“Oh, go on, go on,” Ryder exhorted bitterly.  “I like it.  It’s better than I can do myself.  Go on....  But while you are talking trot out your tartans.  Something clannish now—­one of those ancestral rigs that you are always cherishing ...  Rich and red, to set off my dark, handsome type.”

“Set off you’ll be, Jack dear,” promised McLean, dragging out a huge chest.  “Set off you’ll be.”

* * * * *

Set off he was.

And a fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his brilliant image in the glass.  A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay with big buckles.

“Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the west,” warbled McLean merrily, as he straightened the shoulder pin of silver and Scotch topaz.

“Out of Hades,” said Ryder, rather pointlessly, for he felt it was Hades he was going into.

Chiefly he was concerned with his knees and the striking contrast between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his face....  Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass....  Bony hard, they flaunted their angles at every move....  He was grateful that he was not a centipede.

     “Oh, ’twas all for my rightful king,
       That I gaed o’er the border;
       Twas all for—­

“You didn’t tell me her name, now, Jack.”

“Where’s my mask?” Ryder was muttering.  “I say, aren’t there any pockets in these confounded petticoats?”

“In the sporran, man....  There!” McLean at last withheld his hand from its handiwork.  “Jock, you’re a grand sight,” he pronounced with a special Scottish burr.  “If ye dinna win her now—­’Bonny Charley’s now awa,’” he sung as Ryder, with a last darkling look at his vivid image, strode towards the door.

“He’s awa’ all right—­and he’ll be back again as soon as he can make it.”

With this cheerless anticipation of the evening’s promise, the departing one stalked, like an exiled Stuart, to his waiting carriage.

For a moment more McLean kept the ironic smile alive upon his lips, as he listened to the rattle of the wheels and the harsh gutturals of the driver, then the smile died as he turned back into the room.

“Eh, but wouldn’t you like it, though, Andy,” he said to himself, “if some girl now liked you enough to get you to go to one of those damned things....  The lucky dog!”

CHAPTER II

MASKS AND MASKERS

Moors and Juliets and Circassian slaves and Knights at Arms were fast emerging from lift or cloak room, and confronting each other through their masks in sheepish defiance and curiosity.  Adventurous spirits were circulating.  Voices, lowered and guarded, began to engage in nervous, tittering banter....  Laughter, belatedly smothered, flared to betrayals....