One day she saw Aileen sweep in from her carriage, wearing warm brown furs, smart polished boots, a street-suit of corded brown wool, and a fur toque sharpened and emphasized by a long dark-red feather which shot upward like a dagger or a quill pen.

Antoinette hated her.

She conceived herself to be better, or as good at least.
Why was life divided so unfairly?
What sort of a man was Cowperwood, anyhow?
One night after she had written out a discreet but truthful history of himself which he had dictated to her, and which she had sent to the Chicago newspapers for him soon after the opening of his brokerage office in Chicago, she went home and dreamed of what he had told her, only altered, of course, as in dreams.

She thought that Cowperwood stood beside her in his handsome private office in La Salle Street and asked her: "Antoinette, what do you think of me ?" Antoinette was nonplussed, but brave.

In her dream she found herself intensely interested in him.
"Oh, I don't know what to think.