Book excerpt: This nineteenth-century novel begins in New York where two men are meeting for dinner. They are Mr. Whitehouse Southmead, a lawyer of around 50 years, and Captain Harry Storey Lawrence, a much younger man recently arrived in the city from a Utah mining company. They are clearly there to discuss some business, but the young Captain's head has been turned by a beautiful young woman whom he has just met on the stairs of the restaurant.