“Well--it doesn’t seem to matter much what are the qualities of the voice if we can’t hear it,” the Manager said carelessly; and he told his fashionable partner of the singer he had heard of in Milan, who was to distance all the singers then on the operatic stage. “They are all like that,” he said--“like this private nightingale of yours, Ridsdale--till you hear them; and then they turn out to be very much like the rest. To tell the truth, I am not so very sorry this particular _protégée_ of yours has broken down; for I don’t believe the time has come for an English prima donna, if it ever comes. We’ve got no confidence in ourselves, so far as art goes--especially musical art. English opera, sir; there’s many fine pieces, but you’ll never keep it up in England. It might make a hit, perhaps, in Germany, or even France, but not here. Your English prima donna would be considered fit for the music halls. We’d have to dress her up in vowels, and turn her into an Italian. Contemptible? Oh, yes, it’s contemptible; but, if we’re to make our own money out of it, we mustn’t trouble ourselves about what’s contemptible. What we’ve got to do is to please the public. I’m just as glad that this idea of yours has broken down.” “Broken down! I will never allow it has broken down. It is much easier and pleasanter, of course, to go to Milan than to go to St. Michael’s,” said Rollo disdainfully. “But never mind; if you don’t start till Monday, trust me to arrange it somehow. Your new Milanese, of course, will be like all the rest. She will have been brought up to it. She will know how to do one thing, and no more; but this is genius--owing nothing to education and everything to nature. Capable of--I could not say what such a voice and such a woman is not capable of----” “Bravo, Ridsdale!” said his partner. “She is capable of stirring you up thoroughly, that is clear--and I hope she will be kind to you,” he said, with a big laugh, full of insinuations. The man was vulgar and fat, but a mountain of energy, and Rollo though disgusted, could not afford to quarrel with him. “You are entirely out in your notion,” he said, with that air of dignity which is apt to look fictitious in such circumstances. He was not himself easily shocked, nor would this interpretation of his motives have appeared to him at all unlikely in the case of another man; therefore, as was natural, his gravity and look of disgust only confirmed the suspicions of the other, and amused him the more. “Bravo, my boy; go in and win!” he said, chuckling; “promise whatever you like, if you find it necessary, and trust to me to back you up.” To say “I am unable to understand what you mean,” as Rollo did, with cold displeasure, yet consciousness, did but increase the ecstasy of the fat Manager over the evident fact that his fastidious friend was “caught at last.”