future reveal to her now? What?

Chapter XVII

An Overture to Conflict

The result of this understanding was not so important to Cowperwood as
it was to Antoinette. In a vagrant mood he had unlocked a spirit here
which was fiery, passionate, but in his case hopelessly worshipful.
However much she might be grieved by him, Antoinette, as he
subsequently learned, would never sin against his personal welfare.
Yet she was unwittingly the means of first opening the flood-gates of
suspicion on Aileen, thereby establishing in the latter's mind the fact
of Cowperwood's persistent unfaithfulness.

The incidents which led up to this were comparatively trivial--nothing
more, indeed, at first than the sight of Miss Nowak and Cowperwood
talking intimately in his office one afternoon when the others had gone
and the fact that she appeared to be a little bit disturbed by Aileen's
arrival. Later came the discovery--though of this Aileen could not be
absolutely sure--of Cowperwood and Antoinette in a closed carriage one
stormy November afternoon in State Street when he was supposed to be
out of the city. She was coming out of Merrill's store at the time,
and just happened to glance at the passing vehicle, which was running
near the curb. Aileen, although uncertain, was greatly shocked. Could
it be possible that he had not left town? She journeyed to his office
on the pretext of taking old Laughlin's dog, Jennie, a pretty collar
she had found; actually to find if Antoinette were away at the same
time. Could it be possible, she kept asking herself, that Cowperwood
had become interested in his own stenographer? The fact that the office
assumed that he was out of town and that Antoinette was not there gave
her pause. Laughlin quite innocently informed her that he thought Miss
Nowak had gone to one of the libraries to make up certain reports. It
left her in doubt.

What was Aileen to think? Her moods and aspirations were linked so
closely with the love and success of Cowperwood that she could not, in
spite of herself, but take fire at the least thought of losing him. He
himself wondered sometimes, as he threaded the mesh-like paths of sex,
what she would do once she discovered his variant conduct. Indeed,
there had been little occasional squabbles, not sharp, but suggestive,
when he was trifling about with Mrs. Kittridge, Mrs. Ledwell, and
others. There were, as may be imagined, from time to time absences,
brief and un