“You shall have one,” said he coaxingly. He went to the landlord and inquired if there was a piano in the house. “Yes, there is one,” said he. “And it is mine,” said a sharp female voice. “May I beg the use of it?” “No,” said the lady, a tall, bony spinster. “I cannot have it strummed on and put out of tune by everybody.” “But this is not everybody. The lady I want it for is a professional musician. Top of the tree.” “The hardest strummers going.” “But, mademoiselle, this lady is going to sing at the opera. She _must_ study. She _must_ have a piano. “But [grimly] she need not have mine. “Then she must leave the hotel.” “Oh [haughtily], _that_ is as she pleases.” Ashmead went to Ina Klosking in a rage and told her all this, and said he would take her to another hotel kept by a Frenchman: these Germans were bears. But Ina Klosking just shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Take me to her.” He did so; and she said, in German, “Madam, I can quite understand your reluctance to have your piano strummed. But as your hotel is quiet and respectable, and I am unwilling to leave it, will you permit me to play to you? and then you shall decide whether I am worthy to stay or not.” The spinster drank those mellow accents, colored a little, looked keenly at the speaker, and, after a moment's reflection, said, half sullenly, “No, madam, you are polite. I must risk my poor piano. Be pleased to come with me.” She then conducted them to a large, unoccupied room on the first-floor, and unlocked the piano, a very fine one, and in perfect tune. Ina sat down, and performed a composition then in vogue. “You play correctly, madam,” said the spinster; “but your music--what stuff! Such things are null. They vex the ear a little, but they never reach the mind.” Ashmead was wroth, and could hardly contain himself; but the Klosking was amused, and rather pleased. “Mademoiselle has positive tastes in music,” said she; “all the better.” “Yes,” said the spinster, “most music is mere noise. I hate and despise forty-nine compositions out of fifty; but the fiftieth I adore. Give me something simple, with a little soul in it--if you can.” Ina Klosking looked at her, and observed her age and her dress, the latter old-fashioned. She said, quietly, “Will mademoiselle do me the honor to stand before me? I will sing her a trifle my mother taught me.”