What an opportunity was this of seizing hold upon her--of overcoming any objection that might arise! Rollo felt himself Lottie’s best friend as he heard of this complication. While she might help to make his fortune he could make her independent, above the power of any disreputable father or undesirable home. He could not bear to think that such a girl should be lost in conditions so wretched, and, though the Dean was obdurate, he did not lose hope. But between Thursday and Monday is not a very long time for such negotiations, and the Manager was entirely preoccupied by his Milanese, whom another impresario was said to be on the track of, and in whom various connoisseurs were interested. It is impossible to describe the scorn and incredulity with which Rollo himself heard his partner’s account of this new singer. He put not the slightest faith in her. “I know how she will turn out,” he said. “She will shriek like a peacock; she will have to be taught her own language; she will be coached up for one _rôle_ and good for nothing else; and she will smell of garlic enough to kill you.” “Oh, garlic will never kill me!” said the vulgar partner who gave Rollo so much trouble. In the meantime he wrote to the Signor to see what could be done, and begged with the utmost urgency that he would arrange something. “Perhaps the old Irishwoman next door would receive us,” Rollo said, “even if she has got no piano. Try, my dear Rossinetti, I implore you; try your best.” The Signor was very willing to serve the Dean’s nephew; but he was at the moment very much put out by Lottie’s reception of young Purcell, as much as if it had been himself that had been refused. “Who is Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and how am I to communicate with her?” he cried; and he did not throw himself into the work with any zeal. All that he would do at last, moved by Rollo’s repeated letters, was to bid him bring his friend down to the service on Sunday afternoon, when he would see Lottie at least, and hear something of her voice. The Manager grinned at this invitation. He was not an enthusiast for Handel, and shrugged his shoulders at sacred music generally as much out of his line; but he ended, having no better engagement on hand, by consenting to go. It was the end of the season; the opera was over, and all its fashionable patrons dispersed; and St. Michael’s was something to talk of at least. So the two connoisseurs arrived on a warm afternoon of early August, when the grey pinnacles of the Abbey blazed white in excessive sunshine, and the river showed like glowing metal here and there through the broad valley, too brilliant to give much refreshment to the eyes.