here. Haguenin is his name. He owns
that morning paper, the Press, and has a fine house up the street here
a little way. Well, I haven't seen her very often of late, but more
than once I saw him kissing her in this very room. Sure his wife knows
all about it. Depend on it. She had an awful fight with some woman
here onct, so I hear, some woman that he was runnin' with and bringin'
here to the house. I hear it's somethin' terrible the way she beat her
up--screamin' and carryin' on. Oh, they're the divil, these men, when
it comes to the wimmin."

A slight rustling sound from somewhere sent the two gossipers on their
several ways, but Aileen had heard enough to understand. What was she
to do? How was she to learn more of these new women, of whom she had
never heard at all? She at once suspected Florence Cochrane, for she
knew that this servant had worked in the Cochrane family. And then
Cecily Haguenin, the daughter of the editor with whom they were on the
friendliest terms! Cowperwood kissing her! Was there no end to his
liaisons--his infidelity?

She returned, fretting and grieving, to her room, where she meditated
and meditated, wondering whether she should leave him, wondering
whether she should reproach him openly, wondering whether she should
employ more detectives. What good would it do? She had employed
detectives once. Had it prevented the Stephanie Platow incident? Not
at all. Would it prevent other liaisons in the future? Very likely
not. Obviously her home life with Cowperwood was coming to a complete
and disastrous end. Things could not go on in this way. She had done
wrong, possibly, in taking him away from Mrs. Cowperwood number one,
though she could scarcely believe that, for Mrs. Lillian Cowperwood was
so unsuited to him--but this repayment! If she had been at all
superstitious or religious, and had known her Bible, which she didn't,
she might have quoted to herself that very fatalistic statement of the
New Testament, "With what measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you
again."

The truth was that Cowperwood's continued propensity to rove at liberty
among the fair sex could not in the long run fail of some results of an
unsatisfactory character. Coincident with the disappearance of
Stephanie Platow, he launched upon a variety of episodes, the charming
daughter of so worthy a man as Editor Haguenin, his sincerest and most
sympathetic journalistic supporter; and the daughter of Aymar C