“I do not think Laura is engaged for this dance.  Excuse me a moment till I ascertain.”  Miss Rennie walked across the room, leaving William Dalzell and the stranger together, but she presently returned, with the assurance that Miss Wilson was disengaged, and would be happy to be introduced to Mr. Dalzell.  Miss Wilson was ward of Mrs. Rennie’s, as Jane had heard, a West Indian heiress, somewhat stupid, and very much impressed with her own wealth and importance.  Miss Rennie had a pitying sort of liking for her, though sometimes Laura’s airs were too much for her, and they would not speak to each other for a week at a time.  She had just left school, having made all the progress which money without natural ability or any of the usual incentives to application could attain, and was to live at the Rennies’, which she thought a very dull place.  This large party was the brightest thing in her horizon at present, and she was looking her best, and took her place in the dance with one of the handsomest men in the room, with much more animation than was usual with her.

“Now,” said Miss Rennie, “I have done my best for Mr. Dalzell.  I must attend to my other stranger before I fulfil my engagement to you, Mr. Hogarth, and I hope you will excuse me, when it is to get a partner for Alice.  Miss Melville, I suppose, does not care about dancing, she is so dreadfully matter-of-fact.  I know you have been talking politics, or something as bad, in that corner all this evening.”

So Miss Rennie led the stranger across the room, and introduced Miss Alice Melville to Mr. Brandon, from Australia.

Chapter XII.

Mr. Brandon In Edinburgh

“You must excuse any blunders I may make in my dancing, Miss Melville, for I am an old bushman, and have been out of practice for many years,” said Mr. Brandon.

In spite of Elsie’s being an admirable dancer, she was too much excited to do her best, and the stranger made no great figure in his first debut in that line.  Miss Rennie was inwardly rejoicing that she had herself got rid of him.

“What part of Australia do you come from?” asked Elsie, in the first pause.

“From Victoria, as it is called now.  It was called Port Phillip when I went there.”

“Have you been long in the colony?”

“A long time—­long enough for all my friends to forget me.  But yet I need make no complaint; they have all been very kind; but I think I am entitled to a spell now.”

“To a what?” asked Elsie, to whom the term was new.

“To a rest, or rather a fling—­a holiday.  Ah!  Miss Melville, you can have no idea what a rough life I have led for many years.  You cannot fancy how delightful, how perfectly beautiful it is to me to be in such society as this after the Australian bush.”