this comparative nearness fettered rather than emancipated the players
in the game, and that, though civil wars and clan feuds had long died
out, and the memory of the Scotch rebellion was no more than a
picturesque tragic romance, a trifle of awkwardness survived in the
encounter, face to face once more, in the very guise of the past, of
the descendants of the men and women who had won at Prestonpans and
lost at Culloden. It was said that a grave and stately formality
distinguished this ball--a tone attributed to dignified, troublesome
fashions--stranger then, but which since these days have become more
familiar to us.

No two more attractive figures presented themselves that night than
the sisters-in-law, the Duchess of Kent and the Duchess of
Gloucester, the one in her sixtieth the other in her seventieth year.
The third royal duchess in the worthy trio, who represented long and
well the royal matronhood of England, the Duchess of Cambridge, was,
along with her Duke, prevented from being present at the Queen's ball
in consequence of a recent death in her family. The Duchess of Kent
wore a striped and "flowered" brocade, with quantities of black lace
relieving the white satin of her train. The Duchess of Gloucester,
sweet pretty Princess Mary of more than fifty years before, came in
the character of a much less happy woman, Marie Leczinska, the queen
of Louis XV. She must have looked charming in her rich black brocade,
and some of the hoards of superb lace--which she is said to have
inherited from her mother, Queen Charlotte--edged with strings of
diamonds and agraffes of diamonds, while over her powdered hair was
tied a fichu capuchin of Chantilly.

Among the multitude of guests assembled at Buckingham Palace, the
privileged few who danced in the Queen's minuets, as well as the