though she now
flung the powder out of her nut-brown hair, and tapped her little mirror
with her fan.

In a low dark closet, up a steep stair, in a narrow, confined,
dark-browed house in the Canongate of Edinburgh, one of the belles of
17--made her toilette. Her chamber woman, in curch and tartan screen,
was old nurse and sole domestic of the high-headed, strong-minded,
stately widow of a wild north-country laird, whose son now ruled alone
in the rugged family mansion among the grand, misty mountains of
Lochaber. Nelly Carnegie was no beauty; not fair as a red-and-white
rose, like Lady Eglinton, or any one of her six daughters; not dainty,
like poor imprisoned Lady Lovat; she was more like desperate Lady
Primrose, flying shrieking from her mad husband's sword and pistols, or
fierce Lady Grange, swearing her bootless revenge on the wily,
treacherous, scared Lord of Session. She was but wild, witty Nelly
Carnegie, whom no precise, stern mother could tame, no hard life at her
embroidery or her spinet could subdue. She was brown as a gipsy, skin,
eyes, and hair--the last a rich, ruddy chestnut brown--with nothing to
distinguish her figure but its diminutiveness and the nimbleness of the
shapely hands and feet; while her mother's lace lappets were higher by
half a foot than the crown of many a manikin on whom she looked down,
and her back that never bent or leant for a second on rail or cushion,
was straight as an arrow, as well as long. But Nelly, in her absurd,
magnificent brocade, and her hoop, that made her small figure like a
little russet cask, and with busk and breast-knot and top-knot, was
admired, as odd people will choose what is irregular, strange, and racy,
in preference to what is harmonious, orderly, and insipid.

Nelly had a cavalier to walk by her sedan, as her mother and she
traversed the rough streets. He handed her out at the old Assembly door,
but she flung away his hand, and followed her mother alone within the
dignified precincts, leaving a gloom and a storm on a lowering brow,
unshaded by the cocked hat, then carried under the wearer's arm.

The old Assembly Rooms where potent Jacky Murray presided, where urbane
Duncan Forbes won all hearts, where a gentle laird wooed in sweet
numbers--and in vain--the Annie Laurie of that well-known old song, are
now almost forgotten. Other things have passed away in company with the
wigs and ruffles, the patches and snuff. The grace may remain, and the
refinement