the clannish, snobbish elements of
society--but among the beginners and financially strong men who had
come or were coming up from the bottom, and who had no social hopes
whatsoever. There were many such. If through luck and effort he
became sufficiently powerful financially he might then hope to dictate
to society. Individualistic and even anarchistic in character, and
without a shred of true democracy, yet temperamentally he was in
sympathy with the mass more than he was with the class, and he
understood the mass better. Perhaps this, in a way, will explain his
desire to connect himself with a personality so naive and strange as
Peter Laughlin. He had annexed him as a surgeon selects a special
knife or instrument for an operation, and, shrewd as old Laughlin was,
he was destined to be no more than a tool in Cowperwood's strong hands,
a mere hustling messenger, content to take orders from this swiftest of
moving brains. For the present Cowperwood was satisfied to do business
under the firm name of Peter Laughlin & Co.--as a matter of fact, he
preferred it; for he could thus keep himself sufficiently inconspicuous
to avoid undue attention, and gradually work out one or two coups by
which he hoped to firmly fix himself in the financial future of Chicago.

As the most essential preliminary to the social as well as the
financial establishment of himself and Aileen in Chicago, Harper
Steger, Cowperwood's lawyer, was doing his best all this while to
ingratiate himself in the confidence of Mrs. Cowperwood, who had no
faith in lawyers any more than she had in her recalcitrant husband.
She was now a tall, severe, and rather plain woman, but still bearing
the marks of the former passive charm that had once interested
Cowperwood. Notable crows'-feet had come about the corners of her
nose, mouth, and eyes. She had a remote, censorious, subdued,
self-righteous, and even injured air.

The cat-like Steger, who had all the graceful contemplative air of a
prowling Tom, was just the person to deal with her. A more suavely
cunning and opportunistic soul never was. His motto might well have
been, speak softly and step lightly.

"My dear Mrs. Cowperwood," he argued, seated in her modest West
Philadelphia parlor one spring afternoon, "I need not tell you what a
remarkable man your husband is, nor how useless it is to combat him.
Admitting all his faults--and we can agree, if you please, that they
are many"--Mrs. Cowperwood stir