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As Butler drove downtown his huge, slow-moving, in some respects chaotic mind turned over as
rapidly as he could all of the possibilities in connection with this unexpected, sad, and disturbing
revelation. Why had Cowperwood not been satisfied with his wife? Why should he enter into his
(Butler's) home, of all places, to establish a clandestine relationship of this character? Was
Aileen in any way to blame? She was not without mental resources of her own. She must have
known what she was doing. She was a good Catholic, or, at least, had been raised so. All these
years she had been going regularly to confession and communion. True, of late Butler had
noticed that she did not care so much about going to church, would sometimes make excuses
and stay at home on Sundays; but she had gone, as a rule. And now, now--his thoughts would
come to the end of a blind alley, and then he would start back, as it were, mentally, to the center
of things, and begin all over again.
He went up the stairs to his own office slowly. He went in and sat down, and thought and
thought. Ten o'clock came, and eleven. His son bothered him with an occasional matter of
interest, but, finding him moody, finally abandoned him to his own speculations. It was twelve,
and then one, and he was still sitting there thinking, when the presence of Cowperwood was
announced.
Cowperwood, on finding Butler not at home, and not encountering Aileen, had hurried up to the
office of the Edward Butler Contracting Company, which was also the center of some of Butler's
street-railway interests. The floor space controlled by the company was divided into the usual
official compartments, with sections for the bookkeepers, the road-managers, the treasurer, and
so on. Owen Butler, and his father had small but attractively furnished offices in the rear, where
they transacted all the important business of the company.
During this drive, curiously, by reason of one of those strange psychologic intuitions which so
often precede a human difficulty of one sort or another, he had been thinking of Aileen. He was
thinking of the peculiarity of his relationship with her, and of the fact that now he was running to
her father for assistance. As he mounted the stairs he had a peculiar sense of the untoward; but
he could not, in his view of life, give it countenance. One glance at Butler showed him that
something had gone amiss. He was not so friendly; his glance was dark, and there was a
certain sternness to his countenance which had never previously been manifested there in
Cowperwood's memory. He perceived at once that here was something different from a mere
intention to refuse him aid and call his loan. What was it? Aileen? It must be that. Somebody
had suggested something. They had been seen together. Well, even so, nothing could be
proved. Butler would obtain no sign from him. But his loan--that was to be called, surely. And as
for an additional loan, he could see now, before a word had been said, that that thought was
useless.
"I came to see you about that loan of yours, Mr. Butler," he observed, briskly, with an old-time,
jaunty air. You could not have told from his manner or his face that he had observed anything
out of the ordinary.
Butler, who was alone in the room--Owen having gone into an adjoining room--merely stared at
him from under his shaggy brows.
"I'll have to have that money," he said, brusquely, darkly.
An old-time Irish rage suddenly welled up in his bosom as he contemplated this jaunty,
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