yes off her. In a way, she was aware
of this but she did not attach any significance to it. Thoroughly
conventional, satisfied now that her life was bound permanently
with that of her husband, she had settled down to a staid and quiet
existence.

At first, when Frank called, she did not have much to say. She was
gracious, but the burden of conversation fell on her husband. Cowperwood
watched the varying expression of her face from time to time, and if she
had been at all psychic she must have felt something. Fortunately she
was not. Semple talked to him pleasantly, because in the first place
Frank was becoming financially significant, was suave and ingratiating,
and in the next place he was anxious to get richer and somehow Frank
represented progress to him in that line. One spring evening they sat on
the porch and talked--nothing very important--slavery, street-cars, the
panic--it was on then, that of 1857--the development of the West. Mr.
Semple wanted to know all about the stock exchange. In return Frank
asked about the shoe business, though he really did not care. All the
while, inoffensively, he watched Mrs. Semple. Her manner, he thought,
was soothing, attractive, delightful. She served tea and cake for them.
They went inside after a time to avoid the mosquitoes. She played the
piano. At ten o'clock he left.

Thereafter, for a year or so, Cowperwood bought his shoes of Mr. Semple.
Occasionally also he stopped in the Chestnut Street store to exchange
the time of the day. Semple asked his opinion as to the advisability
of buying some shares in the Fifth and Sixth Street line, which, having
secured a franchise, was creating great excitement. Cowperwood gave
him his best judgment. It was sure to be profitable. He himself had
purchased one hundred shares at five dollars a share, and urged Semple
to do so. But he was not interested in him personally. He liked Mrs.
Semple, though he did not see her very often.

About a year later, Mr. Semple died. It was an untimely death, one
of those fortuitous and in a way insignificant episodes which are,
nevertheless, dramatic in a dull way to those most concerned. He was
seized with a cold in the chest late in the fall--one of those seizures
ordinarily attributed to wet feet or to going out on a damp day without
an overcoat--and had insisted on going to business when Mrs. Semple
urged him to stay at home and recuperate. He was in his way a very
determined person, not obstreperou