. Sometimes, too, they
danced the _Minuet de la Cour_.

[Illustration: Minuet de la Cour 009-177]

Having once done it, they had been often unanimously requested to repeat
it. In this they had no competitors. Miss Gryll confined herself to
quadrilles, and Mr. Falconer did not even propose to walk through one
with her. When dancing brought into Miss Nipher/s cheeks the blush-rose
bloom, which had more than once before so charmed Lord Curryfin, it
required little penetration to see, through his external decorum, the
passionate admiration with which he regarded her. Mr. Falconer remarked
it, and, looking round to Miss Gryll, thought he saw the trace of a tear
in her eye. It was a questionable glistening: jealousy construed it
into a tear. But why should it be there? Was her mind turning to Lord
Curryfin? and the more readily because of a newly-perceived obstacle?
Had mortified vanity any share in it? No: this was beneath _Morgana._
Then why was it there? Was it anything like regret that, in respect
of the young lord, she too had lost her opportunity? Was he himself
blameless in the matter? He had been on the point of declaration, and
she had been apparently on the point of acceptance: and instead of
following up his advantage, he had been absent longer than usual. This
was ill; but in the midst of the contending forces which severally acted
on him, how could he make it well? So he sate still, tormenting himself.

In the meantime, Mr. Gryll had got up at a card-table, in the outer,
which was the smaller drawing-room, a quadrille party of his own,
consisting of himself, Miss Ilex, the Reverend Dr. Opimian, and _Mr.
MacBorrowdale._

_Mr. Gryll._ This is the only game of cards that ever pleased me. Once
it was the great evening charm of the whole nation. Now, when cards are
played at all, it has given place to whist, which, in my younger days,
was considered a dry, solemn, studious game, played in moody silence,
only interrupted by an occasional outbreak of dogmatism and ill-humour.
Quadrille is not so absorbing but that we may talk and laugh over it,
and yet is quite as interesting as anything of the kind has need to be.

_Miss Ilex._ I delight in quadrille. I am old enough to remember when,
in mixed society in the country, it was played every evening by some of
the party. But _Chaque age a ses plaisirs, son esprit, et ses mours._{1}
It is one of the evils of growing old that we do not easily habituate
ourselves to chang