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In early June, just as Barton Gubelmann, the grand first lady of Palm Beach's Old Guard, was explaining how Palm Beach society works, the phone rang.

"Oh, shit. Let the maid take it," the eighty-year-old scion said in a gravelly voice. Behind her, beyond the lily ponds and the burgeoning sea-grape trees, the Atlantic glistened.

An invitation to one of Gubelmann's gala dinner parties is coveted more than acceptance by the Everglades Club or the Bath & Tennis Club, the two WASP clubs that dominate Palm Beach social life and conversation. For her last party of the season, on May 9, Gubelmann dressed as a milkmaid. The invitation billed the party "Operation Deep Freeze" and explained: "Barton Is Cleaning Out the Freezer and Wants the Cupboard Bare." Dress called for "Flip Flops and Aprons."

The seventy-eight guests, who dined on pheasant pie, ham, and cold beef tenderloin, included Palm Beach mayor Paul R. Ilyinsky and his wife, Angelica; Lesly Smith, the town council president whose late husband, Earl, was ambassador to Cuba; Durie Appleton, a girlfriend of John F. Kennedy who was erroneously said to have been married to him; Prince Michel de Yougoslavie, ousted Yugoslav royalty; Chris Kellogg, an heir to the Wanamaker department-store fortune; Angela Koch (pronounced 'coke'), wife of near-billionaire William Koch; Princess Maria Pia of Italy; Jane Smith, from Standard Oil Company of New Jersey money; and Cynthia Rupp, an heir to the Chrysler fortune.

Unlike many other Palm Beach socialites, Gubelmann has no publicity agent and no bio to hand out. Why should she? She is Palm Beach society. After social queens Mary Sanford and Sue Whitmore bothdied in 1993 (Whitmore having succeeded Sanford as queen), the Palm Beach Daily News handicapped Gubelmann eight to one to rule over Palm Beach society. She said she didn't want the job.

Self-deprecating, irreverent, and publicity-shy, Gubelmann is a contrast to Palm Beach's plastic strivers. She is the widow of Walter Gubelmann, an America's Cup financier whose father, William, invented handy gadgets like the bicycle coaster brake and the basic mechanisms used in adding machines, typewriters, and early calculators. If she wasn't already rich, Gubelmann would make a good CEO. Shrewd and smart, she exercises her authority deftly and like a good boss rarely reveals her true powers.

Like other Palm Beach socialites, she shuttles back and forth among her homes. During the season, she lives in Palm Beach, where she has what she calls her "very small house" on South Ocean Boulevard, just two houses north of the home John Lennon and Yoko Ono owned. Assessed at $2.9 million, Barton's house is a gray-shingled contemporary with a pagodalike roof. At the entrance is a lily pond with a fountain, and in back is the requisite pool, rarely used. Inside, on an upholstered chair, sits a green pillow embroidered with the words It ain't easy being queen. Outside, the vanity plate on her Mercedes reads glamma.

Now, in off-season, Gubelmann was preparing to make her annual pilgrimage to her palatial home in Newport, Rhode Island. Gubelmann would fly there with one of her maids, her dog, and her cat, having bought tickets for each of the animals. Her assistant, Arthur "Skip" Kelter, a graying man with a perpetually bemused expression, would drive up in her Mercedes. A Chevy van with another driver would haul a twelve-foot trailer containing her clothes and Skip's computer.

J. Paul Getty said, "If you can actually count your money, then you are not really a rich man." Asked how much she is worth, Gubelmann responded in kind: "I don't know," she said. "I don't sit home and count it. I have no idea. Someone must have it on some piece of paper. We have lawyers and accountants and bookkeepers." But Gubelmann is said to be worth close to $100 million. When asked about that, she said, "Is that what it is? I'm glad to know it. I'll spend some money today."

Palm Beachers hold Gubelmann in awe, and many doubted she would ever meet with me, much less be candid. I first came to Palm Beach four years earlier to conduct research on Joseph P. Kennedy for my book The Sins of the Father. Residents like Dennis E. Spear, the caretaker of the Kennedy estate, and Cynthia Stone Ray, one of Rose Kennedy's former secretaries, filled me in--not only on the Kennedys, but on the secrets, lore, and rituals of Palm Beach. Spear took me to Au Bar, where Senator Edward M. Kennedy had been on the night that his nephew William Kennedy Smith picked up the woman who would later accuse him of raping her--a charge that a jury found to be without basis. Cynthia gave me a tour of Palm Beach's mansions.

I was drawn to this bizarre town. Like most people, I hadn't realized that Palm Beach is located on a fifteen-mile-long subtropical barrier island, of which twelve miles is Palm Beach. On the rest, the southern tip, are the towns of Manalapan and South Palm Beach. The island's width varies at different points from five hundred feet to three quarters of a mile. Lake Worth, a coastal lagoon that is part of the Intracoastal Waterway, separates the island from the mainland about a half mile away. In 1870 settlers cut a ditch between the northern end of Lake Worth and the Atlantic. The inlet was later enlarged, and another was cut at the southern tip of the barrier strip, turning it into an island.

With only 9,800 residents, Palm Beach is inherently a very small town--only a few times larger than Gilmanton Iron Works, the New Hampshire village where Grace Metalious's Peyton Place was set. Here, on $5 billion worth of real estate, live some of the richest people in the world. For many tycoons, Palm Beach is a reward, a realization of life's pleasures in a self-contained paradise.