vately
considering investing in another proposed line which, if it could secure
a franchise from the legislature, was to run on Fifth and Sixth streets.

Cowperwood, Senior, saw a great future for this thing; but he did not
see as yet how the capital was to be raised for it. Frank believed that
Tighe & Co. should attempt to become the selling agents of this new
stock of the Fifth and Sixth Street Company in the event it succeeded
in getting a franchise. He understood that a company was already formed,
that a large amount of stock was to be issued against the prospective
franchise, and that these shares were to be sold at five dollars,
as against an ultimate par value of one hundred. He wished he had
sufficient money to take a large block of them.

Meanwhile, Lillian Semple caught and held his interest. Just what it was
about her that attracted him at this age it would be hard to say,
for she was really not suited to him emotionally, intellectually, or
otherwise. He was not without experience with women or girls, and
still held a tentative relationship with Marjorie Stafford; but Lillian
Semple, in spite of the fact that she was married and that he could have
legitimate interest in her, seemed not wiser and saner, but more worth
while. She was twenty-four as opposed to Frank's nineteen, but still
young enough in her thoughts and looks to appear of his own age. She was
slightly taller than he--though he was now his full height (five feet
ten and one-half inches)--and, despite her height, shapely, artistic
in form and feature, and with a certain unconscious placidity of soul,
which came more from lack of understanding than from force of character.
Her hair was the color of a dried English walnut, rich and plentiful,
and her complexion waxen--cream wax---with lips of faint pink, and eyes
that varied from gray to blue and from gray to brown, according to the
light in which you saw them. Her hands were thin and shapely, her nose
straight, her face artistically narrow. She was not brilliant,
not active, but rather peaceful and statuesque without knowing it.
Cowperwood was carried away by her appearance. Her beauty measured up to
his present sense of the artistic. She was lovely, he thought--gracious,
dignified. If he could have his choice of a wife, this was the kind of a
girl he would like to have.

As yet, Cowperwood's judgment of women was temperamental rather than
intellectual. Engrossed as he was by his desire for wealt