A gnawing fancy that she had been fighting against for weeks rose suddenly into jealous conviction. This girl—a penniless nobody—had a quality, an air, a distinction, that she with all her advantages had never been able to acquire, _could_ never acquire. It was something innate, something you were born with, something that made you fitted for any sphere. Immovable, apparently absorbed in the reading, Suzanne began to think how she could induce her mother to dispense with the services of the Social Secretary. When the war news was finished Miss Maitland passed on to the news of the day. On this particular morning it was varied and interesting: A Western senator had attacked the President’s policy with unseemly vigor; the mysterious murder of a woman in Chicago had developed a new suspect; a California mob had nearly killed a Japanese student; and in the New York loft district a strike of shirtwaist makers had attained the proportions of a riot in which one of the pickets had stabbed a policeman with a hatpin. Mr. Janney was shocked at these horrors, but he always liked to hear them. Miss Maitland had to stop reading and listen to a theory he had evolved about the Chicago murder—it was the woman’s husband and he demonstrated how this was possible. Then he took up the shirtwaist strike with a fussy disapproval—they got nothing by violence, only set the public against them and their cause. Miss Maitland was inclined to argue about it; thought there was something to say for their methods and said it. Suzanne listened uncomprehending, unable to join in or to follow. She had heard such arguments before and had to sit silent, feeling a fool. The girl didn’t know her place, talked as if she were their equal, talked to Dick that way, and Dick had been interested, giving her an attention he never gave Suzanne. Mr. Janney was doing it now, leaning out of his chair, voicing his hope that a speedy vengeance would overtake the picket who had made her escape in the mêlée. The conversation was brought to an end by the appearance of Mrs. Janney. It was time for the mail; Otto had gone for it an hour ago. Before its arrival Mrs. Janney wanted their answers about two dinner invitations which had just come by telephone. One was for herself and Sam—Sunday night at the Delavalles—and the other was from Dick Ferguson for to-night—all of them, very informally—just himself and Ham Lorimer who was staying there. Mr. Janney agreed to both and in answer to her mother’s glance Suzanne said languidly, "Yes, she’d go to-night—there was nothing else to do." "And he wants you too, Miss Maitland," said Mrs. Janney, turning to the Secretary. "You’ll come, won’t you?"