The tea, dark, fragrant, and priceless beyond any now in use, was served by the prim gentlewoman before mentioned (the daughter of some decayed family), who acted as her useful friend and companion; and slowly it was poured out like physic from a little silver pot of curious workmanship, a gift from Mary Stuart (then Princess of Orange), and the same from which she was wont to regale the ladies of Holyrood. Tea was unknown in London at the time of the Restoration; and when introduced a few years afterwards by the Lords Arlington and Ossory, was valued at sixty shillings the pound; but the beautiful Mary d'Este of Modena was the first who made it known in the Scottish capital in 1681. This new and costly beverage was still one of the wonders and innovations of the age, and was only within the reach of the great and wealthy until about 1750; but the royal tea-parties, masks and entertainments of the Duchess Mary and her affable daughters, were long the theme of many a tall great-grandmother, and remembered with veneration and regret among other vanished glories, when, by the cold blight that fell upon her, poor Scotland felt too surely that "a stranger" filled the throne of the Stuarts. Lady Grisel of Bruntisfield, and other venerable dowagers and ancient maiden gentlewomen (a species in which some old Scottish families are still very prolific), all as stiff as pride, brocade, starch, and buckram could make them, were sitting very primly and uprightly in their high-backed chairs, clustered round the Countess's little tripod table, like pearls about a diamond, when the cavaliers advanced to pay their respects. "Welcome! Finland," said the Countess, addressing Douglas according to the etiquette of the country. "My old friend Walter, your most obedient servant. How fortunate!--we have just been disputing about romances, and drawing comparisons between that lumbering folio _The Banished Virgin_ and the _Cassandra_. You will act our umpire. My dear boy, let me look at you; how well you look, and so handsome, in all this bravery; doth he not, Mistress Lilian?" Lilian, who, in all the splendour of diamonds and full dress, was leaning on Aunt Grisel's chair, blushed too perceptibly at this very pointed question, but was spared attempting a reply, for the gay Countess continued: "Remember, Walter, that the great Middleton, who became an earl, and lieutenant-general of the Scots' Horse, began his career like yourself, by trailing a partisan in the old Royals--then Hepburn's pikemen in the French service; and who knoweth, my dear child, where yours may end? Heigho! These perilous times are the making and unmaking of many a brave man. So, Mr. Douglas, we were disputing about----(Madam Ruth, assist the gentlemen to dishes of tea)----about--what was it?--O, a passage in the _Cassandra_."