Rollo, who was not aware of the vehement interest with which the Signor espoused Purcell’s cause, felt the Manager’s suspicions echo through his own mind. He knew how entirely disinclined he felt to enter upon this question. Was his companion right, and had the Signor been hit too? It seemed to Rollo that the wonder was how anyone could avoid that catastrophe. The Manager made very merry, as they went back to town, upon Lottie’s voice and the character of the admiration which it had excited; but all this Rollo received with as much solemnity of aspect as characterised the Signor. CHAPTER XXI. SEARCHINGS OF HEART. It was not to be supposed that the visit of Rollo and his companion should pass unnoticed in so small a community as that of St. Michael’s, where everybody knew him, and in which he had all the importance naturally belonging to a member, so to speak, of the reigning family. Everybody noticed his appearance in the Abbey, and it soon became a matter of general talk that he was not at the Deanery, but had come down from town expressly for the service, returning by as early a train afterwards as the Sunday regulations of the railway allowed. What did he come for? Not to see his relations, which would have been a comprehensible reason for so brief a visit. He had been seen talking to somebody at the north door, and he had been seen following the Signor, in company with a large and brilliant person who wore more rings and studs and _breloques_ than had ever been seen at St. Michael’s. Finally, this remarkable stranger, who was evidently a friend of the Signor as well as of Rollo, had been visible on the little green terrace outside Rossinetti’s sitting-room, smoking cigarettes and drinking claret-cup, and tilting up his chair upon two legs in a manner which suggested a tea-garden, critics said, more than a studious nook sheltered among the buttresses of the Abbey. Public opinion was instinctively unfavourable to Rollo’s companion; but what was the young prince, Lady Caroline’s nephew, doing there? Then the question arose, who was it to whom Rollo had been talking at the north door? All the Canons and their wives, and the ladies in the Lodges, and even the townspeople, when the story reached them, cried out “Impossible!” when they were told that it was Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. But that lady had no intention of concealing the honour done her. She published it, so to speak, on the housetops. She neglected no occasion of making her friends acquainted with all the particulars of the interview. “And who should it have been but me?” she said. “Is there e’er another one at St. Michael’s that knows as much of his family? Who was it but an uncle of his, or maybe it might be a cousin, that was in the regiment with us and O’Shaughnessy’s greatest friend? Many’s the good turn the Major’s done him; and, say the worst you can o’ the Ridsdales, it’s not ungrateful they are. It’s women that are little in their ways.