It chanced that shortly before this liaison was broken off, some troubling information was quite innocently conveyed to Aileen by Stephanie Platow's own mother. One day Mrs. Platow, in calling on Mrs. Cowperwood, commented on the fact that Stephanie was gradually improving in her art, that the Garrick Players had experienced a great deal of trouble, and that Stephanie was shortly to appear in a new role--something Chinese.
"That was such a charming set of jade you gave her," she volunteered, genially. "I only saw it the other day for the first time. She never told me about it before. She prizes it so very highly, that I feel as though I ought to thank you myself."
Aileen opened her eyes. "Jade!" she observed, curiously. "Why, I don't remember." Recalling Cowperwood's proclivities on the instant, she was suspicious, distraught. Her face showed her perplexity.
"Why, yes," replied Mrs. Platow, Aileen's show of surprise troubling her. "The ear-rings and necklet, you know. She said you gave them to her."
"To be sure," answered Aileen, catching herself as by a hair. "I do recall it now. But it was Frank who really gave them. I hope she likes them."
She smiled sweetly.
"She thinks they're beautiful, and they do become her," continued Mrs. Platow, pleasantly, understanding it all, as she fancied.
The truth was that Stephanie, having forgotten, had left her make-up box open one day at home, and her mother, rummaging in her room for something, had discovered them and genially confronted her with them, for she knew the value of jade. Nonplussed for the moment, Stephanie had lost her mental, though not her outward, composure and referred them back casually to an evening at the Cowperwood home when Aileen had been present and the gauds had been genially forced upon her.
Unfortunately for Aileen, the matter was not to be allowed to rest just so, for going one afternoon to a reception given by Rhees Crier, a young sculptor of social proclivities, who had been introduced to her by Taylor Lord, she was given a taste of what it means to be a neglected wife from a public point of view. As she entered on this occasion she happened to overhear two women talking in a corner behind a screen erected to conceal wraps.
"Oh, here comes Mrs. Cowperwood," said one. "She's the street-railway magnate's wife. Last winter and spring he was running with that Platow girl--of the Garrick Players, you know."
The other nodded, studying Aileen's splendiferous green--velvet gown with envy.
"I wonder if she's faithful to him?" she queried, while Aileen strained to hear. "She looks daring enough."
Aileen managed to catch a glimpse of her observers later, when they were not looking, and her face showed her mingled resentment and feeling; but it did no good. The wretched gossipers had wounded her in the keenest way. She was hurt, angry, nonplussed. To think that Cowperwood by his variability should expose her to such gossip as this!
One day not so long after her conversation with Mrs. Platow, Aileen happened to be standing outside the door of her own boudoir, the landing of which commanded the lower hall, and there overheard two of her servants discussing the Cowperwood menage in particular and Chicago life in general. One was a tall, angular girl of perhaps twenty-seven or eight, a chambermaid, the other a short, stout woman of forty who held the position of assistant housekeeper.
They were pretending to dust, though gossip conducted in a whisper was the matter for which they were foregathered. The tall girl had recently been employed in the family of Aymar Cochrane, the former president of the Chicago West Division Railway, and now a director of the new West Chicago Street Railway Company.
"And I was that surprised," Aileen heard this girl saying, "to think I should be coming here. I cud scarcely believe me ears when they told me. Why, Miss Florence was runnin' out to meet him two and three times in the week. The wonder to me was that her mother never guessed."
Och," replied the other, "he's the very divil and all when it comes to the wimmin." (Aileen did not see the upward lift of the hand that accompanied this). "There was a little girl that used to come here. Her father lives up the street here. Haguenin is his name. He owns that morning paper, the Press, and has a fine house up the street here a little way. Well, I haven't seen her very often of late, but more than once I saw him kissing her in this very room. Sure his wife knows all about it. Depend on it. She had an awful fight with some woman here onct, so I hear, some woman that he was runnin' with and bringin' here to the house. I hear it's somethin' terrible the way she beat her up--screamin' and carryin' on. Oh, they're the divil, these men, when it comes to the wimmin."
A slight rustling sound from somewhere sent the two gossipers on their several ways, but Aileen had heard enough to understand.
What was she to do? How was she to learn more of these new women, of whom she had never heard at all? She at once suspected Florence Cochrane, for she knew that this servant had worked in the Cochrane family. And then Cecily Haguenin, the daughter of the editor with whom they were on the friendliest terms! Cowperwood kissing her!
Was there no end to his liaisons--his infidelity?
