Under the circumstances he would almost have been willing—not quite—for Aileen to succumb to Sohlberg in order to entrap her and make his situation secure.
Yet he really did not wish it in the last analysis—would have been grieved temporarily if she had deserted him.
However, in the case of Sohlberg, detectives were employed, the new affair with the flighty pupil was unearthed and sworn to by witnesses, and this, combined with the “lettahs” held by Rita, constituted ample material wherewith to “hush up” the musician if ever he became unduly obstreperous.
So Cowperwood and Rita’s state was quite comfortable.
But Aileen, meditating over Antoinette Nowak, was beside herself with curiosity, doubt, worry.
She did not want to injure Cowperwood in any way after his bitter Philadelphia experience, and yet when she thought of his deserting her in this way she fell into a great rage.
Her vanity, as much as her love, was hurt.
What could she do to justify or set at rest her suspicions?
Watch him personally?
She was too dignified and vain to lurk about street-corners or offices or hotels.
Never!
Start a quarrel without additional evidence—that would be silly.
He was too shrewd to give her further evidence once she spoke. He would merely deny it.
She brooded irritably, recalling after a time, and with an aching heart, that her father had put detectives on her track once ten years before, and had actually discovered her relations with Cowperwood and their rendezvous.
Bitter as that memory was—torturing—yet now the same means seemed not too abhorrent to employ under the circumstances.
No harm had come to Cowperwood in the former instance, she reasoned to herself—no especial harm—from that discovery (this was not true), and none would come to him now. (This also was not true.) But one must forgive a fiery, passionate soul, wounded to the quick, some errors of judgment.
Her thought was that she would first be sure just what it was her beloved was doing, and then decide what course to take.
But she knew that she was treading on dangerous ground, and mentally she recoiled from the consequences which might follow.
He might leave her if she fought him too bitterly. He might treat her as he had treated his first wife, Lillian.
She studied her liege lord curiously these days, wondering if it were true that he had deserted her already, as he had deserted his first wife thirteen years before, wondering if he could really take up with a girl as common as Antoinette Nowak—wondering, wondering, wondering—half afraid and yet courageous.
What could be done with him?
If only he still loved her all would be well yet—but oh!
The detective agency to which she finally applied, after weeks of soul-racking suspense, was one of those disturbingly human implements which many are not opposed to using on occasion, when it is the only means of solving a troublous problem of wounded feelings or jeopardized interests.
Aileen, being obviously rich, was forthwith shamefully overcharged; but the services agreed upon were well performed.
To her amazement, chagrin, and distress, after a few weeks of observation Cowperwood was reported to have affairs not only with Antoinette Nowak, whom she did suspect, but also with Mrs. Sohlberg.
And these two affairs at one and the same time.
For the moment it left Aileen actually stunned and breathless.
The significance of Rita Sohlberg to her in this hour was greater than that of any woman before or after.
Of all living things, women dread women most of all, and of all women the clever and beautiful.
Rita Sohlberg had been growing on Aileen as a personage, for she had obviously been prospering during this past year, and her beauty had been amazingly enhanced thereby.
Once Aileen had encountered Rita in a light trap on the Avenue, very handsome and very new, and she had commented on it to Cowperwood, whose reply had been:
“Her father must be making some money.
Sohlberg could never earn it for her.”
Aileen sympathized with Harold because of his temperament, but she knew that what Cowperwood said was true.
Another time, at a box-party at the theater, she had noted the rich elaborateness of Mrs. Sohlberg’s dainty frock, the endless pleatings of pale silk, the startling charm of the needlework and the ribbons—countless, rosetted, small—that meant hard work on the part of some one.
“How lovely this is,” she had commented.
“Yes,” Rita had replied, airily;
“I thought, don’t you know, my dressmaker would never get done working on it.”
It had cost, all told, two hundred and twenty dollars, and Cowperwood had gladly paid the bill.
Aileen went home at the time thinking of Rita’s taste and of how well she had harmonized her materials to her personality.
She was truly charming.
Now, however, when it appeared that the same charm that had appealed to her had appealed to Cowperwood, she conceived an angry, animal opposition to it all.
Rita Sohlberg! Ha!
A lot of satisfaction she’d get knowing as she would soon, that Cowperwood was sharing his affection for her with Antoinette Nowak—a mere stenographer.
And a lot of satisfaction Antoinette would get—the cheap upstart—when she learned, as she would, that Cowperwood loved her so lightly that he would take an apartment for Rita Sohlberg and let a cheap hotel or an assignation-house do for her.
But in spite of this savage exultation her thoughts kept coming back to herself, to her own predicament, to torture and destroy her.
Cowperwood, the liar!
Cowperwood, the pretender!
Cowperwood, the sneak!
At one moment she conceived a kind of horror of the man because of all his protestations to her; at the next a rage—bitter, swelling; at the next a pathetic realization of her own altered position.