-chairs pass from the Stamp Office Close, bearing her and her
stately brood to the Assembly Room, amid a crowd that was "hushed with
respect and admiration to behold their lofty and graceful figures step
from the chairs on the pavement."

Here itself is the site of those old Assemblies presided over at one
time by the famous Miss Nicky Murray, a directress of society affairs,
who seems to have been a feminine premonition of Count d'Orsay and our
own McAllister. Rather dull they must have been, those old Scotch
balls, where Goldsmith saw the ladies and gentlemen in two dismal
groups divided by the length of the room.

"The Assembly Close received the fair--
Order and elegance presided there--
Each gay Right Honourable had her place,
To walk a minuet with becoming grace.
No racing to the dance with rival hurry,
Such was thy sway, O famed Miss Nicky Murray!"

It was half past nine in the evening when Salemina and I drove to
Holyrood, our humble cab-horse jogging faithfully behind Lady Baird's
brougham, and it was the new experience of seeing Auld Reekie by
lamplight that called up these gay visions of other days,--visions and
days so thoroughly our mental property that we could not help
resenting the fact that women were hanging washing from the Countess
of Eglinton's former windows, and popping their unkempt heads out of
the Duchess of Gordon's old doorway.

The Reverend Ronald is so kind! He enters so fully into our spirit of
inquiry, and takes such pleasure in our enthusiasms! He even sprang
lightly out of Lady Baird's carriage and called to our "lamiter" to
halt while he showed us the site of the Black Turnpike, from whose
windows Queen Mary saw the last of her kingdom's capital.

"Here was the Black Turnpike, Miss Hamilton!" he cried; "and from here
Mary went to Loch Leven, where you Hamiltons and the Setons came
gallantly to her help. Don't you remember the 'far ride to the Solway
sands'?"

I looked with interest, though I was in such a state of delicious
excitement that I could scarce keep my seat.

"Only a few minutes more, Salemina," I sighed, "and we shall be in the
palace courtyard; then a probable half-hour in crowded dressing-rooms,
with another half-hour in line, and then, then we shall be making our
best republican bow in the Gallery of the Kings! How I wish Mr.
Beresford and Francesca were with us! What do you suppose was her real
reason for staying away? Some petty disagre