“You forget I don’t know where they come, nor the meaning of them,” said Lottie, calmly. “I never heard an opera. I think these things are beautiful, but they only sing to my ear, they don’t come in to _me_.” Rollo shook his head. He was half touched, half shocked. It was her ignorance; but then a woman destined for a prima donna, a woman with musical genius, _ought_ to know the best by intuition, he thought. All the same, he was more interested than if she had raved as the commonplace, half educated amateur raves. “But Handel does,” he said. “Ah!” Lottie cried, her face lighting up. But she added, after a moment, “I am too ignorant to be worth talking to; you will be disgusted. I never thought much about Handel. It was not Handel, it was _that_.” A flush of colour came over her face with the recollection. She was too uninstructed (notwithstanding the neighbourhood of the Abbey) to have fully woke up to Handel or anyone. “I suppose I have heard it and did not pay much attention to it,” she said; “it was singing it. One does not understand at first--till suddenly one hears one’s self, and you say, ‘What is this that is speaking; what is this? it cannot be _me_!’” “I think I understand--a little,” said Rollo doubtfully; “though it is simply _you_ that makes a something quite familiar, a piece of music we have all heard a hundred times, become a new revelation to us all in a moment. I am going away, Miss Despard, and it may be some time before I return. Would you do me such a great favour--which I have no right to ask--as to sing me something now before I go?” But Lottie would not sing. She said, “Oh no, no,” with a half terror which he did not understand, and which she did not understand herself. The tone was one which forbade the repetition of the request. He begged her pardon anxiously, and there was a little languid conversation about other subjects, and then he rose. He put out his hand again, looking into her eyes, which she raised shyly, almost for the first time. Rollo had a way of looking into the eyes of women to whom he wished to make himself agreeable. It is sometimes very impertinent, and always daring, but, especially when the woman’s imagination is on the side of the gazer, it is very efficacious. Lottie was entirely inexperienced, and she trembled under this look, but felt it penetrate to her very heart. “Till we meet again,” he said, with a smile, holding her hand for that necessary moment while he said his good-by. “It will not be very long; and I hope that you will be kind to me, Miss Despard, and let me hear you----”