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Scrimped a little, cried a little, prayed a little in
private, but outwardly lived the life of the smug in body and soul.
But the Wheelers' is another story, also a running social sore; but it
was Hester, you remember, who came sobbing and clamoring to be told.
As Wheeler once said of her, she was a darn fine clothes horse. There
was no pushed-up line of flesh across the middle of her back, as
the corsets did it to Mrs. Wheeler. She was honed to the ounce. The
white-enameled weighing scales, the sweet oils, the flexible fingers of
her masseur, the dumb-bells, the cabinet, salt-water, needle-spray,
and vapor baths saw to that. Her skin, unlike Marion Wheeler's, was
unfreckled, and as heavily and tropically white as a magnolia leaf, and,
of course, she reddened her lips, and the moonlike pallor came out more
than ever.
As I said, she was frankly what she was. No man looked at her more than
once without knowing it. To use an awkward metaphor, it was before her
face like an overtone; it was an invisible caul.


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