As luck would have it, Lola's interview with him came at just the right moment, for he was alternating ballet with opera and was in want of a fresh attraction. Convinced that he recognised it in his caller (or, perhaps, anxious to please Lord Malmesbury), he offered her an engagement there and then to dance a _pas seul_ between the acts of _Il Barbiere di Seviglia_. "If you make a hit," he said, "you shall have a contract for the rest of the season. It all depends on yourself." Lola, wanting nothing better, left the managerial office, treading on air. As was his custom, Lumley cultivated the critics, and would receive them in his sanctum whenever he had a novel attraction to submit. "I have a surprise for you in my next programme," he said, when the champagne and cigars had been discussed. "This is that I have secured Donna Lola, a Spanish dancer, direct from Seville. She is, I assure you, deliciously beautiful and remarkably accomplished. I pledge you my word, gentlemen, she will create a positive _furore_ here." In 1843 dramatic critics had the privilege of attending rehearsals and penetrating behind the scenes. One of their number, adopting the pseudonym "Q," has left an account of the manner in which he first met Lola Montez. He had called on Lumley for a gossip, and was invited by that authority to descend to the stage and watch his new acquisition practising a dance there. "At that period," he says, "her figure was even more attractive than her face, lovely as the latter was. Lithe and graceful as a young fawn, every movement she made was instinct with melody. Her dark eyes were blazing and flashing with excitement, for she felt that I was willing to admire her.... As she swept round the stage, her slender waist swayed to the music, and her graceful head and neck bent with it like a flower that bends with the impulse given to its stem by the fitful temper of the wind." Lumley was tactful enough to leave the pressman alone with the star. As the latter promised to "give her a good puff in his paper," Lola, who never missed an opportunity, made herself specially agreeable to him. Her bright eyes did their work. "When we separated," says "Q" in his reminiscences, "I found myself tumbled heels over head into the profound depths of that which the French call a _grande passion_." Lumley's next step was to draw up an announcement of the promised novelty for inclusion in the programme: HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE June 3, 1843 SPECIAL ATTRACTION! Mr. Benjamin Lumley begs to announce that, between the acts of the Opera, DONNA LOLA MONTEZ, of the Teatro Real, Seville, will have the honour to make her first appearance in England in the Original Spanish dance El Oleano.