“I will not dance--to make sport for the fine folk,” said Kirsteen in the same tone.
“You are just like my father,” said Mary, “spoiling other folks’ pleasure. Will ye come or will ye not, and the gentleman waiting--and me that cannot if you will not.”
“Come, my dear,” said old Glendochart. He patted her hand as he drew it through his arm. “I have known your father and all your friends this fifty years, and ye must not refuse an old man.”
Neither of the girls were very much at their ease in the quadrille, but they watched the first dancers with anxious attention, and followed their example with the correctness of a lesson just received. Kirsteen, though she began very reluctantly, was soothed in spite of herself by the music and the measure, and the satisfaction of having a share in what was going on. She forgot for a moment the gibes she had listened to with such indignation. A quadrille is a very humdrum performance nowadays to those who know nothing so delightful as the wild monotony of the round dance. But in Kirsteen’s time the quadrille was still comparatively new, and very “genteel.” It was an almost solemn satisfaction to have got successfully through it, and her old partner was very kind and took her out to the tea-room afterwards with the greatest attention, pointing out to her the long vista of the corridor and some of the pictures on the walls, and everything that was worth seeing. They were met as they came back by a very fine gentleman with a riband and a star, who stopped to speak to her companion, and at whom Kirsteen looked with awe. “And who may this bonny lass be?” the great man said. “A daughter of yours, Glendochart?”
“No daughter of mine,” said the old gentleman in a testy tone. “I thought your Grace was aware I was the one of your clan that had not married. The young lady is Miss Kirsteen Douglas, a daughter of Drumcarro.”
“I beg your--her pardon and yours; I ought to have known better,” said the Duke. “But you must remember, Glendochart, when you are in such fair company, that it is never too late to mend.”
“He should indeed have known better,” said Glendochart, when they had passed on. “These great folk, Miss Kirsteen, they cannot even take the trouble to mind--which kings do, they say, who have more to think of. And yet one would think my story is not a thing to forget. Did you ever hear how it was that John Campbell of Glendochart was a lone auld bachelor? It’s not a tale for a ball-room, but there’s something in your pretty eyes that makes me fain to tell.”