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.  He was liked in the financial district and he was sure that he had a successful future.  Because of his analysis of the brokerage situation he had come to the conclusion that he did not want to be a stock gambler.  Instead, he was considering the matter of engaging in bill-brokering, a business which he had observed to be very profitable and which involved no risk as long as one had capital.  Through his work and his father’s connections he had met many people—­merchants, bankers, traders.  He could get their business, or a part of it, he knew.  People in Drexel & Co. and Clark & Co. were friendly to him.  Jay Cooke, a rising banking personality, was a personal friend of his.