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Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2 by Sarah Tytler
page 22 of 350 (06%)
Mackay, gave forth, for the benefit of the strathspey and reel-
dancers, the stirring strains of "Miss Drummond of Perth,"
"Tullochgorum," and "The Marquis of Huntly's Highland Fling," which
must have rung with wild glee through the halls of kings.

Lady Chesterfield's minuet was the last dance before supper, served
with royal splendour in the dining-room, to which the Queen passed at
twelve o'clock. After supper the Queen danced in a quadrille and in
the two next minuets. Her first partner was the Duc de Nemours, who
wore an old French infantry general's uniform--a coat of white cloth,
the front covered with gold embroidery, sleeves turned up with crimson
velvet, waistcoat and breeches of crimson velvet, stockings of crimson
silk, and red-heeled shoes with diamond buckles. In the second minuet
her Majesty had her brother, the Prince of Leiningen, for her partner.
The ball was ended, according to a good old English fashion, by the
quaint changing measure of "Sir Roger de Coverley," known in Scotland
as "The Haymakers," in which the Queen had her husband for her
partner. This country-dance was danced in the picture gallery.

Let who would be the beauty at the Queen's ball, there was at least
one poetess there in piquant black and cerise, with cerise roses and
priceless point a l'aiguille, Lady John Scott, who had been the witty
heiress, Miss Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode. She wrote to an old
refrain one of the most pathetic of modern Scotch ballads--

Douglas, Douglas, tender and true

The beauty of the ball was the Marchioness of Douro, who not so long
ago had been the beauty of the season as Lady Elizabeth Hay, daughter
of the Marquis of Tweeddale, when she caught the fancy of the elder,
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