known you now for something like fourteen years, and during this time I
have shown you nothing but courtesy and good will. It is true that
quite recently you have done me various financial favors, but that was
more due, I thought, to the sincere friendship you bore me than to
anything else. Quite accidentally I have learned of the relationship
that exists between you and my daughter. I have recently spoken to
her, and she admitted all that I need to know. Common decency, it
seems to me, might have suggested to you that you leave my child out of
the list of women you have degraded. Since it has not, I merely wish
to say to you"--and Mr. Haguenin's face was very tense and white--"that
the relationship between you and me is ended. The one hundred thousand
dollars you have indorsed for me will be arranged for otherwise as soon
as possible, and I hope you will return to me the stock of this paper
that you hold as collateral. Another type of man, Mr. Cowperwood,
might attempt to make you suffer in another way. I presume that you
have no children of your own, or that if you have you lack the parental
instinct; otherwise you could not have injured me in this fashion. I
believe that you will live to see that this policy does not pay in
Chicago or anywhere else."

Haguenin turned slowly on his heel toward his desk. Cowperwood, who
had listened very patiently and very fixedly, without a tremor of an
eyelash, merely said: "There seems to be no common intellectual ground,
Mr. Haguenin, upon which you and I can meet in this matter. You cannot
understand my point of view. I could not possibly adopt yours.
However, as you wish it, the stock will be returned to you upon receipt
of my indorsements. I cannot say more than that."

He turned and walked unconcernedly out, thinking that it was too bad to
lose the support of so respectable a man, but also that he could do
without it. It was silly the way parents insisted on their daughters
being something that they did not wish to be.

Haguenin stood by his desk after Cowperwood had gone, wondering where
he should get one hundred thousand dollars quickly, and also what he
should do to make his daughter see the error of her ways. It was an
astonishing blow he had received, he thought, in the house of a friend.
It occurred to him that Walter Melville Hyssop, who was succeeding
mightily with his two papers, might come to his rescue, and that later
he could repay him when the Press w