nately for Aileen, the matter was not to be allowed to rest just
so, for going one afternoon to a reception given by Rhees Crier, a
young sculptor of social proclivities, who had been introduced to her
by Taylor Lord, she was given a taste of what it means to be a
neglected wife from a public point of view. As she entered on this
occasion she happened to overhear two women talking in a corner behind
a screen erected to conceal wraps. "Oh, here comes Mrs. Cowperwood,"
said one. "She's the street-railway magnate's wife. Last winter and
spring he was running with that Platow girl--of the Garrick Players,
you know."

The other nodded, studying Aileen's splendiferous green--velvet gown
with envy.

"I wonder if she's faithful to him?" she queried, while Aileen strained
to hear. "She looks daring enough."

Aileen managed to catch a glimpse of her observers later, when they
were not looking, and her face showed her mingled resentment and
feeling; but it did no good. The wretched gossipers had wounded her in
the keenest way. She was hurt, angry, nonplussed. To think that
Cowperwood by his variability should expose her to such gossip as this!

One day not so long after her conversation with Mrs. Platow, Aileen
happened to be standing outside the door of her own boudoir, the
landing of which commanded the lower hall, and there overheard two of
her servants discussing the Cowperwood menage in particular and Chicago
life in general. One was a tall, angular girl of perhaps twenty-seven
or eight, a chambermaid, the other a short, stout woman of forty who
held the position of assistant housekeeper. They were pretending to
dust, though gossip conducted in a whisper was the matter for which
they were foregathered. The tall girl had recently been employed in
the family of Aymar Cochrane, the former president of the Chicago West
Division Railway, and now a director of the new West Chicago Street
Railway Company.

"And I was that surprised," Aileen heard this girl saying, "to think I
should be coming here. I cud scarcely believe me ears when they told
me. Why, Miss Florence was runnin' out to meet him two and three times
in the week. The wonder to me was that her mother never guessed."

"Och," replied the other, "he's the very divil and all when it comes to
the wimmin." (Aileen did not see the upward lift of the hand that
accompanied this). "There was a little girl that used to come here.
Her father lives up the street