Her ox, God wot, was the one that was being gored.
What if he should find some one whom he could want more than he did her?
Dear heaven, how terrible that would be!
What would she do? she asked herself, thoughtfully.
She lapsed into the blues one afternoon—almost cried—she could scarcely say why.
Another time she thought of all the terrible things she would do, how difficult she would make it for any other woman who invaded her preserves.
However, she was not sure.
Would she declare war if she discovered another?
She knew she would eventually; and yet she knew, too, that if she did, and Cowperwood were set in his passion, thoroughly alienated, it would do no good.
It would be terrible, but what could she do to win him back?
That was the issue.
Once warned, however, by her suspicious questioning, Cowperwood was more mechanically attentive than ever.
He did his best to conceal his altered mood—his enthusiasms for Mrs. Sohlberg, his interest in Antoinette Nowak—and this helped somewhat.
But finally there was a detectable change.
Aileen noticed it first after they had been back from Europe nearly a year.
At this time she was still interested in Sohlberg, but in a harmlessly flirtatious way.
She thought he might be interesting physically, but would he be as delightful as Cowperwood?
Never!
When she felt that Cowperwood himself might be changing she pulled herself up at once, and when Antoinette appeared—the carriage incident—Sohlberg lost his, at best, unstable charm.
She began to meditate on what a terrible thing it would be to lose Cowperwood, seeing that she had failed to establish herself socially.
Perhaps that had something to do with his defection.
No doubt it had.
Yet she could not believe, after all his protestations of affection in Philadelphia, after all her devotion to him in those dark days of his degradation and punishment, that he would really turn on her.
No, he might stray momentarily, but if she protested enough, made a scene, perhaps, he would not feel so free to injure her—he would remember and be loving and devoted again.
After seeing him, or imagining she had seen him, in the carriage, she thought at first that she would question him, but later decided that she would wait and watch more closely.
Perhaps he was beginning to run around with other women.
There was safety in numbers—that she knew.
Her heart, her pride, was hurt, but not broken.
Chapter XVIII. The Clash
The peculiar personality of Rita Sohlberg was such that by her very action she ordinarily allayed suspicion, or rather distracted it.
Although a novice, she had a strange ease, courage, or balance of soul which kept her whole and self-possessed under the most trying of circumstances.
She might have been overtaken in the most compromising of positions, but her manner would always have indicated ease, a sense of innocence, nothing unusual, for she had no sense of moral degradation in this matter—no troublesome emotion as to what was to flow from a relationship of this kind, no worry as to her own soul, sin, social opinion, or the like.
She was really interested in art and life—a pagan, in fact.
Some people are thus hardily equipped.
It is the most notable attribute of the hardier type of personalities—not necessarily the most brilliant or successful.
You might have said that her soul was naively unconscious of the agony of others in loss.
She would have taken any loss to herself with an amazing equableness—some qualms, of course, but not many—because her vanity and sense of charm would have made her look forward to something better or as good.
She had called on Aileen quite regularly in the past, with or without Harold, and had frequently driven with the Cowperwoods or joined them at the theater or elsewhere.
She had decided, after becoming intimate with Cowperwood, to study art again, which was a charming blind, for it called for attendance at afternoon or evening classes which she frequently skipped.
Besides, since Harold had more money he was becoming gayer, more reckless and enthusiastic over women, and Cowperwood deliberately advised her to encourage him in some liaison which, in case exposure should subsequently come to them, would effectually tie his hands.
“Let him get in some affair,” Cowperwood told Rita.
“We’ll put detectives on his trail and get evidence.
He won’t have a word to say.”
“We don’t really need to do that,” she protested sweetly, naively. “He’s been in enough scrapes as it is.
He’s given me some of the letters—” (she pronounced it “lettahs”)—“written him.”
“But we’ll need actual witnesses if we ever need anything at all.
Just tell me when he’s in love again, and I’ll do the rest.”
“You know I think,” she drawled, amusingly, “that he is now.
I saw him on the street the other day with one of his students—rather a pretty girl, too.”
Cowperwood was pleased.