Mrs.Van Dorn was a good woman, but she had her limitations when it came to admiring in another something that she had not herself.
Mrs.Lee's superior bonnet had been a jarring note for her all the way.

She felt in her inmost soul, though she would have been loath to admit the fact to herself, that a woman whom she had invited to make calls with her at her expense had really no right to wear a finer bonnet--that it was, to say the least, indelicate and tactless.
Therefore she remarked, rather dryly, upon the beauty of a new pansy-bed beside the drive into which they now turned.

The bed looked like a bit of fairy carpet in royal purples and gold.
"I call that beautiful," said Mrs.Van Dorn, with a slight emphasis on the that, as if bonnets were nothing; and Mrs.Lee appreciated her meaning.
"Yes, it is lovely," she said, meekly, as they rolled past and quite up to the front-door of the house upon whose mistress they were about to call.
"I wonder if Mrs.Morris is at home," said Mrs.Van Dorn, as she got a card from her case.
"I think it is doubtful, it is such a lovely day," said Mrs.Lee, also taking out a card.
Samson Rawdy threw open the coach door with a flourish and assisted the ladies to alight.

He had a sensation of distinct reverence as the odor of Russian violet came into his nostrils.
"When them ladies go out makin' fashionable calls they have the best perfumery I ever seen," he was fond of remarking to his wife.
Sometimes he insisted upon her going out to the stable and sniffing in the coach by way of evidence, and she would sniff admiringly and unenviously.

She knew her place.