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Ishing the situation for the sheer sense of superiority it gave

“Good evening, Mr. Butler,” said Cowperwood, cheerfully, him. “I want to be perfectly frank with you, if you will let when he saw him, extending his hand. “What can I do for you?” me. I may know where your daughter is, and I may not. I

“Ye can take that away from in front of me, for one thing,” may wish to tell you, and I may not. She may not wish me said Butler, grimly referring to his hand. “I have no need of to. But unless you wish to talk with me in a civil way there is it. It’s my daughter I’ve come to talk to ye about, and I want no need of our going on any further. You are privileged to do plain answers. Where is she?”

what you like. Won’t you come up-stairs to my room? We

“You mean Aileen?” said Cowperwood, looking at him with can talk more comfortably there.” steady, curious, unrevealing eyes, and merely interpolating Butler looked at his former protege in utter astonishment.

this to obtain a moment for reflection. “What can I tell you He had never before in all his experience come up against a about her?”

more ruthless type—suave, bland, forceful, unterrified. This

“Ye can tell me where she is, that I know. And ye can make man had certainly come to him as a sheep, and had turned her come back to her home, where she belongs. It was bad out to be a ravening wolf. His incarceration had not put him fortune that ever brought ye across my doorstep; but I’ll not in the least awe.

366

Dreiser

“I’ll not come up to your room,” Butler said, “and ye’ll not once of coming to you and explaining this; but I was quite get out of Philadelphy with her if that’s what ye’re plannin’.

sure you wouldn’t listen to me. Now that you are here I would I can see to that. Ye think ye have the upper hand of me, I like to talk to you. If you will come up to my room I will be see, and ye’re anxious to make something of it. Well, ye’re glad to—otherwise not. Won’t you come up?” not. It wasn’t enough that ye come to me as a beggar, cravin’

Butler saw that Cowperwood had the advantage. He might the help of me, and that I took ye in and helped ye all I as well go up. Otherwise it was plain he would get no infor-could—ye had to steal my daughter from me in the bargain.

mation.

If it wasn’t for the girl’s mother and her sister and her broth-

“Very well,” he said.

ers—dacenter men than ever ye’ll know how to be—I’d brain Cowperwood led the way quite amicably, and, having en-ye where ye stand. Takin’ a young, innocent girl and makin’

tered his private office, closed the door behind him.

an evil woman out of her, and ye a married man! It’s a God’s

“We ought to be able to talk this matter over and reach an blessin’ for ye that it’s me, and not one of me sons, that’s here understanding,” he said again, when they were in the room talkin’ to ye, or ye wouldn’t be alive to say what ye’d do.” and he had closed the door. “I am not as bad as you think, The old man was grim but impotent in his rage.

though I know I appear very bad.” Butler stared at him in

“I’m sorry, Mr. Butler,” replied Cowperwood, quietly. “I’m contempt. “I love your daughter, and she loves me. I know willing to explain, but you won’t let me. I’m not planning to you are asking yourself how I can do this while I am still run away with your daughter, nor to leave Philadelphia. You married; but I assure you I can, and that I do. I am not ought to know me well enough to know that I’m not con-happily married. I had expected, if this panic hadn’t come templating anything of that kind; my interests are too large.

along, to arrange with my wife for a divorce and marry Aileen.

You and I are practical men. We ought to be able to talk this My intentions are perfectly good. The situation which you matter over together and reach an understanding. I thought can complain of, of course, is the one you encountered a few 367

The Financier

weeks ago. It was indiscreet, but it was entirely human. Your get free and restore himself—would certainly—and Aileen daughter does not complain—she understands.” At the men-ought to be glad to marry him if she could under the cir-tion of his daughter in this connection Butler flushed with cumstances. He did not quite grasp the depth of Butler’s rage and shame, but he controlled himself.

religious and moral prejudices.) “Lately,” he went on, “you

“And ye think because she doesn’t complain that it’s all have been doing all you can, as I understand it, to pull me right, do ye?” he asked, sarcastically.

down, on account of Aileen, I suppose; but that is simply

“From my point of view, yes; from yours no. You have one delaying what I want to do.”

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