Cowperwood, and one day sent for him and asked him to call at his house.

Cowperwood responded quickly, for he knew of Butler, his rise, his
connections, his force. He called at the house as directed, one cold,
crisp February morning. He remembered the appearance of the street
afterward--broad, brick-paved sidewalks, macadamized roadway, powdered
over with a light snow and set with young, leafless, scrubby trees
and lamp-posts. Butler's house was not new--he had bought and repaired
it--but it was not an unsatisfactory specimen of the architecture of the
time. It was fifty feet wide, four stories tall, of graystone and with
four wide, white stone steps leading up to the door. The window arches,
framed in white, had U-shaped keystones. There were curtains of lace and
a glimpse of red plush through the windows, which gleamed warm against
the cold and snow outside. A trim Irish maid came to the door and he
gave her his card and was invited into the house.

"Is Mr. Butler home?"

"I'm not sure, sir. I'll find out. He may have gone out."

In a little while he was asked to come upstairs, where he found Butler
in a somewhat commercial-looking room. It had a desk, an office chair,
some leather furnishings, and a bookcase, but no completeness or
symmetry as either an office or a living room. There were several
pictures on the wall--an impossible oil painting, for one thing, dark
and gloomy; a canal and barge scene in pink and nile green for another;
some daguerreotypes of relatives and friends which were not half bad.
Cowperwood noticed one of two girls, one with reddish-gold hair, another
with what appeared to be silky brown. The beautiful silver effect of the
daguerreotype had been tinted. They were pretty girls, healthy, smiling,