sly so, but quietly and under the
surface. Business was a great urge. He saw himself soon to be worth
about fifty thousand dollars. Then this cold--nine more days of
pneumonia--and he was dead. The shoe store was closed for a few days;
the house was full of sympathetic friends and church people. There was
a funeral, with burial service in the Callowhill Presbyterian Church, to
which they belonged, and then he was buried. Mrs. Semple cried bitterly.
The shock of death affected her greatly and left her for a time in a
depressed state. A brother of hers, David Wiggin, undertook for the time
being to run the shoe business for her. There was no will, but in the
final adjustment, which included the sale of the shoe business, there
being no desire on anybody's part to contest her right to all the
property, she received over eighteen thousand dollars. She continued
to reside in the Front Street house, and was considered a charming and
interesting widow.

Throughout this procedure young Cowperwood, only twenty years of age,
was quietly manifest. He called during the illness. He attended the
funeral. He helped her brother, David Wiggin, dispose of the shoe
business. He called once or twice after the funeral, then stayed away
for a considerable time. In five months he reappeared, and thereafter he
was a caller at stated intervals--periods of a week or ten days.

Again, it would be hard to say what he saw in Semple. Her prettiness,
wax-like in its quality, fascinated him; her indifference aroused
perhaps his combative soul. He could not have explained why, but he
wanted her in an urgent, passionate way. He could not think of her
reasonably, and he did not talk of her much to any one. His family knew
that he went to see her, but there had grown up in the Cowperwood family
a deep respect for the mental force of Frank. He was genial, cheerful,
gay at most times, without being talkative, and he was decidedly
successful. Everybody knew he was making money now. His salary was fifty
dollars a week, and he was certain soon to get more. Some lots of his in
West Philadelphia, bought three years before, had increased notably in
value. His street-car holdings, augmented by still additional lots of
fifty and one hundred and one hundred and fifty shares in new lines
incorporated, were slowly rising, in spite of hard times, from the
initiative five dollars in each case to ten, fifteen, and twenty-five
dollars a share--all destined to go to par.