It was a small dinner table that evening. Winslow had stayed in town over night, and Shackleton sat at the head of a shrunken board, with Bessie opposite him, his daughter to the left, and Pussy Thurston on his right. Pussy was Maud’s best friend and was one of the beauties of San Francisco. To-night she looked especially pretty in a pale green crape dress, with green leaves in her fair hair. Her skin was of a shell-like purity of pink and white, her face was small, with regular features and a sweet, childish smile. She and her sister were the only children of the famous Judge Beauregard Thurston, in his day one of those brilliant lawyers who brought glory to the California bar. He had made a fortune, lived on it recklessly and magnificently, and died leaving his daughters almost penniless. He had been in the heyday of his splendor when Jake Shackleton, just struggling into the public eye, had come to San Francisco, and the proud Southerner had not scrupled to treat the raw mining man with careless scorn. Shackleton evened the score before Thurston’s death, and he still soothed his wounded pride with the thought that the two daughters of the man who had once despised him were largely dependent on his wife’s charity. Bessie took them to balls and parties, dressed them, almost fed them. The very green crape gown in which Pussy looked so pretty to-night had been included in Maud’s bill at a fashionable dressmaker’s. Personally he liked Pussy, whose beauty and winning manners lent a luster to his house. Once or twice to-night she caught him looking at her with a cold, debating glance in which there was little of the admiration she was accustomed to receiving since the days of her first long dress. He was in truth regarding her critically for the first time, for the Bonanza King was a man on whom the beauty of women cast no spell. He was comparing her with another and a more regally handsome girl. Pussy Thurston would look insipid and insignificant before the stately splendor of his own daughter. He smiled as he realized Mariposa’s superiority. The young girl saw the smile, and said with the privileged coquetry of a maid who all her life has known herself favored above her fellows: “Why are you smiling all to yourself, Mr. Shackleton? Can’t we know if it is something pleasant?” “I was looking at something pretty,” he answered, his eyes full of amusement as they rested on her charming face. “That generally makes people smile.” She was so used to such remarks that her rose-leaf color did not vary the fraction of a shade. Maud, to whom no one ever paid compliments, looked at her with wistful admiration. “Is that all?” she said with an air of disappointment. “I hoped it was something that would make us all smile.” “Well, I have an idea that may make you all smile”--he turned to his wife--“how would you like to go to Europe next spring, Bessie?”