“Mr Macdonald—just so! a rale decent clan,” said Lady Charlotte, who prided herself upon the quality of her Scots. “I mind you had the tickets from Lord Duthie; you’re lucky to have the chance of the bonniest partner in the room.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said he, with another glance at a very soothfast mask that came down on as sweet a pair of lips as ever man took craving for.
At a quadrille he was not amiss if one could get over the crook in his nose and the rugged plainness of his countenance generally. When he was done and brought the lady to a seat, she was good enough to say he danced divinely. She had herself the carriage of a swan, her voice was of a ravishing and caressing quality, with none of the harsh, high-pitched, East-country accent that would have grated on Macdonald’s ears, and yet there was a something shallow in her phrase and sentiment.
“You are very good to say so, ma’am. I rarely dance, and I have seldom danced less at an assembly than I have done to-night,” said he, taking the compliment at its real value, for his dancing was a point on which he had no illusions.
The lady toyed with her fan; her eyes, mischievous and profound as wells and of the hue of plums, sparkled through the holes in her mask.
“Oh la! and you divine at it, I declare! Our Edinburgh belles, then, do not tempt you, Mr Macdonald? But I daresay you will think them quite good enough for our Edinburgh beaux; now, did you ever in your life see such gawks?”
Macdonald rubbed his chin. “On the contrary,” said he, “I was just thinking them uncommon spruce and handsome.”
“You are very tolerant; have you any other virtues to be aired?” said the lady with a smile that puzzled him. “There’s still another dance, I see; her ladyship is fairly in the key to-night; you’ll have time to tell me all of them seriatim, missing out the lesser ones brevitatis causa.”
“H’m!” thought he; “her father’s in the law,” and wondered who she was. “I could tell you all of them in the time it would take to dance a step of the Highland Fling,” said he.
“Faith, there’s modesty! Item, Mr Macdonald?” and she sat back in her chair, her hoops bulged out in front of her like the bastion of a fort.