She used to play, or profess to play, the harp, and adopted, as she explained, a costume for the purpose.

This consisted of a loose, flowing garment, much like a muslin surplice, which fell back and allowed the arm to be seen when raised for performance on her favourite instrument.

The arm probably was, or had once been, a handsome one.

The large grey head, and the large blue eyes, and the drooping curls, were also raised simultaneously, and the player looked singularly like the picture of King David similarly employed, which I have seen as a frontispiece in an old-fashioned prayer-book.

But the specialty of the performance was that, as all present always said, no sound whatever was heard to issue from the instrument! "Attitude is everything," as we have heard in connection with other matters; but with dear old Mrs.Stisted at her harp it was absolutely and literally so to the exclusion of all else! She and the good old colonel--he _was_ a truly good and benevolent man, and, indeed, I believe she was a good and charitable woman, despite her manifold absurdities and eccentricities--used to drive out in the evening among her subjects--_her_ subjects, for neither I nor anybody else ever heard him called King of the Baths!--in an old-fashioned, very shabby and very high-hung phaeton, sometimes with her niece Charlotte--an excellent creature and universal favourite--by her side, and the colonel on the seat behind, ready to offer the hospitality of the place by his side to any mortal so favoured by the queen as to have received such an invitation.
The poor dear old colonel used to play the violoncello, and did at least draw some more or less exquisite sounds from it.