Mrs. Semple read a little—­not much.  She had a habit of sitting and apparently brooding reflectively at times, but it was not based on any deep thought.  She had that curious beauty of body, though, that made her somewhat like a figure on an antique vase, or out of a Greek chorus.  It was in this light, unquestionably, that Cowperwood saw her, for from the beginning he could not keep his eyes 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 obstreperously so, but quietly and under the surface.  Business was a great urge.  He saw himself soon to be worth