r, swelling; at the
next a pathetic realization of her own altered position. 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
Buildin