The evening came, and with it the few select friends of the Countess of Smatterton, who were to compose her party. There were not many persons in town at this time; but Penelope had never before seen anything bearing the slightest resemblance to a fashionable party, for she had never been at the Easter ball at the Mansion house, or at Bartholomew fair; to her therefore this very small select party looked like a very tumultuous and promiscuous multitude. Every face was strange to her, and as the apartments were splendidly lighted up, the drawing and music rooms opening into each other, and displaying by means of mirrors a deceiving appearance as to their real dimensions. Thus magnified and multiplied, they looked to her unpractised eye as awfully public as a great theatre. Part of the company was assembled before Penelope made her appearance. When therefore she entered the middle drawing-room, which was the apartment most usually occupied by the family, she was surprised at the sight of lighted apartments on both sides of this, and these apartments to her eye filled with elegant company. She was still more surprised at entering the room to find that no one took the slightest notice of her in the way of courtesy, but that three or four young gentlemen who were standing together near a fire-place absolutely and immovably stared at her: and then, as soon as she caught sight of the Countess of Smatterton, she observed that her ladyship was engaged in conversation with a great, broad, coarse, overdressed female, who was talking very loud and looking very majestically. This stranger appeared like a very vulgar woman to our unfashionable heroine, but was in reality no less a personage than the Duchess of Steeple Bumstead. Her Grace put her glass to her eye, and contemplated by its means the face and figure of Penelope. The poor girl felt very uncomfortable and ill at ease being thus gazed at so unmercifully. As soon as her Grace had satisfied her curiosity she dropt her glass, and wheeled round and sailed away in another direction. The Countess of Smatterton then approached the confused and embarrassed dependent, and after giving her a good-humoured rebuke for making her appearance in such very sable attire, told her that the Duchess of Steeple Bumstead was very desirous of hearing her sing.