Cowperwood paid no heed. Out he went through the dark hall and down the stairs. For once the lure of a beautiful, enigmatic, immoral, and promiscuous woman—poison flower though she was—was haunting him. “D— her!” he exclaimed. “D— the little beast, anyhow! The ——! The ——!” He used terms so hard, so vile, so sad, all because he knew for once what it was to love and lose—to want ardently in his way and not to have—now or ever after. He was determined that his path and that of Stephanie Platow should never be allowed to cross again.
CHAPTER XXIX.
A Family Quarrel
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.”