After a little bashful reluctance, she seated herself upon the round stool. She was short and thick, with a very small waist and a very full gown, and she sat extremely stiff and upright. Her arms were short, and when she meant to play _staccato_, she caught up her hands as high as her shoulders, and then she pounced down again on the affrighted notes as a kite upon a brood of chickens. The “sweet thing” she selected for the occasion was in a German style. A love-lorn damsel who sold herself to the spirit of darkness, that she might rejoin her murdered lover’s ghost in another, but not a better, world. Miss Pennefeather’s nose was small, and somewhat _retroussé_; her eyes were large, black, and round (they were her beauty); her mouth would not have been ugly, but that it was difficult to decide where her chin ended and her throat began, so that, during the vehement and energetic passages which the nature of the subject called forth, when the head was thrown back, and the black eyes were darting their beams towards the ceiling, the double chin protruded rather beyond the natural and original one. The gentlemen entered just as the maiden was torn away to the realms below by the infernal crew, and, having repented her of her unholy compact, was invoking beings of the upper air to her rescue. The poor pianoforte reeled under the astounding accompaniment, in its lowest bass to the deep-toned exultation of the demons, and to the shrieks of the maiden in its highest treble; the Sappho’s cheeks were suffused with the excitement of the moment, the feathers in her yellow toque were waving as rapidly as the plume of a hero in the thickest of the fight. The sight, the sounds, were awful! The dandy reached the door—he saw—he heard—and, he fled. He retreated to the hall, and hastily seizing a hat (which, by the by, happened to be Lord Montreville’s instead of his own,) and throwing around him his military cloak, he boldly sallied forth in a drizzling wet night to walk two miles to his lodgings. “He’d brave the raging of the skies, But not”—Miss Pennefeather. The other gentlemen were less easily intimidated, and made good their entrance. Lord Montreville seated himself by the side of Lucy, and, without speaking enough to be uncivil towards the performer, he contrived to make Lucy perfectly understand that he preferred her conversation to Miss Pennefeather’s singing, although he was passionately fond of music, and should like of all things to hear her sing. When the performance was concluded, he assured the Corinne of the evening that her composition was one which could be heard with indifference by no one. Miss Pennefeather was charmed, and asked if his Lordship was an admirer of the new style of English music, which had been introduced since the Captive Knight and the Treasures of the Deep had made such a sensation.