After having once more visited Oscar, in the company of Phiobaire bhig, Macleod went up again to the brilliantly lit hall; and here he found that a further number of his friends had arrived.  Among them was young Ogilvie, in the tartan of the Ninety-third Highlanders; and very smart indeed the boy-officer looked in his uniform.  Mrs. Ross was here too and she was busy in assisting to get up the Highland quadrille.  When she asked Macleod if he would join in it, he answered by asking her to be his partner, as he would be ashamed to display his ignorance before an absolute stranger.  Mrs. Ross most kindly undertook to pilot him through the not elaborate intricacies of the dance; and they were fortunate in having the set made up entirely of their own friends.

Then the procession of the children took place; and the fantastically dressed crowd formed a lane to let the homely-clad lads and lasses pass along, with the six small pipers proudly playing a march at their head.

He stopped the last of the children for a second.

“Have you got a tart, and an orange, and a shilling?”

“No, sir.”

“I have got the word of a prince for it,” he said to himself, as he went out of the room; “and they shall not go home with empty pockets.”

As he was coming up the staircase again to the ball-room he was preceded by two figures that were calculated to attract any one’s notice by the picturesqueness of their costume.  The one stranger was apparently an old man, who was dressed in a Florentine costume of the fourteenth century—­a cloak of sombre red, with a flat cap of black velvet, one long tail of which was thrown over the left shoulder and hung down behind.  A silver collar hung from his neck across his breast:  other ornament there was none.  His companion, however, drew all eyes toward her as the two passed into the ball-room.  She was dressed in imitation of Gainsborough’s portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire; and her symmetrical figure and well-poised head admirably suited the long trained costume of blue satin, with its fichu of white muslin, the bold coquettish hat and feathers, and the powdered puffs and curls that descended to her shoulders.  She had a gay air with her, too.  She bore her head proudly.  The patches on her cheek seemed not half so black as the blackness of her eyes, so full of a dark mischievous light were they; and the redness of the lips—­a trifle artificial, no doubt—­as she smiled seemed to add to the glittering whiteness of her teeth.  The proud, laughing, gay coquette:  no wonder all eyes were for a moment turned to her, in envy or in admiration.