t not be an outcast any longer. Her mother
must give her a home. Where Jennie was, there must Vesta be.

Sitting by the bedside in this humble Swedish cottage, Jennie
realized the fruitlessness of her deception, the trouble and pain it
had created in her home, the months of suffering it had given her with
Lester, the agony it had heaped upon her this night--and to what
end? The truth had been discovered anyhow. She sat there and
meditated, not knowing what next was to happen, while Vesta quieted
down, and then went soundly to sleep.

Lester, after recovering from the first heavy import of this
discovery, asked himself some perfectly natural questions. "Who was
the father of the child? How old was it? How did it chance to be in
Chicago, and who was taking care of it?" He could ask, but he could
not answer; he knew absolutely nothing.

Curiously, now, as he thought, his first meeting with Jennie at
Mrs. Bracebridge's came back to him. What was it about her then that
had attracted him? What made him think, after a few hours'
observation, that he could seduce her to do his will? What was
it--moral looseness, or weakness, or what? There must have been
art in the sorry affair, the practised art of the cheat, and, in
deceiving such a confiding nature as his, she had done even more than
practise deception--she had been ungrateful.

Now the quality of ingratitude was a very objectionable thing to
Lester--the last and most offensive trait of a debased nature,
and to be able to discover a trace of it in Jennie was very
disturbing. It is true that she had not exhibited it in any other way
before--quite to the contrary--but nevertheless he saw
strong evidences of it now, and it made him very bitter in his feeling
toward her. How could she be guilty of any such conduct toward him?
Had he not picked her up out of nothing, so to speak, and befriended
her?

He moved from his chair in this silent room and began to pace
slowly to and fro, the weightiness of this subject exercising to the
full his power of decision. She was guilty of a misdeed which he felt
able to condemn. The original concealment was evil; the continued
deception more. Lastly, there was the thought that her love after all
had been divided, part for him, part for the child, a discovery which
no man in his position could contemplate with serenity. He moved
irritably as he thought of it, shoved his hands in his pockets and
walked to and fro across the floor.

That