That fine old spacious alley was found to be, on the present occasion, as splendid as it was possible for any close in Auld Reekie to be, under the double advantages of fashion and festivity. Two livery-men stood at the head with torches, and served as a beacon to mark to the gathering company the entrance of the strait into which they had to steer their way. Between the head of the lane and the vestibule of his lordship’s house, other servants were planted with torches, so as to form an avenue of lights, along which the guests were ushered. All the guests, as they successively arrived, were announced at the head of the stair by a servant—a custom recently adopted from London, and of little service in Edinburgh, where all people knew each other by sight. It served, however, on the present occasion, to procure for Sir Robert and his son, immediately on their entering the room, a general and instantaneous attention, which they would rather have dispensed with, and upon which they had not calculated. Both gentlemen were personally presented by their kinsman, the earl, to many persons of distinction of both sexes, among whom Sir Robert (though he had been for twenty years estranged in a great measure from society, in the prosecution of his studies, and the management of his gout) soon recognised and entered into conversation with some old friends, while his son set himself to observe if Miss Lindsay was in the room. She was not present; but, as company continued still to arrive, he entertained hopes that she would yet make her appearance. Disengaging himself, therefore, from his father, he withdrew to a corner of the room, where he might see, without being easily perceived by any person entering; and there, in silence and abstraction, he awaited her probable arrival. Some minutes had elapsed after the last announcement; and, in the idea that all were assembled, the earl had stood up at the head of a long double line of powdered beaux, and ladies with enormous hoops and high head-dresses, in order to lead off the first dance, when William Douglas heard the name of Mr and Miss Lindsay proclaimed at the head of the stair, and presently after saw an old precise-looking gentleman lead into the room the elegant figure of his long-lost mistress. He saw no more for some time; for, while his blood rushed upwards to the heart in tumultuous tide, a dimness came over his eyes, and obscured even the brilliant chandeliers that hung over the company. On recovering his powers of observation, the dance was done, and the floor cleared of its revellers, who now sat all round in full view. Some of the ladies were fanning themselves vehemently with their large Indian fans; others were listening, with head awry, to the compliments of their partners; not a few were talking and coquetting with the gentlemen near them, and a great portion were sitting demurely and stiffly in groups, like hedgerow elms, under the awful patronage of their mothers or