It was not only in the mind of young Purcell that Lottie’s circumstances and prospects were the subject of thought. Rollo Ridsdale had not watched and worshipped as the young musician had done. Nor had he, even on his first introduction to her, looked upon Lottie as anything but the possessor of a beautiful voice, of which use might be made, for her benefit no doubt in the long run, but primarily for his own. She was not a divinity; she was not even a woman; she was a valuable stock-in-trade, a most important implement with which to work. Rollo had gone through a very effectual training in this kind. He had run through the little money he possessed so soon, and had learned the use of his wits so early, that the most energetic of tradesmen was not more alive to all the charms of gain than he. The means, perhaps, may be of a different kind, but it does not very much matter in principle whether a man is trained to sharp bargains in bric-à-brac or in cotton bales; and it is not essentially a loftier trade to speculate in pictures and china than in shares and stocks. This young aristocrat had kept his eyes very wide open to anything that might come in his way. He was not a director of companies chiefly because his poor little Honourable was not a sufficiently valuable possession to be traded upon, though it had some small value pecuniarily. Lord Courtland himself might indeed have made a few hundreds a year out of his title, but to his second son the name was not worth so much. It secured him some advantages. It gave him the _entrée_ to places where things were to be “picked up,” and it helped him to puff and even to dispose of the wares which he might have in hand. It kept him afloat; it ameliorated poverty; it took away all objections to the sale and barter in which, profitably or unprofitably, he spent so much of his life. Had he gone upon the Stock Exchange, society might have made comments upon the strange necessity; but when Rollo’s collection of _objets d’art_ was sold, nobody found anything to object to in the transaction, which put a comfortable sum in his pocket, and enabled him to go forth to fresh fields and pastures new; neither was there anything unbecoming his nobility in the enterprise which he had now in hand. Theatres are not generally a very flourishing branch of commerce; yet it cannot be denied that those who ruin themselves by them embark in the enterprise with as warm an inclination towards gain as any shopkeeper could boast of. Rollo had thought of Lottie’s voice as something quite distinct from any personality. It was a commodity he would like to buy, as he would have liked to buy a picture, or anything rare and beautiful, of which he could be sure that he would get more than his own money for it. In that, as in other things, he would have bought in the cheapest market and sold in the dearest. He would have thought it only right and natural to secure at a low rate the early services of a prima donna.