Say what one will, to take the love of a man like Cowperwood away from a woman like Aileen was to leave her high and dry on land, as a fish out of its native element, to take all the wind out of her sails—almost to kill her.
Whatever position she had once thought to hold through him, was now jeopardized. Whatever joy or glory she had had in being Mrs. Frank Algernon Cowperwood, it was now tarnished. She sat in her room, this same day after the detectives had given their report, a tired look in her eyes, the first set lines her pretty mouth had ever known showing about it, her past and her future whirling painfully and nebulously in her brain.
Suddenly she got up, and, seeing Cowperwood’s picture on her dresser, his still impressive eyes contemplating her, she seized it and threw it on the floor, stamping on his handsome face with her pretty foot, and raging at him in her heart.
The dog!
The brute!
Her brain was full of the thought of Rita’s white arms about him, of his lips to hers.
The spectacle of Rita’s fluffy gowns, her enticing costumes, was in her eyes.
Rita should not have him; she should not have anything connected with him, nor, for that matter, Antoinette Nowak, either—the wretched upstart, the hireling.
To think he should stoop to an office stenographer!
Once on that thought, she decided that he should not be allowed to have a woman as an assistant any more.
He owed it to her to love her after all she had done for him, the coward, and to let other women alone.
Her brain whirled with strange thoughts.
She was really not sane in her present state.
She was so wrought up by her prospective loss that she could only think of rash, impossible, destructive things to do.
She dressed swiftly, feverishly, and, calling a closed carriage from the coach-house, ordered herself to be driven to the New Arts Building.
She would show this rosy cat of a woman, this smiling piece of impertinence, this she-devil, whether she would lure Cowperwood away.
She meditated as she rode.
She would not sit back and be robbed as Mrs. Cowperwood had been by her.
Never!
He could not treat her that way.
She would die first!
She would kill Rita Sohlberg and Antoinette Nowak and Cowperwood and herself first.
She would prefer to die that way rather than lose his love.
Oh yes, a thousand times!
Fortunately, Rita Sohlberg was not at the New Arts Building, or Sohlberg, either.
They had gone to a reception.
Nor was she at the apartment on the North Side, where, under the name of Jacobs, as Aileen had been informed by the detectives, she and Cowperwood kept occasional tryst.
Aileen hesitated for a moment, feeling it useless to wait, then she ordered the coachman to drive to her husband’s office.
It was now nearly five o’clock.
Antoinette and Cowperwood had both gone, but she did not know it.
She changed her mind, however, before she reached the office—for it was Rita Sohlberg she wished to reach first—and ordered her coachman to drive back to the Sohlberg studio.
But still they had not returned.
In a kind of aimless rage she went home, wondering how she should reach Rita Sohlberg first and alone.
Then, to her savage delight, the game walked into her bag.
The Sohlbergs, returning home at six o’clock from some reception farther out Michigan Avenue, had stopped, at the wish of Harold, merely to pass the time of day with Mrs. Cowperwood.
Rita was exquisite in a pale-blue and lavender concoction, with silver braid worked in here and there.
Her gloves and shoes were pungent bits of romance, her hat a dream of graceful lines.
At the sight of her, Aileen, who was still in the hall and had opened the door herself, fairly burned to seize her by the throat and strike her; but she restrained herself sufficiently to say,
“Come in.”
She still had sense enough and self-possession enough to conceal her wrath and to close the door.
Beside his wife Harold was standing, offensively smug and inefficient in the fashionable frock-coat and silk hat of the time, a restraining influence as yet.
He was bowing and smiling:
“Oh.” This sound was neither an “oh” nor an “ah,” but a kind of Danish inflected “awe,” which was usually not unpleasing to hear.
“How are you, once more, Meeses Cowperwood?
It eez sudge a pleasure to see you again—awe.”
“Won’t you two just go in the reception-room a moment,” said Aileen, almost hoarsely.
“I’ll be right in. I want to get something.”
Then, as an afterthought, she called very sweetly: “Oh, Mrs. Sohlberg, won’t you come up to my room for a moment?
I have something I want to show you.”
Rita responded promptly.