be thorough where then it was superficial, but the
courtliness of conscious superiority, the picturesque contrarieties and
broken natural land that lay below the heaths and craters, exist but as
the black gloom and red glare of the past.

There the grave responsible Lord of Session, sober in mien as Scotchmen
are wont to be, sat at midnight and roared over his claret in the mad
orgies of the Hell-fire Club; here the pawky, penetrating lawyer, shrewd
both from calling and character, played the reckless game of a
correspondence with the stage Court of St. Germains; yonder mettle
beauty sailed along on her high-heeled shoes to finish the night's
triumph at an oyster supper in a den behind the Luckenbooths. And there
again walked an imperial dowager, who still span her own linen and
struck her serving-man with her ivory cane. Truly the old Edinburgh
Assembly Rooms had their secrets, and contained exciting enough elements
under their formal French polish.

The regular balls at the Assembly Rooms were eras in Nelly Carnegie's
life, and yet she met always the same company. She knew every face and
name, and what was worse, danced nightly with the same partner. The
select society was constituted at the commencement of the season, and
when once the individual fan was drawn from the cocked-hat of fate,
there was no respite, no room for change. Young Home of Staneholme had
knowledge of the filigree circle through which Nelly was wont to insert
her restless fingers, and Lady Carnegie furthered his advances; so that
although Nelly hated him as she did the gloomy Nor' Loch, she received
his escort to and from the Assembly Rooms, and walked with him her
single minuet, as inevitably as she lilted Allan Ramsay's songs, or
scalded her mouth with her morning's porridge.

Nelly's suitor was not ill to look upon, so far as flesh and blood went.
He was a well-made, robust fellow, whose laced coat and deep vest showed
the comely, vigorous proportions of youth. The face was manly, too, in
spite of its beardless one-and-twenty, but the broad eyebrows sank,
either in study or sullenness, and the jaw was hard and fixed.

Yet to see how Nelly strained her bonds, how she gecked and flouted and
looked above him, and curtsied past him, and dropped his hand as if it
were live coals, while the heavy brow grew darker, until it showed like
a thunderstorm over the burning red of the passion-flushed cheek.

"Tak tent, Nelly," whispered a sedate companio