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. I didn’t want to do her any harm if I could help it. I was ashamed, afterward; when you said you didn’t like children I was afraid.” “Afraid I’d leave you?” “Yes.” He stopped, the simplicity of her answers removing a part of the suspicion of artful duplicity which had originally weighed upon him. After all, there was not so much of that in it as mere wretchedness of circumstance and cowardice of morals. What a family she must have! What queer non-moral natures they must have to have brooked any such a combination of affairs! “Didn’t you know that you’d be found out in the long run?” he at last demanded. “Surely you might have seen that you couldn’t raise her that way. Why didn’t you tell me in the first place? I wouldn’t have thought anything of it then.” “I know,” she said. “I wanted to protect her.” “Where is she now?” he asked. Jennie explained. She stood there, the contradictory aspect of these questions and of his attitude puzzling even herself. She did try to explain them after a time, but all Lester could gain was that she had blundered along without any artifice at all—a condition that was so manifest that, had he been in any other position than that he was, he might have pitied her. As it was, the revelation concerning Brander was hanging over him, and he finally returned to that. “You say your mother used to do washing for him. How did you come to get in with him?”