“To the devil!” said he to himself. “I cannot expect them to be civil to any casual Jo at a two-and-sixpenny ball.” And he yawned again, impatient for the coming away of his cousin, whose gallantries to a lady at the other end of the room seemed unending. From that cousin he neither expected the ordinary courtesies of life nor desired them. They were usually as cool to each other as if they had sprung from different clans, and it was only the accident of a law plea affecting the family in its various branches that brought them privately to the capital and to the same lodgings from widely different parts of their native shire, and from widely different ways of life. Whatever the cousin had to say to madam, she was pretty merry on the head of it, and seemed entranced with her gallant. He was such a coxcomb surely as never before came off the heather, with his Genoa velvet coat, his sky-blue breeches, and a waistcoat of the tartan of his clan, a thin, delicate, lady-like sword at his haunch that better knew the swing of the claymore. “A rogue, Jock! and a tongue to wile the bird off the tree,” thought the man with the crooked nose, in no envy at all, but just in a distaste at nature’s perversity; and he saw that his cousin and the lady looked at him as if he were the object of their conversation. To his astonishment, the lady, at the forming of the next quadrille, was brought to him by Lady Charlotte. “You see, if the mountain ’ll not come to Mahomet, Mahomet maun just come to the mountain,” said the directress airily. “Here’s a leddy I’m determined shall not miss her quadrille, and you are very lucky, Mr—Mr—” “Macdonald,” said he, with a bow and a glance of shrewdness at the young lady, who had plainly made the arrangements herself for the introduction. “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.