Perch of the Devil by Gertrude Atherton — Read

Butte long since had made up its mind as to the social future of Mrs. Gregory Compton. That Ida's mother had been a laundress and her father a miner concerned the ladies of Butte as little as many similar outcroppings of family history peculiar not only to Montana but to all regions of recent exploitation and rapid growth.

In the hearty welcome extended to the newcomer, with either the money or the personality to command its attention, Butte more nearly resembles London than any other city in the world. To pasts she is indifferent, provided they are not resurrected as models for a present: she asks no questions of a pretty, amiable, amusing woman who pays her the compliment of sojourning in her midst, so long as the lady exercises an equal reticence -- assuming reticence to be her virtue -- and plays the social game with _savoir faire_. Distractions on that high perch are few, social life ebbs oftener than it flows, many of the large houses are closed for the greater part of the year, and only the very young, who care not where they are so long as they may dance, find life in an overgrown mining camp as satisfactory as their elders find New York.