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It was a gay post, a fashionable post, a frivolous post, for the tone of garrison life depends immeasurably upon its social leader, the wife of the commanding officer, and Mrs. Stone was but little older than her husband's daughters. The latter were East at school or visiting their own mother's relatives. The former had been a belle at home and was glad to continue her belledom on the plains.
A part of the growing and sad incongruity of modern dress appears in the unavoidable awkwardness of a large number of bouquets. A belle cannot leave the insignia of belledom at home, nor can she be so unkind as to carry Mr. Smith's flowers and ignore Mr. Brown's; so she appears with her arms and hands full, to the infinite detriment of her dress and general effect.
She had spent her one season of belledom in being whirled from festivity to festivity, in dancing in rooms festooned with thousands of dollars' worth of flowers, in lunching or dining at tables loaded with roses and violets and orchids, from which ballrooms or feasts she had borne away wonderful "favours" and gifts, whose prices, being recorded in the newspapers, caused a thrill of delight or envy to pass over the land.
Her hands had no gloves, but white short-fingered mitts, also cherished remnants of days of schoolgirl belledom, did service. Over white stockings, below the long and full-bodied skirt, showed the crossed bands of long elastic tapes tied in an ankle bow to hold in place her little slippers of black high-finished leather.
Austen had been a belle in the nights when there were belles but her belledom, this girl, who was not a belle, outshone. Yet the glow of it while necessarily physical had in it that which was moral. Unfortunately the radiance of moral beauty only those who are morally beautiful can perceive. Mrs. Austen was blind to it.
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