ite a look of gratitude, if not of affection;
but even then no change had come in the mirror-like surface of her blue
eyes. President, I was aware, had sacrificed himself to her while I was
still a child, had slaved and toiled and denied himself that he might
make her a lady. Yet when I asked her if she ever wrote to him, she
smiled quietly and shook her head.

"Why don't you write to him, Jessy? He was always fond of you."

"He writes such dreadful letters--just like a working-man's--that I hate
to get them," she answered, turning to catch the effect of her train in
the long mirror.

"He is a working-man, Jessy, and so am I."

She accepted the statement without demur, as she accepted
everything--neither denying nor disputing, but apparently indifferent to
its truth or falseness. My eyes met Sally's in the glass, and they held
me in a long, compassionate gaze.

"All men are working-men, Jessy, if they are worth anything," she said,
"and any work is good work if it is well done."

"He is a miner," responded Jessy.

"If he is, it is because he prefers to do the work he knows to being
idle," I answered sharply. "What you must remember is that when he had
little, and I had nothing, he gave you freely all that he had."

She did not answer, and for a moment I thought I had convinced her.

"Will you write to President to-night?" I asked.

"But we are having a dinner party. How can I?"

"To-morrow, then?"

"I am going to the theatre with Mrs. Blansford. Mr. Cottrel has taken a
box for her. He is one of the richest men in the West, isn't he?"

"There are a great many rich men in the West. How can it concern you?"

"Oh, it's beautiful to be rich," she returned, in the most enthusiastic
phrase I had ever heard her utter; and gathering her white lace train
over her arm she went into her bedroom to remove the dress.

"What is she made of, Sally?" I asked, in sheer desperation; "flesh and
blood, do you think?"

"I don't know, Ben, not your flesh and blood, certainly."

"But for President--why wasn't my father hanged before he gave him such
a name!--she would have remained ignorant and common with all her
beauty. He almost starved himself in order to send her to a good school
and give her pretty clothes."

"I know, I know, it seems terribly ungrateful--but perhaps she's excited
over her first dinner."

That evening we were to give our first formal dinner, and when I came
downstairs a little before eight o'clock,