Mrs Maple now, violently ringing the bell, ordered one of her servants to summon the woman who came from abroad. The stranger obeyed, with the confused look of a person who expected a reprimand, to which she had not courage to reply. 'Be so good as to tell me,' said Mrs Maple, 'what you have been into my drawing-room for? and whether you know who it is, that has taken the liberty to play upon my niece's harp?' The Incognita begged a thousand pardons, but said that having learnt, from the house-maid, that the family was gone out for the day, she had ventured to descend, to take a little air and exercise in the garden. 'And what has that to do with my niece's harp?--And my drawing-room?' 'The door, Madam, was open.--It was long since I had seen an instrument--I thought no one would hear me--' 'Why you don't pretend that it was you who played?' The young woman renewed her apology. 'You?--You play upon a harp?--And pray who was it that sung?' The stranger looked down. 'Well, this is surprising indeed!--And pray where might such a body as you learn these things?--And what use can such a body want them for? Be so good as to tell me that; and who you are?' The stranger, in the utmost disturbance, painfully answered, 'I am truly ashamed, Madam, so often to press for your forbearance, but my silence is impelled by necessity! I am but too well aware how incomprehensible this must seem, but my situation is perilous--I cannot reveal it! I can only implore your compassion!--' She retired hastily. No one pursued nor tried to stop her. All, except Harleigh, remained nearly stupified by what had passed, for no one else had ever considered her but as a needy travelling adventurer. To him, her language, her air, and her manner, pervading every disadvantage of apparel, poverty, and subjection, had announced her, from the first, to have received the education, and to have lived the life of a gentlewoman; yet to him, also, it was as new, though not as wonderful, as to the rest, to find in her all the delicately acquired skill, joined to the happy natural talents, which constitute a refined artist. Elinor seemed absorbed in mortification, not sooner to have divined what Harleigh had so immediately discovered; Selina, triumphant, felt enchanted with an idea that the stranger must be a disguised princess; Mrs Maple, by a thousand crabbed grimaces, shewed her chagrin, that the frenchified stroller should not rather have been detected as a positive vagabond, then proved, by her possession of cultivated talents, to have been well brought up; and Ireton, who had thought her a mere female fortune-hunter, was utterly overset, till he comforted himself by observing, that many mere adventurers, from fortuitous circumstances, obtain accomplishments that may vie, in brilliancy, with those acquired by regular education and study.