“You decided to call it, eh?”
“I have.”
Owen was puzzled by the old man’s angry mood. He wondered what it all meant, but thought he and Cowperwood might have had a few words. He went out to his desk to write a note and call a clerk. Butler went to the window and stared out. He was angry, bitter, brutal in his vein.
“The dirty dog!” he suddenly exclaimed to himself, in a low voice. “I’ll take every dollar he’s got before I’m through with him. I’ll send him to jail, I will. I’ll break him, I will. Wait!”
He clinched his big fists and his teeth.
“I’ll fix him. I’ll show him. The dog! The damned scoundrel!”
Never in his life before had he been so bitter, so cruel, so relentless in his mood.
He walked his office floor thinking what he could do. Question Aileen—that was what he would do. If her face, or her lips, told him that his suspicion was true, he would deal with Cowperwood later. This city treasurer business, now. It was not a crime in so far as Cowperwood was concerned; but it might be made to be.
So now, telling the clerk to say to Owen that he had gone down the street for a few moments, he boarded a street-car and rode out to his home, where he found his elder daughter just getting ready to go out. She wore a purple-velvet street dress edged with narrow, flat gilt braid, and a striking gold-and-purple turban. She had on dainty new boots of bronze kid and long gloves of lavender suede. In her ears was one of her latest affectations, a pair of long jet earrings. The old Irishman realized on this occasion, when he saw her, perhaps more clearly than he ever had in his life, that he had grown a bird of rare plumage.
“Where are you going, daughter?” he asked, with a rather unsuccessful attempt to conceal his fear, distress, and smoldering anger.