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now surely tending to become real enough. Still, his children were pleasing to him; his home
beautiful. Lillian, phlegmatic and now thin, was still not homely. All these years he had found her
satisfactory enough; but now his dissatisfaction with her began to increase. She was not like
Aileen--not young, not vivid, not as unschooled in the commonplaces of life. And while
ordinarily, he was not one who was inclined to be querulous, still now on occasion, he could be.
He began by asking questions concerning his wife's appearance--irritating little whys which are
so trivial and yet so exasperating and discouraging to a woman. Why didn't she get a mauve hat
nearer the shade of her dress? Why didn't she go out more? Exercise would do her good. Why
didn't she do this, and why didn't she do that? He scarcely noticed that he was doing this; but
she did, and she felt the undertone--the real significance--and took umbrage.
"Oh, why--why?" she retorted, one day, curtly. "Why do you ask so many questions? You don't
care so much for me any more; that's why. I can tell."
He leaned back startled by the thrust. It had not been based on any evidence of anything save
his recent remarks; but he was not absolutely sure. He was just the least bit sorry that he had
irritated her, and he said so.
"Oh, it's all right," she replied. "I don't care. But I notice that you don't pay as much attention to
me as you used to. It's your business now, first, last, and all the time. You can't get your mind
off of that."
He breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't suspect, then.
But after a little time, as he grew more and more in sympathy with Aileen, he was not so
disturbed as to whether his wife might suspect or not. He began to think on occasion, as his
mind followed the various ramifications of the situation, that it would be better if she did. She
was really not of the contentious fighting sort. He now decided because of various calculations
in regard to her character that she might not offer as much resistance to some ultimate
rearrangement, as he had originally imagined. She might even divorce him. Desire, dreams,
even in him were evoking calculations not as sound as those which ordinarily generated in his
brain.
No, as he now said to himself, the rub was not nearly so much in his own home, as it was in the
Butler family. His relations with Edward Malia Butler had become very intimate. He was now
advising with him constantly in regard to the handling of his securities, which were numerous.
Butler held stocks in such things as the Pennsylvania Coal Company, the Delaware and Hudson
Canal, the Morris and Essex Canal, the Reading Railroad. As the old gentleman's mind had
broadened to the significance of the local street-railway problem in Philadelphia, he had decided
to close out his other securities at such advantageous terms as he could, and reinvest the
money in local lines. He knew that Mollenhauer and Simpson were doing this, and they were
excellent judges of the significance of local affairs. Like Cowperwood, he had the idea that if he
controlled sufficient of the local situation in this field, he could at last effect a joint relationship
with Mollenhauer and Simpson. Political legislation, advantageous to the combined lines, could
then be so easily secured. Franchises and necessary extensions to existing franchises could be
added. This conversion of his outstanding stock in other fields, and the picking up of odd lots in
the local street-railway, was the business of Cowperwood. Butler, through his sons, Owen and
Callum, was also busy planning a new line and obtaining a franchise, sacrificing, of course,
great blocks of stock and actual cash to others, in order to obtain sufficient influence to have the
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