peace. There must be no hitch now. Jennie must be given an opportunity
to better herself. When she returned there was great rejoicing. Of
course she could not go back to her work, but Mrs. Gerhardt explained
that Mrs. Bracebridge had given Jennie a few weeks' vacation in order
that she might look for something better, something at which he could
make more money.

CHAPTER XXIV

The problem of the Gerhardt family and its relationship to himself
comparatively settled, Kane betook himself to Cincinnati and to his
business duties. He was heartily interested in the immense plant,
which occupied two whole blocks in the outskirts of the city, and its
conduct and development was as much a problem and a pleasure to him as
to either his father or his brother. He liked to feel that he was a
vital part of this great and growing industry. When he saw freight
cars going by on the railroads labelled "The Kane Manufacturing
Company--Cincinnati" or chanced to notice displays of the
company's products in the windows of carriage sales companies in the
different cities he was conscious of a warm glow of satisfaction. It
was something to be a factor in an institution so stable, so
distinguished, so honestly worth while. This was all very well, but
now Kane was entering upon a new phase of his personal
existence--in a word, there was Jennie. He was conscious as he
rode toward his home city that he was entering on a relationship which
might involve disagreeable consequences. He was a little afraid of his
father's attitude; above all, there was his brother Robert.

Robert was cold and conventional in character; an excellent
business man; irreproachable in both his public and in his private
life. Never overstepping the strict boundaries of legal righteousness,
he was neither warm-hearted nor generous--in fact, he would turn
any trick which could be speciously, or at best necessitously,
recommended to his conscience. How he reasoned Lester did not
know--he could not follow the ramifications of a logic which
could combine hard business tactics with moral rigidity, but somehow
his brother managed to do it. "He's got a Scotch Presbyterian
conscience mixed with an Asiatic perception of the main chance."
Lester once told somebody, and he had the situation accurately
measured. Nevertheless he could not rout his brother from his
positions nor defy him, for he had the public conscience with him. He
was in line with convention practically, a