the European trip in some form—­she now suspected the invitation of Mrs. Mollenhauer as a trick; and she had to decide whether she would go.  Would she leave Cowperwood just when he was about to be tried?  She was determined she would not.  She wanted to see what was going to happen to him.  She would leave home first—­run to some relative, some friend, some stranger, if necessary, and ask to be taken in.  She had some money—­a little.  Her father had always been very liberal with her.  She could take a few clothes and disappear.  They would be glad enough to send for her after she had been gone awhile.  Her mother would be frantic; Norah and Callum and Owen would be beside themselves with wonder and worry; her father—­she could see him.  Maybe that would bring him to his senses.  In spite of all her emotional vagaries, she was the pride and interest of this home, and she knew it.

It was in this direction that her mind was running when her father, a few days after the dreadful exposure in the Sixth Street house, sent for her to come to him in his room.  He had come home from his office very early in the afternoon, hoping to find Aileen there, in order that he might have a private interview with her, and by good luck found her in.  She had had no desire to go out into the world these last few days—­she was too expectant of trouble to come.  She had just written Cowperwood asking for a rendezvous out on the Wissahickon the following afternoon, in spite of the detectives.  She must see him.  Her father, she said, had done nothing; but she was sure he would attempt to do something.  She wanted to talk to Cowperwood about that.

“I’ve been thinkin’ about ye, Aileen, and what ought to be done in this case,” began her father without preliminaries of any kind once they were in his “office room” in the house together.  “You’re on the road to ruin if any one ever was.  I tremble when I think of your immortal soul.  I want to do somethin’ for ye, my child, before it’s too late.  I’ve been reproachin’ myself for the last month and more, thinkin’, perhaps, it was somethin’ I had done, or maybe had failed to do, aither me or your mother, that has brought ye to the place where ye are to-day.  Needless to say, it’s on me conscience, me child.  It’s a heartbroken man you’re lookin’ at this day.  I’ll never be able to hold me head up again.  Oh, the shame—­the shame!  That I should have lived to see it!”

“But father,” protested Aileen, who was a little distraught at the thought of having to listen to a long preachment which would relate to her duty to God and the Church and her family and her mother and him.  She realized that all these were important in their way; but Cowperwood and his point of view had given her another outlook on life.  They had discussed this matter of families—­parents, children, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters—­from almost every point of view.  Cowperwood’s laissez-faire attitude had permeated and colored her