Gertrude Van Vleck had been a reigning belle for two seasons. Society had received her with a good deal of enthusiasm. She was rich, handsome,--in a rather striking style,--and her blood was as blue as any that a new country can produce. But, after her first appearance as a _débutante_, Gertrude Van Vleck had not been especially popular in the inner circle. She had had many suitors of course, but her indifference to their wooing had been the occasion of remark. But this was not all. From her mother, who had come from an old New England family, Gertrude had inherited a strain of Yankee humor that was not appreciated by the set in which she moved. The whisper had been spread abroad in her first season that she had said several really clever things, and a good many conservative people had considered this an erratic tendency on her part that was distinctly dangerous. Society did not feel certain that Gertrude Van Vleck might not at any moment perpetrate a witticism that would scratch the face of its most cherished traditions. The worst of it was that her position in society was so firmly established that she could afford to indulge her appreciation of the ludicrous and her inclination to look at things in an original way. Society was powerless to discipline her. Furthermore, it was suspected that Gertrude Van Vleck was in sympathy with the effort of woman to break away from her time-honored subserviency to man, and to do a great deal of independent thinking about the problems that agitate the world. She had given her countenance to the efforts of women to turn the political scale at the last election into the lap of reform,--whatever that elusive thing may be,--and she had been a pioneer in the movement that had gained recognition for the bicycle from the swell set. Richard Stoughton had heard something of all this; and he found himself looking at Gertrude with considerable curiosity, while the Hebrews were airing their woes upon the stage--woes that awakened little sympathy from an audience that knew how well in latter days the oppressed race has triumphed over all obstacles, and has placed a mortgage on a planet that has practically refused them a native land. Richard admitted to himself that Miss Van Vleck was handsome, that her eyes were of a cerulean tint worthy of her blood, that her dark hair was strikingly effective, that her white neck and arms were well cut. He also felt that nothing too bitter to please a man or woman of sense could fall from a mouth so finely shaped as hers.