Ada had one brother, whom I have not yet spoken of. He was five years older than she was, and she always spoke of him in enthusiastic terms; but I never saw him except the twice I went to Eaton Square, in my first half-year. He was then rather more than twenty, and seemed a quiet young man, and I thought a little shy, and out of his element with us five girls. He was tall, and dark like his sister, but with a thoughtful, studious face, very unlike hers. Ada said that at ordinary times he was full of fun. All I can say is at these two visits I saw nothing of it. He had, I believe, entered the Guards, but after a short time determined to see some active service, and accordingly exchanged into the Lancers, I understood from Ada, very much to his mother's dissatisfaction. I have now briefly told all the events which occurred in my two years at school, which had in any way a bearing upon my after-life. I have told them all at once, in order that I may not have to go back to my schooldays again, which, indeed, were monotonous enough. I have read and heard that in some schools the girls engage in all sorts of fun and flirtation and adventures. It may be so; I do not know. I can only say we had no such goings on at "Grendon House," but, although naturally lively and full of fun enough, were certainly a quiet, well-conducted, ladylike set of girls, and no such nonsense, as far as I ever heard, entered into any one of our heads. CHAPTER VI. THE BISHOP OF RAVENNA. The autumn sun was blazing down upon the ancient city of Ravenna, and, over the flat pestilential country around it, an unwholesome malarious vapour hung thick and heavy. Perhaps in all Italy there is no more unhealthy spot than is the neighbourhood of Ravenna. The whole country is a swamp, the water oozes up in the fields at the very foot of its walls, and the agriculturist has but to sink a bottomless tub in the ground and he will have a well full to the brim, which no amount of drawing upon will exhaust. The city itself sits lonely and deserted amongst her green rice-grounds and swamps; her wide streets are empty, her churches without worshippers, her aspect mournful and desolate in the extreme. And yet this was once a mighty city, second only to imperial Rome in magnitude and importance, the seat of Emperors, and the cradle of Christianity. The swamps then were not in existence, but the bright waves of the Adriatic broke close to its walls, and the Roman galleys lay moored in the port of Classis within bow-shot range. The sea is far off now, and the rice-grounds stretch away level and flat where the waves broke. Classis has disappeared, and has left no sign; the hungry morasses have swallowed every stone and vestige, and the ancient church of St. Apollinarius alone marks where the place once stood; while, where the galleys anchored, the thick groves of the pine forest extend for miles in an unbroken shade. The emperors and exarchs, the