As time went on Butler grew more and more puzzled and restive as to his duty in regard to his daughter.  He was sure by her furtive manner and her apparent desire to avoid him, that she was still in touch with Cowperwood in some way, and that this would bring about a social disaster of some kind.  He thought once of going to Mrs. Cowperwood and having her bring pressure to bear on her husband, but afterwards he decided that that would not do.  He was not really positive as yet that Aileen was secretly meeting Cowperwood, and, besides, Mrs. Cowperwood might not know of her husband’s duplicity.  He thought also of going to Cowperwood personally and threatening him, but that would be a severe measure, and again, as in the other case, he lacked proof.  He hesitated to appeal to a detective agency, and he did not care to take the other members of the family into his confidence.  He did go out and scan the neighborhood of 931 North Tenth Street once, looking at the house; but that helped him little.  The place was for rent, Cowperwood having already abandoned his connection with it.

Finally he hit upon the plan of having Aileen invited to go somewhere some distance off—­Boston or New Orleans, where a sister of his wife lived.  It was a delicate matter to engineer, and in such matters he was not exactly the soul of tact; but he undertook it.  He wrote personally to his wife’s sister at New Orleans, and asked her if she would, without indicating in any way that she had heard from him, write his wife and ask if she would not permit Aileen to come and visit her, writing Aileen an invitation at the same time; but he tore the letter up.  A little later he learned accidentally that Mrs. Mollenhauer and her three daughters, Caroline, Felicia, and Alta, were going to Europe early in December to visit Paris, the Riviera, and Rome; and he decided to ask Mollenhauer to persuade his wife to invite Norah and Aileen, or Aileen only, to go along, giving as an excuse that his own wife would not leave him, and that the girls ought to go.  It would be a fine way of disposing of Aileen for the present.  The party was to be gone six months.  Mollenhauer was glad to do so, of course.  The two families were fairly intimate.  Mrs. Mollenhauer was willing—­delighted from a politic point of view—­and the invitation was extended.  Norah was overjoyed.  She wanted to see something of Europe, and had always been hoping for some such opportunity.  Aileen was pleased from the point of view that Mrs. Mollenhauer should invite her.  Years before she would have accepted in a flash.  But now she felt that it only came as a puzzling interruption, one more of the minor difficulties that were tending to interrupt her relations with Cowperwood.  She immediately threw cold water on the proposition, which was made one evening at dinner by Mrs. Butler, who did not know of her husband’s share in the matter, but had received a call that afternoon from Mrs. Mollenhauer, when the invitation had been extended.