And in her room Lillian Cowperwood turned and tossed in the face of this new calamity.  For it had suddenly appeared from news from her father and Frank and Anna and her mother-in-law that Frank was about to fail, or would, or had—­it was almost impossible to say just how it was.  Frank was too busy to explain.  The Chicago fire was to blame.  There was no mention as yet of the city treasurership.  Frank was caught in a trap, and was fighting for his life.

In this crisis, for the moment, she forgot about the note as to his infidelity, or rather ignored it.  She was astonished, frightened, dumbfounded, confused.  Her little, placid, beautiful world was going around in a dizzy ring.  The charming, ornate ship of their fortune was being blown most ruthlessly here and there.  She felt it a sort of duty to stay in bed and try to sleep; but her eyes were quite wide, and her brain hurt her.  Hours before Frank had insisted that she should not bother about him, that she could do nothing; and she had left him, wondering more than ever what and where was the line of her duty.  To stick by her husband, convention told her; and so she decided.  Yes, religion dictated that, also custom.  There were the children.  They must not be injured.  Frank must be reclaimed, if possible.  He would get over this.  But what a blow!

Chapter XXXI

The suspension of the banking house of Frank A. Cowperwood & Co. created a great stir on ’change and in Philadelphia generally.  It was so unexpected, and the amount involved was comparatively so large.  Actually he failed for one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and his assets, under the depressed condition of stock values, barely totaled seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  There had been considerable work done on the matter of his balance-sheet before it was finally given to the public; but when it was, stocks dropped an additional three points generally, and the papers the next day devoted notable headlines to it.  Cowperwood had no idea of failing permanently; he merely wished to suspend temporarily, and later, if possible, to persuade his creditors to allow him to resume.  There were only two things which stood in the way of this:  the matter of the five hundred thousand dollars borrowed from the city treasury at a ridiculously low rate of interest, which showed plainer than words what had been going on, and the other, the matter of the sixty-thousand-dollar check.  His financial wit had told him there were ways to assign his holdings in favor of his largest creditors, which would tend to help him later to resume; and he had been swift to act.  Indeed, Harper Steger had drawn up documents which named Jay Cooke & Co., Edward Clark & Co., Drexel & Co., and others as preferred.  He knew that even though dissatisfied holders of smaller shares in his company brought suit and compelled readjustment or bankruptcy later, the intention shown to prefer some of his most influential aids was important.  They would like it, and might help him later when all this was over.  Besides, suits in plenty are an excellent way of tiding over a crisis of this kind until stocks and common sense are restored, and he was for many suits.  Harper Steger smiled once rather grimly, even in the whirl of the financial chaos where smiles were few, as they were figuring it out.