So Sister Sempronia had sought to find what Aileen was most interested in, and bribe her therewith.
Being intensely conscious of her father's competence, and vain of her personal superiority, it was not so easy to do.
She had wanted to go home occasionally, though; she had wanted to be allowed to wear the sister's rosary of large beads with its pendent cross of ebony and its silver Christ, and this was held up as a great privilege.
For keeping quiet in class, walking softly, and speaking softly—as much as it was in her to do—for not stealing into other girl's rooms after lights were out, and for abandoning crushes on this and that sympathetic sister, these awards and others, such as walking out in the grounds on Saturday afternoons, being allowed to have all the flowers she wanted, some extra dresses, jewels, etc., were offered.
She liked music and the idea of painting, though she had no talent in that direction; and books, novels, interested her, but she could not get them.
The rest—grammar, spelling, sewing, church and general history—she loathed.
Deportment—well, there was something in that.
She had liked the rather exaggerated curtsies they taught her, and she had often reflected on how she would use them when she reached home.
When she came out into life the little social distinctions which have been indicated began to impress themselves on her, and she wished sincerely that her father would build a better home—a mansion—such as those she saw elsewhere, and launch her properly in society.
Failing in that, she could think of nothing save clothes, jewels, riding-horses, carriages, and the appropriate changes of costume which were allowed her for these.
Her family could not entertain in any distinguished way where they were, and so already, at eighteen, she was beginning to feel the sting of a blighted ambition.
She was eager for life.
How was she to get it?
Her room was a study in the foibles of an eager and ambitious mind. It was full of clothes, beautiful things for all occasions—jewelry—which she had small opportunity to wear—shoes, stockings, lingerie, laces.
In a crude way she had made a study of perfumes and cosmetics, though she needed the latter not at all, and these were present in abundance.
She was not very orderly, and she loved lavishness of display; and her curtains, hangings, table ornaments, and pictures inclined to gorgeousness, which did not go well with the rest of the house.
Aileen always reminded Cowperwood of a high-stepping horse without a check-rein.
He met her at various times, shopping with her mother, out driving with her father, and he was always interested and amused at the affected, bored tone she assumed before him—the
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!
Life is so tiresome, don't you know," when, as a matter of fact, every moment of it was of thrilling interest to her.
Cowperwood took her mental measurement exactly. A girl with a high sense of life in her, romantic, full of the thought of love and its possibilities.
As he looked at her he had the sense of seeing the best that nature can do when she attempts to produce physical perfection.
The thought came to him that some lucky young dog would marry her pretty soon and carry her away; but whoever secured her would have to hold her by affection and subtle flattery and attention if he held her at all.
"The little snip"—she was not at all—"she thinks the sun rises and sets in her father's pocket," Lillian observed one day to her husband.
"To hear her talk, you'd think they were descended from Irish kings.
Her pretended interest in art and music amuses me."
"Oh, don't be too hard on her," coaxed Cowperwood diplomatically. He already liked Aileen very much.
"She plays very well, and she has a good voice."
"Yes, I know; but she has no real refinement.
How could she have?
Look at her father and mother."
"I don't see anything so very much the matter with her," insisted Cowperwood.
"She's bright and good-looking.
Of course, she's only a girl, and a little vain, but she'll come out of that.
She isn't without sense and force, at that."
Aileen, as he knew, was most friendly to him.
She liked him.
She made a point of playing the piano and singing for him in his home, and she sang only when he was there.
There was something about his steady, even gait, his stocky body and handsome head, which attracted her.
In spite of her vanity and egotism, she felt a little overawed before him at times—keyed up.
She seemed to grow gayer and more brilliant in his presence.
The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character.
All individuals are a bundle of contradictions—none more so than the most capable.
In the case of Aileen Butler it would be quite impossible to give an exact definition.
Intelligence, of a raw, crude order she had certainly—also a native force, tamed somewhat by the doctrines and conventions of current society, still showed clear at times in an elemental and not entirely unattractive way.
At this time she was only eighteen years of age—decidedly attractive from the point of view of a man of Frank Cowperwood's temperament.
She supplied something he had not previously known or consciously craved. Vitality and vivacity.
No other woman or girl whom he had ever known had possessed so much innate force as she.
Her red-gold hair—not so red as decidedly golden with a suggestion of red in it—looped itself in heavy folds about her forehead and sagged at the base of her neck.
She had a beautiful nose, not sensitive, but straight-cut with small nostril openings, and eyes that were big and yet noticeably sensuous.