Kane turned the difficult problem over in her mind and, having no previous experiences whereby to measure it, telephoned for old Archibald, who came out from the factory and sat through the discussion with a solemn countenance.
So Lester was living openly with a woman of whom they had never heard.
He would probably be as defiant and indifferent as his nature was strong. The standpoint of parental authority was impossible.
Lester was a centralized authority in himself, and if any overtures for a change of conduct were to be made, they would have to be very diplomatically executed.
Archibald Kane returned to the manufactory sore and disgusted, but determined that something ought to be done.
He held a consultation with Robert, who confessed that he had heard disturbing rumors from time to time, but had not wanted to say anything.