discovered except through accident.  When some crude, suggestive fact, such as this letter proved to be, suddenly manifests itself in the placid flow of events, there is great agony or disturbance and clogging of the so-called normal processes.  The siphon does not work right.  It sucks in fear and distress.  There is great grinding of maladjusted parts—­not unlike sand in a machine—­and life, as is so often the case, ceases or goes lamely ever after.

Mrs. Cowperwood was possessed of a conventional mind.  She really knew nothing about life.  And life could not teach her.  Reaction in her from salty thought-processes was not possible.  She was not alive in the sense that Aileen Butler was, and yet she thought that she was very much alive.  All illusion.  She wasn’t.  She was charming if you loved placidity.  If you did not, she was not.  She was not engaging, brilliant, or forceful.  Frank Cowperwood might well have asked himself in the beginning why he married her.  He did not do so now because he did not believe it was wise to question the past as to one’s failures and errors.  It was, according to him, most unwise to regret.  He kept his face and thoughts to the future.

But Mrs. Cowperwood was truly distressed in her way, and she went about the house thinking, feeling wretchedly.  She decided, since the letter asked her to see for herself, to wait.  She must think how she would watch this house, if at all.  Frank must not know.  If it were Aileen Butler by any chance—­but surely not—­she thought she would expose her to her parents.  Still, that meant exposing herself.  She determined to conceal her mood as best she could at dinner-time—­but Cowperwood was not able to be there.  He was so rushed, so closeted with individuals, so closely in conference with his father and others, that she scarcely saw him this Monday night, nor the next day, nor for many days.

For on Tuesday afternoon at two-thirty he issued a call for a meeting of his creditors, and at five-thirty he decided to go into the hands of a receiver.  And yet, as he stood before his principal creditors—­a group of thirty men—­in his office, he did not feel that his life was ruined.  He was temporarily embarrassed.  Certainly things looked very black.  The city-treasurership deal would make a great fuss.  Those hypothecated city loan certificates, to the extent of sixty thousand, would make another, if Stener chose.  Still, he did not feel that he was utterly destroyed.

“Gentlemen,” he said, in closing his address of explanation at the meeting, quite as erect, secure, defiant, convincing as he had ever been, “you see how things are.  These securities are worth just as much as they ever were.  There is nothing the matter with the properties behind them.  If you will give me fifteen days or twenty, I am satisfied that I can straighten the whole matter out.  I am almost the only one who can, for I know all about it.  The market is bound to recover.  Business is going to be better than ever.  It’s time I want.  Time is the only significant factor in this situation.  I want to know if you won’t give me fifteen or twenty days—­a month, if you can.  That is all I want.”