After purchasing a number of suitable fabrics, Miss Worth took Belle-Ann to a modiste where they were detained for more than two hours. By the time they had completed their shopping, it was dusk and their automobile dashed up to the station barely in time to make the train. Colonel Tennytown was there to see them off, and had only time to bid them a hurried good-by.
Miss Worth had arranged for all her minor purchases to be delivered to the school the same day that the gowns were sent. In the meantime, Belle-Ann had made three hurried trips with Miss Worth to the modiste in Lexington for fittings. Then, one memorable day, a horde of boxes arrived at the school for Belle-Ann. There were four exquisite dresses cut in the latest fashion. There were three beautiful imported hats. There were delicate veils and gloves and shoes and three dainty pairs of pumps embellished with oddly carved silver buckles. There were lingerie of the finest texture and stockings of many hues, so soft and fine that Belle-Ann marvelled at their resiliency. Also, there was a great brass-bound trunk, with compartments, with Belle-Ann's name stamped thereon, and a smart buff-leather traveling bag.
There was everything calculated to inspire a girl-heart to the heights of inexpressible happiness,—particularly a girl who had never before known a luxurious life. Miss Worth and Belle-Ann spent half the night in the girl's room amid a deluge of tissue paper and boxes.
The following Tuesday Miss Worth and Belle-Ann went to Lexington to visit Colonel Tennytown and his sister. The girl's figure had rounded and she had grown a head taller during the past winter. Her appearance in a city in her simple mountain garb would have challenged attention,—not because of the quaintness of the garb, but by merit of her natural grace and fresh, startling beauty. But to-day this wealth of beauty was enhanced a hundred fold. When she alighted at the station in Lexington, she presented a vision of loveliness that arrested the admiring eyes of people who had become inured to the sight of pretty girls, from the nearby newsboys, up to a group of loquacious old ladies who wore suffragist badges.
Belle-Ann wore a dark blue creation that fell in clinging, Parisian grace about her supple form. The yoke and sleeves were trimmed with pleated lace of exquisite richness, and a jabot of lace fell down the front from the yoke midway to the waistline. On her feet were dark blue pumps with silver buckles and hose to match. She wore a large Panama hat caught up at one side, drooping at the other side and back and girded with a wide Persian ribbon knotted at the back and ending in a silk fringe that trailed toward the hair. Her mass of black, lustrous curls were caught up in the back in the embrace of a large Oriental clasp of unique design.
In one hand she carried a beautiful Oriental purse suspended by a dragon-skin thong, which was hemmed with a camel's-hair braid. In the other hand, she balanced a long-stemmed white silk parasol. The apparel might have been duplicated; but the oval face under the Panama hat had no replica. There was no vestige of powder or cosmetics on the girl's complexion, which was left in all the rich purity that nature decreed to her.
The chin was indescribably fascinating. A little mouth with curved carmine lips that turned upward at the corners flanked by dimples. A short, thin little nose, white like the soft white of a rose petal. Above that, a pair of round, wondrous eyes—eyes that harbored a depth of unfathomable eloquence—black-fringed, steadfast eyes, of a peculiar deep violet hue, merging into that matchless pigment that tones the blue of a robin's egg. Above that, were exquisitely penciled brows, and then the soft, shiny, raven-black ringlets that rippled beneath the hat.
It was this beautiful Grecian countenance that inspired even the well-bred people about her in the station to pause for a second covert look. They had waited several minutes in the station when Colonel Tennytown's tall figure appeared coming toward them. He apologized contritely for his tardiness, stating that his car had suffered a "blow-out" which had delayed him.
They were whirled along the shell road four miles outside of Lexington to the Colonel's magnificent homestead surrounded by acres of level pasturage and numerous modern out-buildings. As Belle-Ann learned afterward, this estate represented the highest type of a modern stock farm and was one of international repute. Colonel Tennytown's pedigreed horses were periodically shipped abroad.
The Colonel was a gracious and fascinating host. He was a widower and had now in his household his maiden sister a few years his junior. There was no conceivable hospitality these two did not lavish upon their guests. Colonel Tennytown's proud prototype is met frequently throughout Kentucky.