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the vor acious demand for fuel to cook the food and do the wash for the household. The money she was making was giving her a bit of breathing room, but she knew how quickly that income could dry up. Clients would soon move on if she didn’t give them what they wanted. For many of the women, what they wanted was a sympathetic ear, but women didn’t have a lot of disposable income, and she couldn’t survive on their clientele alone. For Madam Sibyl to be successful, she needed the steady business of the city’s merchants, manufacturers, and professional men. They were the group who could afford to pay her fees, week after week. They were the people who had the resources to best take advantage of the financial advice she gave. Business and professional men, however, wouldn’t pay for regular consultations unless the advice she gave them paid off. And paid off quickly.
    Today, she was going to find out if she had been successful with Matthew Voss. He’d cha llenged her to make him money in a month, and if he had followed her instructions, he should have. However, her father told her that one of the most difficult parts of a broker’s job wasn’t to get a client to buy stock but to follow the brokers’ advice about when to sell the stock. Some sold off too quickly; others, more unfortunately, held on too long. She’d discovered a specific pattern in the price fluctuations in Nevada silver mine stocks in the five months since she arrived in town. The mining report in the Chronicle would mention that a mine was opening up a new shaft and the the price would start to go up, probably because the Comstock mine owners—who everyone agreed were artificially manipulating prices—bought up enough shares to push the price up just a bit. They quietly sold off the stock within a day or two, but by that time, the money from eastern speculators would have flooded in and pushed the value of the stock even higher. Then, when no new vein of silver was announced—and nothing had developed for the past eight months—these speculators would start to sell, and the price would drift back down again.
    She’d seen signs this process was about to start for the stock of the Best and Belcher mine a few days before her second consultation with Voss. He was, rightfully, nervous about sinking any money on Nevada silver, but she advised him to buy twenty shares of this stock, currently selling at $17 a share (half of what the famous Ophir stock was selling). She told him to sell th ese shares as soon as they hit $25, or in three weeks, whichever came first. The stock hit that $25 price point on March 1 and then immediately began a steady slide in value. If he followed her instructions, even deducting his broker fees, he would have made around $150. Not a bad return for two dollar’s worth advice. If he had followed her instructions.
    A soft knock at the parlor door was followed immediately by the entrance of Kathleen, carr ying some logs in her hands. “Ma’am, I thought I would build the fire back up before Madam Sibyl’s next appointment. It’s raining cats and dogs out there, terrible cold. I thought the older gentleman might appreciate the warmth.”
    Annie watched fondly as the girl took the poker and rearranged the embers on the grate b efore carefully placing three more logs on the fire. Kathleen had quite embraced Annie’s Madam Sibyl enterprise, cheerfully dropping whatever other task she was engaged in to run and answer the door or usher a client out of the house. Annie hoped that if the new income remained steady, she would be able to add a dollar a week onto the girl’s wages to compensate for the extra work.
    “Kathleen, that is excellent. Let’s hope that Mr. Voss is willing to let you take his overcoat this time, so it can dry out. Do you remember how you practically had to pry his hat and gloves off of him the first time he came?”
    “Oh, ma’am. Do you think he was afraid I was going to steal them?”
    The door bell