The Gilded Chair by Melville Davisson Post

There is a raised bench of two broad steps, covered with red cloth, running, like a great circular dais, around the curious old ballroom of the Oban Gathering. The effect of it is strikingly to enthrone the matron and the dowager, who hold that bench from eleven until five o'clock in the morning. Impressive, important women, gowned in rich stuffs, and of varying ages, from that one coming in beauty to the meridian of life, to that one arriving in wisdom at its close.

The very word bench, applied to this raised seat, is apt and suggestive. The significance of the term presents itself in a sense large and catholic. The judges of the King's Bench do not deal in any greater measure with the problems of human destinies than do the judges of this one. That dowager, old and wise, her chin resting on her hand, her eyes following some youth whirling a débutante down the long ballroom, weighing carefully his lineage, his income, his social station, will presently deliver an opinion affecting, more desperately, life and lives than any legal one pronounced by my lord upon his woolsack. Here on this bench, while music clashes and winged feet dance, are destinies made and unmade by women who have sounded life and got its measure; who are misled by no illusions; who know accurately into what grim realities the path of every mortal presently descends. There is no tribunal on this earth surpassing in varied and practical knowledge of life these judges of the Red Bench.