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The story deals with the affairs of a family that had suddenly grown rich. In five parts.

Bessie Wheaton returns from Europe to find her nouveau riche family has adopted and magnified the worst characteristics of the upper class. Her father spends all of his time at the club, her mother cultivates snobbishness, and her sister thinks only of marrying into royalty. To shake them out of their aristocratic poses, Bessie decides to reflect all of their faults, becoming as lazy as her father and as status conscious as her mother. She even rejects her own sweetheart, Allan Shelby, to lure Count d'Orr away from her sister. Finally, the members of the family confront Bessie, and she angrily tells them that she was only mirroring their behavior. Bessie then runs away, but Allan, with whom she quickly reconciles, brings her back, just as her family acknowledges its recent burlesque of the upper crust.