Meanwhile my education, as may be supposed, pursued a somewhat erratic course, and my standard of attainments would, I fear, have by no means been considered satisfactory by Mrs. Grundy. A life passed in hotels, _pensions_, and lodgings is unfavourable to regular studies; and, besides that, there was no one, after my mother's death, who cared sufficiently about my intellectual or moral progress to take the trouble of insisting on lessons being persevered with, whether I liked them or not. Consequently I learnt anything that took my fancy, and left alone everything else. On some out-of-the-way subjects I was better informed than the majority of my contemporaries; but then, on the other hand, I was ignorant of much that every schoolgirl is expected to know. My ideas, for instance, as to religious matters were extremely vague. I was but slightly acquainted with the contents of either the Bible or Prayer Book; never thought of religion as a thing with which I, personally, had to do; had not a notion of what constituted the differences between one form of religious belief and another; and never attended any place of worship except when some grand function was to come off. All I cared for in such a place was to listen to the music, and stare at the lights, vestments, decorations, ceremonial, and crowd; therefore I only went on great festivals, or when some especially prized relic was to be exhibited, or other unusual attraction offered; and, of course, I became more familiar with the interior of Roman Catholic churches and chapels than any other.