and the brave heart. He
was here to-night, looking on at the scene of pleasure with as absent
and absorbed a face as a London stockbroker might have worn in the midst
of a financial crisis.

The brilliant mirage before the shining anticipative eyes of the fair
Belinda did not preclude her from entering with youthful ardor into
these festivities now _faute de mieux_ garbed in a canary-colored tabby,
of which the moire effect, as we should say nowadays, glistened and
shoaled in the light and the luster of the silk. It was worn opening
over a skirt of white satin with yellow stripes, enclosing in each a
delicate pattern of a vine of roses in several natural tints from pink
to a deep purplish red, all having that sere sort of freshness which
comes from solicitous preservation rather than newness--like a pressed
flower; one might imagine that garbed thus the galvanized widow had
captured the affections of the bishop's son, not then perhaps so
severely ascetic of outlook. But Miss Belinda danced as graciously with
the ensign as if she had no splendid ulterior views, and graced the
minuet which Odalie and Captain Demere led. Hamish looking at them
thought that though she was as unlike Odalie as a splendid tulip differs
from the stately, tender sweetness of the aspect of a white rose, they
both adorned the dance like flowers in a parterre. He resolved with a
glow of fraternal pride that he would tell Odalie how beautiful she was
in her primrose-tinted gown and deep red jupon with her dark hair rolled
high, and its string of white pearls, her step so deliberate and smooth
with its precision of grace as with uplifted clasped hands she and the
officer opened the dance.

This minuet was a splendid maze to Hamish's limited experience, as the
firelight glowed and flashed on the scarlet uniforms and the delicate,
dainty tints of the gowns of the ladies, giving out the gloss of satin
and now and again showing the soft whiteness of a bare arm held upward
to the clasp of a partner's hand in a lace ruffle and a red sleeve in
the graceful attitudes prescribed by the dance. The measured and stately
step, the slow, smooth whirl, the swinging changing postures, the fair
smiling faces and shining eyes, all seemed curiously enhanced by the
environment--the background of boughs of holly on the walls, and the
military suggestions of the metallic flashing of the arms resting on the
line of deer antlers that encircled the room--it was like a bird