d a few weeks ago. It was indiscreet, but it was
entirely human. Your daughter does not complain--she understands." At
the mention of his daughter in this connection Butler flushed with rage
and shame, but he controlled himself.

"And ye think because she doesn't complain that it's all right, do ye?"
he asked, sarcastically.

"From my point of view, yes; from yours no. You have one view of life,
Mr. Butler, and I have another."

"Ye're right there," put in Butler, "for once, anyhow."

"That doesn't prove that either of us is right or wrong. In my judgment
the present end justifies the means. The end I have in view is to marry
Aileen. If I can possibly pull myself out of this financial scrape that
I am in I will do so. Of course, I would like to have your consent
for that--so would Aileen; but if we can't, we can't." (Cowperwood was
thinking that while this might not have a very soothing effect on the
old contractor's point of view, nevertheless it must make some appeal to
his sense of the possible or necessary. Aileen's present situation
was quite unsatisfactory without marriage in view. And even if he,
Cowperwood, was a convicted embezzler in the eyes of the public, that
did not make him so. He might get free and restore himself--would
certainly--and Aileen ought to be glad to marry him if she could
under the circumstances. He did not quite grasp the depth of Butler's
religious and moral prejudices.) "Lately," he went on, "you have been
doing all you can, as I understand it, to pull me down, on account of
Aileen, I suppose; but that is simply delaying what I want to do."

"Ye'd like me to help ye do that, I suppose?" suggested Butler, with
infinite disgust and patience.

"I want to marry Aileen," Cowperwood repeated, for emphasis' sake. "She
wants to marry me. Under the circumstances, however you may feel, you
can have no real objection to my doing that, I am sure; yet you go on
fighting me--making it hard for me to do what you really know ought to
be done."

"Ye're a scoundrel," said Butler, seeing through his motives quite
clearly. "Ye're a sharper, to my way of thinkin', and it's no child of
mine I want connected with ye. I'm not sayin', seein' that things are
as they are, that if ye were a free man it wouldn't be better that she
should marry ye. It's the one dacent thing ye could do--if ye would,
which I doubt. But that's nayther here nor there now. What can ye want
with her hid away somewhere? Ye can't mar