This had been the simple enthusiasm in Rollo’s mind up to his last meeting with Lottie Despard. He had pursued her closely that he might fully understand and know all the qualities of her voice--of the slave he wanted to buy: to know exactly what training it would want, and how much would have to be done to it before it could appear before the public, and begin to pay back what he had given for it. And point by point, as he pursued this quest of his, he had noted in her the qualities of beauty, the grace, the expression, the perfection of form and feature, which were so many additional advantages. The rush of colour to her cheek, of spirit or softness to her eyes, had delighted him, as proving in her the power to be an actress as well as a singer. He studied all her looks, interpreted her character to himself, and watched her movements with this end, with a frank indifference to every other, not even thinking what interpretation might be put, what interpretation she might herself put, upon this close and anxious attention. It was not till the evening when, overcome by the feelings which music and excitement had roused in her, Lottie had fled alone to her home, avoiding his escort, that he had suddenly awoke to the consciousness that it was no mere voice, but a young and beautiful woman, with whom he was dealing. The awakening gave him a shock--yet there was pleasure in it, and a flattering consciousness that his prima donna had all along been regarding him in no abstract, but an entirely individual, way. Rollo had been brought up among artificial sentiments. He had been used to hear people talk of the effect of music upon their imagination--of the sensations it gave them, and the manner in which they were dominated by it. But he had never seen any one honestly moved like Lottie--abandoning the sphere of her social success, silent in the height of her triumph. When he saw that she could not and would not sing again after that wonderful sacred song, he was himself more vividly impressed than he had ever been by music. It took her voice from her, and her breath--transported her out of herself. How strange it was, yet how real, how natural! just (when you came to think of it) as a pure and elevated mind ought to be touched: though he had never yet seen the fumes of art get so completely into any head before. The reality of Lottie’s emotion had awakened Rollo. He was not touched himself by Handel, but he was touched by Lottie. He suddenly saw _her_ through the mist of his own preconceived ideas, and through the cloud of conventionalities, those of art and those of society alike. Never in his life before had he so suddenly and distinctly come in contact with a genuine human creature, as God had made her--feeling, moving, living according to the dictates of nature, not as she had been trained to live and feel. This is not to say that he had met with no genuine people in his life. His father and mother were real enough, and so was his aunt,