I knew women well enough to
understand that she wished to outshine even herself in this first
meeting with Danvers since his marriage, perhaps to show him that she
wore no willows on his account, or perchance to make him a bit
regretful of what he had missed.

On the evening of the rout the duke dined at Stair, purposing to go
with us to the ball and to be set down at his tavern on our way home.
Nancy, in a short-waisted black frock, sat with us at the meal, merry
as a child, chattering of the coming party and her "braw new claes," as
she called them, as if there were no trouble in the world, or as if she
were exempted from it, if it existed. She spent an hour or more upon
her dressing, returning to us a lovelier, fairer, more radiant Nancy
than she had ever seemed before, even to my infatuated fatherly eyes.
Nor was this thought mine alone, for I saw the start of surprise which
Montrose gave at sight of her, and heard the sudden breath he drew as
she came toward us from the hall.

Her skin, always noticeably white and transparent, seemed this night to
have a certain luminous quality. Her cheeks were flushed, her gray eyes
shone mistily under the black lashes and blacker brows, and the scarlet
outline of her lips was marked as in a drawing. She wore a gown of
palest rose, covered with yellow cob-webby lace, which was her
grandmother's, the satin of the gown showing through the film which
covered it like "morning light through mist," as I told her, to be
poetical. The frock was low and sleeveless, the bodice of it ablaze
with gems, and there was another thing I noticed with surprise and
admiration. She wore her hair high, though loose and soft about the
brows, and in the coil of it a large comb set with many precious
stones. This jewel, originally designed to wear at the back of the
head, she had turned forward, making a coronet over her brows,
beautiful in itself, becoming in the extreme, and I noted that his
Grace of Borthwicke let his eyes rest upon it with a peculiar pleasure.

He rose at her entrance and bowed very low, with pretended servility,
resuming his usual manner before he said, with significance:

"The coronet becomes you, Nancy Stair."

And she looked back at him, with a low laugh, with no
self-consciousness in it, however, as she answered:

"There is none more competent to judge of that than yourself, your
grace."

We arrived late at the ball, to find the rooms already crowded, and the
Arran par