Old Butler looked at her narrowly, solemnly. He was not deceived to any extent by her bravado. If she were really innocent, he knew she would have jumped to her feet in her defiant way. Protest would have been written all over her. As it was, she only stared haughtily. He read through her eager defiance to the guilty truth.
“How do ye know, daughter, that I haven’t had the house watched?” he said, quizzically. “How do ye know that ye haven’t been seen goin’ in there?”
Only Aileen’s solemn promise to her lover could have saved her from this subtle thrust. As it was, she paled nervously; but she saw Frank Cowperwood, solemn and distinguished, asking her what she would say if she were caught.
“It’s a lie!” she said, catching her breath. “I wasn’t at any house at that number, and no one saw me going in there. How can you ask me that, father?”
In spite of his mixed feelings of uncertainty and yet unshakable belief that his daughter was guilty, he could not help admiring her courage—she was so defiant, as she sat there, so set in her determination to lie and thus defend herself. Her beauty helped her in his mood, raised her in his esteem. After all, what could you do with a woman of this kind? She was not a ten-year-old girl any more, as in a way he sometimes continued to fancy her.
“Ye oughtn’t to say that if it isn’t true, Aileen,” he said. “Ye oughtn’t to lie. It’s against your faith. Why would anybody write a letter like that if it wasn’t so?”
“But it’s not so,” insisted Aileen, pretending anger and outraged feeling, “and I don’t think you have any right to sit there and say that to me. I haven’t been there, and I’m not running around with Mr. Cowperwood. Why, I hardly know the man except in a social way.”
Butler shook his head solemnly.
“It’s a great blow to me, daughter. It’s a great blow to me,” he said. “I’m willing to take your word if ye say so; but I can’t help thinkin’ what a sad thing it would be if ye were lyin’ to me. I haven’t had the house watched. I only got this this mornin’. And what’s written here may not be so. I hope it isn’t. But we’ll not say any more about that now. If there is anythin’ in it, and ye haven’t gone too far yet to save yourself, I want ye to think of your mother and your sister and your brothers, and be a good girl. Think of the church ye was raised in, and the name we’ve got to stand up for in the world. Why, if ye were doin’ anything wrong, and the people of Philadelphy got a hold of it, the city, big as it is, wouldn’t be big enough to hold us. Your brothers have got a reputation to make, their work to do here. You and your sister want to get married sometime. How could ye expect to look the world in the face and do anythin’ at all if ye are doin’ what this letter says ye are, and it was told about ye?”
The old man’s voice was thick with a strange, sad, alien emotion. He did not want to believe that his daughter was guilty, even though he knew she was. He did not want to face what he considered in his vigorous, religious way to be his duty, that of reproaching her sternly. There were some fathers who would have turned her out, he fancied. There were others who might possibly kill Cowperwood after a subtle investigation. That course was not for him. If vengeance he was to have, it must be through politics and finance—he must drive him out. But as for doing anything desperate in connection with Aileen, he could not think of it.