she was making much of a situation
that ought to be handled with a light hand, answered readily: "Very
well--Tuesday! Only call me up before. I may have to change my mind or
the time." And she smiled good-naturedly.

After this Lynde had no opportunity to talk to Aileen privately; but in
saying good night he ventured to press her arm suggestively. She
suffered a peculiar nervous thrill from this, but decided curiously
that she had brought it upon herself by her eagerness for life and
revenge, and must make up her mind. Did she or did she not wish to go
on with this? This was the question uppermost, and she felt that she
must decide. However, as in most such cases, circumstances were to
help decide for her, and, unquestionably, a portion of this truth was
in her mind as she was shown gallantly to her door by Taylor Lord.

Chapter XXXIII

Mr. Lynde to the Rescue

The interested appearance of a man like Polk Lynde at this stage of
Aileen's affairs was a bit of fortuitous or gratuitous humor on the
part of fate, which is involved with that subconscious chemistry of
things of which as yet we know nothing. Here was Aileen brooding over
her fate, meditating over her wrongs, as it were; and here was Polk
Lynde, an interesting, forceful Lothario of the city, who was perhaps
as well suited to her moods and her tastes at this time as any male
outside of Cowperwood could be.

In many respects Lynde was a charming man. He was comparatively
young--not more than Aileen's own age--schooled, if not educated, at
one of the best American colleges, of excellent taste in the matter of
clothes, friends, and the details of living with which he chose to
surround himself, but at heart a rake. He loved, and had from his
youth up, to gamble. He was in one phase of the word a HARD and yet by
no means a self-destructive drinker, for he had an iron constitution
and could consume spirituous waters with the minimum of ill effect. He
had what Gibbon was wont to call "the most amiable of our vices," a
passion for women, and he cared no more for the cool, patient, almost
penitent methods by which his father had built up the immense reaper
business, of which he was supposedly the heir, than he cared for the
mysteries or sacred rights of the Chaldees. He realized that the
business itself was a splendid thing. He liked on occasion to think of
it with all its extent of ground-space, plain red-brick buildings, tall
stacks and yelling