“I’ll have them to dinner sometime,” she agreed cheerfully and helpfully, “and I’ll stop and take Mrs. Butler driving if she’ll go, or she can take me.”

She had already learned that the Butlers were rather showy—­the younger generation—­that they were sensitive as to their lineage, and that money in their estimation was supposed to make up for any deficiency in any other respect.  “Butler himself is a very presentable man,” Cowperwood had once remarked to her, “but Mrs. Butler—­well, she’s all right, but she’s a little commonplace.  She’s a fine woman, though, I think, good-natured and good-hearted.”  He cautioned her not to overlook Aileen and Norah, because the Butlers, mother and father, were very proud of them.

Mrs. Cowperwood at this time was thirty-two years old; Cowperwood twenty-seven.  The birth and care of two children had made some difference in her looks.  She was no longer as softly pleasing, more angular.  Her face was hollow-cheeked, like so many of Rossetti’s and Burne-Jones’s women.  Her health was really not as good as it had been—­the care of two children and a late undiagnosed tendency toward gastritis having reduced her.  In short she was a little run down nervously and suffered from fits of depression.  Cowperwood had noticed this.  He tried to be gentle and considerate, but he was too much of a utilitarian and practical-minded observer not to realize that he was likely to have a sickly wife on his hands later.  Sympathy and affection were great things, but desire and charm must endure or one was compelled to be sadly conscious of their loss.  So often now he saw young girls who were quite in his mood, and who were exceedingly robust and joyous.  It was fine, advisable, practical, to adhere to the virtues as laid down in the current social lexicon, but if you had a sickly wife—­And anyhow, was a man entitled to only one wife?  Must he never look at another woman?  Supposing he found some one?  He pondered those things between hours of labor, and concluded that it did not make so much difference.  If a man could, and not be exposed, it was all right.  He had to be careful, though.  Tonight, as he sat on the side of his wife’s bed, he was thinking somewhat of this, for he had seen Aileen Butler again, playing and singing at her piano as he passed the parlor door.  She was like a bright bird radiating health and enthusiasm—­a reminder of youth in general.

“It’s a strange world,” he thought; but his thoughts were his own, and he didn’t propose to tell any one about them.

The bond issue, when it came, was a curious compromise; for, although it netted him his twenty thousand dollars and more and served to introduce him to the financial notice of Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania, it did not permit him to manipulate the subscriptions as he had planned.  The State treasurer was seen by him at the office of a local lawyer of great repute, where he worked when in the city.  He was gracious