Douglas, whose extremely handsome features were of a dark and olive hue, like all those of his surname generally, wore the heavy cavalier wig falling over his collar of point d'Espagne and gold-studded breastplate. Walter had his own natural hair hanging in dark curls on a cuirass of silver, polished so bright that the fair dancers who flitted past every moment saw their flushed faces reflected in its glassy surface.
Their coats and breeches were of scarlet, pinked with blue silk and laced with gold; their sashes were of yellow silk, but had massive tassels of gold; and their formidable bowl-hilted rapiers were slung in shoulder-belts of velvet embroidered with silver. Their long military gloves almost met the cuffs of their coats, which were looped up to display the shirt-sleeves—a new fashion of James VII.; and everything about them was perfumed to excess. Such was the attire of the military of that day, as regulated by the "Royal Orders" of the King.
Threading their way through a crowd of dancers, whose magnificent dresses of bright-hued satins and velvets laced with silver or gold, and blazing with jewels, sparkled and shone as they glided from hand to hand to the music of an orchestra perched in a recessed gallery of echoing oak, they passed into an inner apartment to pay their devoirs to the Countess, who for a time had relinquished the dance to overlook the tea-board—a solemn, arduous, and highly-important duty, which was executed by her lady-in-waiting, a starched demoiselle of very doubtful age.
Though rather diminutive in person, the Countess of Dunbarton was a very beautiful woman, and possessed all that dazzling fairness of complexion which is so characteristic of her country-women. She was English, and a sister of the then Duchess of Northumberland. Her eyes were of a bright and merry blue; her hair of the richest auburn; her small face was quite enchanting in expression, and very piquant in its beauty; while her fine figure was decidedly inclined to embonpoint.
She was one of the fashionable mirrors of the day, and the standard by whom the stately belles of Craig's Close and the Blackfriars Wynd regulated the depth of their stomachers and the length of their trains—the star of Mary d'Este's balls at Holyrood, where, in the splendour of her jewels, she had nearly rivalled the famous Duchess of Lauderdale; and though an Englishwoman, notwithstanding the jealousy and dislike which from time immemorial had existed between the two kingdoms, she was, from the suavity of her manner, the brilliancy of her wit, and the amiability of her disposition, both admired and beloved in Edinburgh.
With a pretty and affected air, she held her silver pouncet-box in an ungloved and beautifully-formed hand, which was whiter than the bracelet of pearls that encircled it. Close by, upon a satin cushion, reposed a pursy, pug-nosed, and silky little lap-dog, of his late Majesty's favourite and long-eared breed. It had been a present from himself, and bore the royal cypher on its silver collar. Near her on a little tripod table of ebony stood the tea-board, with its rich equipage and a multitude of little china cups glittering with blue and gold.
The tea, dark, fragrant, and priceless beyond any now in use, was served by the prim gentlewoman before mentioned (the daughter of some decayed family), who acted as her useful friend and companion; and slowly it was poured out like physic from a little silver pot of curious workmanship, a gift from Mary Stuart (then Princess of Orange), and the same from which she was wont to regale the ladies of Holyrood.
Tea was unknown in London at the time of the Restoration; and when introduced a few years afterwards by the Lords Arlington and Ossory, was valued at sixty shillings the pound; but the beautiful Mary d'Este of Modena was the first who made it known in the Scottish capital in 1681. This new and costly beverage was still one of the wonders and innovations of the age, and was only within the reach of the great and wealthy until about 1750; but the royal tea-parties, masks and entertainments of the Duchess Mary and her affable daughters, were long the theme of many a tall great-grandmother, and remembered with veneration and regret among other vanished glories, when, by the cold blight that fell upon her, poor Scotland felt too surely that "a stranger" filled the throne of the Stuarts.
Lady Grisel of Bruntisfield, and other venerable dowagers and ancient maiden gentlewomen (a species in which some old Scottish families are still very prolific), all as stiff as pride, brocade, starch, and buckram could make them, were sitting very primly and uprightly in their high-backed chairs, clustered round the Countess's little tripod table, like pearls about a diamond, when the cavaliers advanced to pay their respects.
"Welcome! Finland," said the Countess, addressing Douglas according to the etiquette of the country. "My old friend Walter, your most obedient servant. How fortunate!—we have just been disputing about romances, and drawing comparisons between that lumbering folio The Banished Virgin and the Cassandra. You will act our umpire. My dear boy, let me look at you; how well you look, and so handsome, in all this bravery; doth he not, Mistress Lilian?"