let him, even
though she scarcely replied, being still in the custody of his
surprise. He was out to please, and he undoubtedly was handsome, or,
at all events, striking in his tartans, and he danced perfectly. Why
deny it, even if it had not been patent to every onlooking, wondering
eye? He made a mightily fine picture, and he knew it, though he did
not spoil the picture by showing he knew it.

Marget was in a simple black gown with a ruffle of white French lace at
her neck and a flush in her cheeks. Her black hair was twined
naturally about her head, which she carried high, so I told myself, as
if in defiance of the Black Colonel, while she had to be his partner
and prisoner. She glanced at me once or twice with an amused twinkle
in her eye, thinking, I suppose, of her bold capture from the host of
the evening, my unlucky self. Some women are a blessing, others keep
you guessing, somebody will say, and Marget, I judged, even in the
whirl of that reel, could be both, if she cared to try.

Quicker time the music made it, many a foot keeping stroke, and quicker
time we had to make it. You know the romp of a Highland reel at the
double, how it causes the blood to sing in the veins and the feet to
jig. Marget's mother had been a fine dancer, but, as she whispered to
me, she was no longer young. Marget herself had inherited all her
mother's ease and grace of carriage, and she had her own spirit and go.
The music and the motion caught her into forgetfulness of everything
else, and she danced with a grace and a swing which were bewitching.

She had, again I was bound to admit, a complete dancing partner in the
Black Colonel, a fellow of natural and acquired accomplishments. He
had his clean ankles and elegant uprightness from his Highland
forbears, and he had got his polish of deportment when he was among the
English Jacobites in France. The result was that he danced all of a
piece, with as near the poetry of movement as a man might attain, and
then there was the intimate, intriguing ripple of his tartans.

Myself, I was quite a good dancer, but, if I may be my own apologist,
not so showy a dancer as the Black Colonel. While I could hold my own
with most men in the Highland dances, probably surpass many, I could
not fill a dancing floor as he did, with his natural air of drama. A
woman who herself dances well, sighs for a fit partner, but give her in
that partner a personality drawing a general homage to them