This irritated Cowperwood, as it would always irritate any strong, acquisitive, direct-seeing temperament.

While he had no desire to acquaint the whole world with his feelings, why should there be concealment between them, or at least mental evasion of a fact which physically she subscribed to?
Why do one thing and think another?
To be sure, she was devoted to him in her quiet way, not passionately (as he looked back he could not say that she had ever been that), but intellectually.

Duty, as she understood it, played a great part in this.
She was dutiful.

And then what people thought, what the time-spirit demanded--these were the great things.

Aileen, on the contrary, was probably not dutiful, and it was obvious that she had no temperamental connection with current convention.