Beside the table, in a low rocker, several paces from the invalid by the
fire, yet where she could catch every expression of his pale, sad face,
there sat a young girl, with a piece of fancy work in her hands, upon
which she had been busily engaged before her father spoke.

She was perhaps twenty years of age, with a straight, perfect form, and a
face that would have better graced a a palace than the humble mountain
home where she now abode. It was a pure, oval, with delicate, beautiful
brows; soft, round cheeks, in which a lovely pink came and went with every
emotion. Her eyes were of a deep violet color, shaded by dark silken
lashes, though their expression was saddened somewhat just now by a look
of care and anxiety. Her white forehead was surmounted by rich
chestnut-brown hair, which was gathered into a graceful knot at the back
of her finely shaped head. A straight, patrician nose; a small, but rather
resolute mouth, and a rounded chin, in which there was a bewitching
dimple; small, lady-like hands and feet, completed the tout ensemble of
Virginia Abbot, the daughter and only child of a whilom honored and
wealthy bank president of San Francisco.

When addressed, as recorded above, the beautiful girl had started and
grown suddenly pale, and a look of keenest pain shot into her violet eyes.

Then her sweet mouth straightened itself into a stern, resolute line.
There was a moment of solemn silence, which she broke, by saying, in a
repressed but gentle tone:

"I am sorry that you are feeling worse than usual to-night, papa. I know
you must be weary. You are always that after being all day in the mine,
and the storm, of course, aggravates your cough; but if you will rest a