“Oh, I know,” replied Aileen.  “It’s me, just me, that’s all.  If it weren’t for me and what he suspects he’d help you in a minute.  Sometimes, you know, I think I’ve been very bad for you.  I don’t know what I ought to do.  If I thought it would help you any I’d not see you any more for a while, though I don’t see what good that would do now.  Oh, I love you, love you, Frank!  I would do anything for you.  I don’t care what people think or say.  I love you.”

“Oh, you just think you do,” he replied, jestingly.  “You’ll get over it.  There are others.”

“Others!” echoed Aileen, resentfully and contemptuously.  “After you there aren’t any others.  I just want one man, my Frank.  If you ever desert me, I’ll go to hell.  You’ll see.”

“Don’t talk like that, Aileen,” he replied, almost irritated.  “I don’t like to hear you.  You wouldn’t do anything of the sort.  I love you.  You know I’m not going to desert you.  It would pay you to desert me just now.”

“Oh, how you talk!” she exclaimed.  “Desert you!  It’s likely, isn’t it?  But if ever you desert me, I’ll do just what I say.  I swear it.”

“Don’t talk like that.  Don’t talk nonsense.”

“I swear it.  I swear by my love.  I swear by your success—­my own happiness.  I’ll do just what I say.  I’ll go to hell.”

Cowperwood got up.  He was a little afraid now of this deep-seated passion he had aroused.  It was dangerous.  He could not tell where it would lead.

It was a cheerless afternoon in November, when Alderson, duly informed of the presence of Aileen and Cowperwood in the South Sixth Street house by the detective on guard drove rapidly up to Butler’s office and invited him to come with him.  Yet even now Butler could scarcely believe that he was to find his daughter there.  The shame of it.  The horror.  What would he say to her?  How reproach her?  What would he do to Cowperwood?  His large hands shook as he thought.  They drove rapidly to within a few doors of the place, where a second detective on guard across the street approached.  Butler and Alderson descended from the vehicle, and together they approached the door.  It was now almost four-thirty in the afternoon.  In a room within the house, Cowperwood, his coat and vest off, was listening to Aileen’s account of her troubles.

The room in which they were sitting at the time was typical of the rather commonplace idea of luxury which then prevailed.  Most of the “sets” of furniture put on the market for general sale by the furniture companies were, when they approached in any way the correct idea of luxury, imitations of one of the Louis periods.  The curtains were always heavy, frequently brocaded, and not infrequently red.  The carpets were richly flowered in high colors with a thick, velvet nap.  The furniture, of whatever wood it might be made, was almost invariably heavy, floriated, and cumbersome.  This room contained a heavily constructed bed of walnut, with washstand,