venture bore the title of the Fargo Construction and Transportation
Company, of which Frank A. Cowperwood was president. His Philadelphia
lawyer, Mr. Harper Steger, was for the time being general master
of contracts.

For another short period he might have been found living at the
Tremont in Chicago, avoiding for the time being, because of Aileen's
company, anything more than a nodding contact with the important
men he had first met, while he looked quietly into the matter of
a Chicago brokerage arrangement--a partnership with some established
broker who, without too much personal ambition, would bring him a
knowledge of Chicago Stock Exchange affairs, personages, and Chicago
ventures. On one occasion he took Aileen with him to Fargo, where
with a haughty, bored insouciance she surveyed the state of the
growing city.

"Oh, Frank!" she exclaimed, when she saw the plain, wooden,
four-story hotel, the long, unpleasing business street, with its
motley collection of frame and brick stores, the gaping stretches of
houses, facing in most directions unpaved streets. Aileen in her
tailored spick-and-spanness, her self-conscious vigor, vanity, and
tendency to over-ornament, was a strange contrast to the rugged
self-effacement and indifference to personal charm which characterized
most of the men and women of this new metropolis. "You didn't
seriously think of coming out here to live, did you?"

She was wondering where her chance for social exchange would come
in--her opportunity to shine. Suppose her Frank were to be very
rich; suppose he did make very much money--much more than he had
ever had even in the past--what good would it do her here? In