He asked himself this question as, disappointed and annoyed, he left the Manager’s ostentatious rooms; and a new sense of unkindness, ungenerosity, unmanliness in having exposed a harmless person, a woman whose reputation should be sacred, to such animadversions, suddenly came into his mind, he could not tell how. This view of the matter had never occurred to Rollo before. The women he had heard discussed--and he had heard almost everybody discussed, from the highest to the lowest--had nothing sacred about them to the laughing gossips who discussed all they had done, or might have done, or might be going to do. This, too, was a new idea to him. Who was there whom he had not heard spoken of? ladies a thousand times more important than Miss Despard, the poor Chevalier’s daughter at St. Michael’s--and nobody had seemed to think there was any harm in it. A man’s duty not to let a woman be lightly spoken of? Pooh! What an exaggerated sentimental piece of nonsense! Why should not women take their chance, like any one else? Rollo was like most other persons when in a mental difficulty of this kind. He was not so much discussing with himself as he was the arena of a discussion which unseen arguers were holding within him. While one of these uttered this Pooh! another replied, with a heat and fervour altogether unknown to the clubs, What had Lottie Despard done to subject herself to these suggestions? she who knew nothing about society and its evil thoughts--she who had it in her to be uplifted and transported by the music at which these other people, at the best, would clap their hands and applaud. The argument in Rollo’s mind went all against himself and his class. He hated not only his manager-partner, whom it was perfectly right and natural to hate, but himself and all the rest of his kind. He was so much disgusted, that he almost made up his mind to let fortune and the English prima donna go together, and to take no further step to make the girl known to those who were so incapable of appreciating her. But when he came that length, Rollo had reached the end of his tether, struck against the uttermost limits of his horizon--and thus was brought back suddenly to the question how he was best to make his prize known? CHAPTER XX. AN UNCONSCIOUS TRIAL.