At the moment she had no wish to participate in a labor controversy. She was entirely the woman at last, roused to the overpowering value of her own inheritance. Her desire to manage, to calculate, to plan her husband's affairs was gone, and in its place was a willingness to submit, a wish for protection which she had not hitherto acknowledged. She brooded for a time on Ben's words, then hurriedly began to dress--with illogical desire to make herself beautiful in his eyes. As she re-entered the room she caught Haney's repeated declaration--"I will be loyal to the men"--and Ben's reply. "Very well, I'll go back and do the best I can to keep them in line, but Williams says the governor is entirely on the side of the mine-operators." "Does he?" retorted Haney. "Well, you say to the governor that Mart Haney was a gambler and saloon-keeper during the other 'war,' and now that he's a mine-owner, with money to hire a regiment of deppyties, his heart is with the red-neckers--just where it was. Owning a paying mine has not changed me heart to a stone." Ben, as well as Bertha, understood the pride he took in not whiffling with the shift of wind, but at the same time he considered it a foolish kind of loyalty. "Very well, I'll take the six-o'clock train to-night in order to be on hand." "What's the rush?" said Haney; "stay on a day or two and see the town with us--'tis a great show." Bertha, re-entering at this moment in her shining gown, put the young attorney's Spartan resolution to rout. He stammered: "I ought to be on the ground before the mine-owners begin to open fire, and, besides--Alice is not very well." At the mention of Alice's name Bertha's glance wavered and her eyelids fell. She did not urge him to stay, and Haney spoke up, heartily: "I'm sorry to hear she's not well. She was pretty as a rose the night of the dinner." "She lives on her nerves," Ben replied, falling into sadness. "One day she's up in the clouds and dancing, the next she's flat in her bed in a darkened room unwilling to see anybody." "'Tis the way of the White Death," thought Haney, but he spoke hopefully: "Well, spring is here and a long summer before her--she'll be herself against October." "I trust so," said Ben, but Bertha could see that he was losing hope and that his life was being darkened by the presence of the death angel. Haney changed the current of all their thinking by saying to Bertha: "If you are minded to go home, now is your chance, acushla. You can return with Mr. Fordyce, while Lucius and I go on to New York the morning." "No, no!" she cried out in a panic. "No, I am going with you--I want to see New York myself," she added, in justification. The thought of the long journey with Ben Fordyce filled her with a kind of terror, a feeling she had never known before. She needed protection against herself. "Very well," said Haney, "that's settled. Now let's show Mr. Fordyce the town."