Penelope saw by the nearest mirror that the aspect of her attire was dark indeed, but dark as it was it could not express the mourning which she felt for her great loss. She was by no means in a proper frame of mind for the enjoyment of society, or at all fit for anything that wore the aspect of festivity. She suffered herself to be led into the music-room by the Countess, and she made a most respectful curtesy to the Duchess of Steeple Bumstead, when she had the honor of being introduced to a personage of such elevated rank. But still Penelope could not help thinking that fashionable manners were not agreeable: for she recollected that her late uncle used to define politeness as being that kind of behaviour which was least calculated to give pain to others; and yet Penelope felt more pain from the behaviour of the Duchess of Steeple Bumstead, and that of some of the whiskered boys in Lady Smatterton’s drawing room, than she would have felt from persons not so high in rank and so fashionable in manners. All that arose from her ignorance of ways of the world. Why did she take the opinion of her uncle as oracular in those matters of which he could not possibly know anything at all? A country clergyman, who studies books all his life-time, can know nothing of the world. The Duchess was pleased to question Penelope on the subject of music, and was pleased to express her approbation of the good taste which the young lady displayed. By degrees the manners of her Grace appeared less repulsive, and Penelope felt herself more at her ease. There was standing by the pianoforte a young lady of mild, pleasing, and prepossessing countenance, to whom the Duchess addressed herself: “My dear Jemima, you will perhaps have the goodness to accompany Miss Primrose on the pianoforte to some song, if there be one there that our friend would like to sing.”