e don't want
you so much as he wants her."

Cowperwood nevertheless walked slowly toward the head of the stairs,
listening.

"What made you come here, father?" he heard Aileen ask.

Butler's reply he could not hear, but he was now at ease for he knew how
much Butler loved his daughter.

Confronted by her father, Aileen was now attempting to stare defiantly,
to look reproachful, but Butler's deep gray eyes beneath their shaggy
brows revealed such a weight of weariness and despair as even she, in
her anger and defiance, could not openly flaunt. It was all too sad.

"I never expected to find you in a place like this, daughter," he said.
"I should have thought you would have thought better of yourself." His
voice choked and he stopped.

"I know who you're here with," he continued, shaking his head sadly.
"The dog! I'll get him yet. I've had men watchin' you all the time. Oh,
the shame of this day! The shame of this day! You'll be comin' home with
me now."

"That's just it, father," began Aileen. "You've had men watching me.
I should have thought--" She stopped, because he put up his hand in a
strange, agonized, and yet dominating way.

"None of that! none of that!" he said, glowering under his strange, sad,
gray brows. "I can't stand it! Don't tempt me! We're not out of this
place yet. He's not! You'll come home with me now."

Aileen understood. It was Cowperwood he was referring to. That
frightened her.

"I'm ready," she replied, nervously.

The old man led the way broken-heartedly. He felt he would never live to
forget the agony of this hour.

Chapter XXXVII

In spite of Butler's rage and his determination to do many things to the
financier, if he could, he was so wrought up and shocked by the attitude
of Aileen that he could scarcely believe he was the same man he had
been twenty-four hours before. She was so nonchalant, so defiant. He
had expected to see her wilt completely when confronted with her guilt.
Instead, he found, to his despair, after they were once safely out of
the house, that he had aroused a fighting quality in the girl which was
not incomparable to his own. She had some of his own and Owen's grit.
She sat beside him in the little runabout--not his own--in which he was
driving her home, her face coloring and blanching by turns, as different
waves of thought swept over her, determined to stand her ground now that
her father had so plainly trapped her, to declare for Cowperwood an