He had heard some gossip at the opera and in the club, which indicated that society did not approve altogether of some of the things Gertrude had recently said and done; but that it smiled approvingly at what it believed to be as good as an engagement between the young lady and Selden Avery. Martin ground his teeth now as he thought of it, and glanced again at the retreating forms of Avery and the two girls. "It was that visit to the Spillinis, and the revelation of life which it gave her, that is to blame for it all," he groaned. "I was an accursed fool--an accursed fool!" That night Gertrude lay thinking how charmingly Selden Avery had met the situation, and how well he had helped carry it off with Ettie and Francis. "He seemed to look at it all just as I do," she thought. I felt that I knew just what he was thinking, and he certainly guessed that I wanted him to see them home, exactly as if they had been girls of our own set. "Poor little Ettie! I wonder what we can do with, or for, such as she? She is so hopelessly--happy and ignorant." Then she fell asleep, and dreamed of rescuing Ettie from the fangs a maddened dog, and Francis stood by and looked scornfully at Gertrude's lacerated hands, and then pointed to her little friend's mangled body and the smile upon her dead lips. "She never knew what hurt her, and she teased the dog to begin with," she said. "You are maimed for life, and may go mad, just trying to help her--and she never knew and she never cared." Gertrude's dreamed had strayed and wandered into vagaries without form or outline, and in the morning nothing of it was left but an unreasonably heavy heart, and a restless desire to do--she knew not what. VII. When Avery took his seat in the Assembly he learned that Ettie Berton's father had been true to his calling. He still might be described as a professional starter. Any bill which was in need of some one to either introduce or offer a speech in its favor, found in John Berton an ever-ready champion. Not that he either understood or believed in all the bills he presented or advocated. Belief and understanding were not for sale; nor, indeed, were they always very much within his own grasp. He was in the Legislature to promote, or start, such measures as stood in need of his peculiar abilities. This was very soon understood, and many a bill which other men feared or hesitated to present found its way to him and through him to a reading. For a while Avery watched this process with amusement. He wrote to Gertrude, from time to time, some very humorous letters about it; but finally, one day a letter came which so bitterly denounced both King and Berton, that Gertrude wondered what could have wrought the sudden change.