At the same time, her father’s local reputation as a quondam garbage contractor ("slop-collector” was the unfeeling comment of the vulgarian cognoscenti); her own unavailing efforts to right a condition of material vulgarity or artistic anarchy in her own home; the hopelessness of ever being admitted to those distinguished portals which she recognized afar off as the last sanctum sanctorum of established respectability and social distinction, had bred in her, even at this early age, a feeling of deadly opposition to her home conditions as they stood.  Such a house compared to Cowperwood’s!  Her dear, but ignorant, father!  And this great man, her lover, had now condescended to love her—­see in her his future wife.  Oh, God, that it might not fail!  Through the Cowperwoods at first she had hoped to meet a few people, young men and women—­and particularly men—­who were above the station in which she found herself, and to whom her beauty and prospective fortune would commend her; but this had not been the case.  The Cowperwoods themselves, in spite of Frank Cowperwood’s artistic proclivities and growing wealth, had not penetrated the inner circle as yet.  In fact, aside from the subtle, preliminary consideration which they were receiving, they were a long way off.

None the less, and instinctively in Cowperwood Aileen recognized a way out—­a door—­and by the same token a subtle, impending artistic future of great magnificence.  This man would rise beyond anything he now dreamed of—­she felt it.  There was in him, in some nebulous, unrecognizable form, a great artistic reality which was finer than anything she could plan for herself.  She wanted luxury, magnificence, social station.  Well, if she could get this man they would come to her.  There were, apparently, insuperable barriers in the way; but hers was no weakling nature, and neither was his.  They ran together temperamentally from the first like two leopards.  Her own thoughts—­crude, half formulated, half spoken—­nevertheless matched his to a degree in the equality of their force and their raw directness.

“I don’t think papa knows how to do,” she said to him, one day.  “It isn’t his fault.  He can’t help it.  He knows that he can’t.  And he knows that I know it.  For years I wanted him to move out of that old house there.  He knows that he ought to.  But even that wouldn’t do much good.”

She paused, looking at him with a straight, clear, vigorous glance.  He liked the medallion sharpness of her features—­their smooth, Greek modeling.

“Never mind, pet,” he replied.  “We will arrange all these things later.  I don’t see my way out of this just now; but I think the best thing to do is to confess to Lillian some day, and see if some other plan can’t be arranged.  I want to fix it so the children won’t suffer.  I can provide for them amply, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Lillian would be willing to let me go.  She certainly wouldn’t want any publicity.”