mood. He wondered what it all
meant, but thought he and Cowperwood might have had a few words. He went
out to his desk to write a note and call a clerk. Butler went to the
window and stared out. He was angry, bitter, brutal in his vein.

"The dirty dog!" he suddenly exclaimed to himself, in a low voice. "I'll
take every dollar he's got before I'm through with him. I'll send him to
jail, I will. I'll break him, I will. Wait!"

He clinched his big fists and his teeth.

"I'll fix him. I'll show him. The dog! The damned scoundrel!"

Never in his life before had he been so bitter, so cruel, so relentless
in his mood.

He walked his office floor thinking what he could do. Question
Aileen--that was what he would do. If her face, or her lips, told him
that his suspicion was true, he would deal with Cowperwood later. This
city treasurer business, now. It was not a crime in so far as Cowperwood
was concerned; but it might be made to be.

So now, telling the clerk to say to Owen that he had gone down the
street for a few moments, he boarded a street-car and rode out to his
home, where he found his elder daughter just getting ready to go out.
She wore a purple-velvet street dress edged with narrow, flat gilt
braid, and a striking gold-and-purple turban. She had on dainty new
boots of bronze kid and long gloves of lavender suede. In her ears was
one of her latest affectations, a pair of long jet earrings. The old
Irishman realized on this occasion, when he saw her, perhaps more
clearly than he ever had in his life, that he had grown a bird of rare
plumage.

"Where are you going, daughter?" he asked, with a rather unsuccessful
attempt to conceal his fear, distress, and smoldering anger.

"To the library," she said easily, and yet with a sudden realization
that all was not right with her father. His face was too heavy and gray.
He looked tired and gloomy.

"Come up to my office a minute," he said. "I want to see you before you
go."

Aileen heard this with a strange feeling of curiosity and wonder. It was
not customary for her father to want to see her in his office just when
she was going out; and his manner indicated, in this instance, that
the exceptional procedure portended a strange revelation of some kind.
Aileen, like every other person who offends against a rigid convention
of the time, was conscious of and sensitive to the possible disastrous
results which would follow exposure. She had often thought about what
he