We made rather a sad entrance into our new abode, for we had not been settled above two days when the portress appeared to me with a very troubled face, and asked me to come and see her Giulia, who, she feared, was dying. The poor woman was in dreadful grief, having lost another daughter not many months before. I accompanied her to the sick room, where I found a very pretty girl, by whose bedside I took my place. With that trustfulness which is a leading characteristic in young Italians, she took my hand, and addressed me as if I had been an old friend. I tried to speak cheerfully to her, but there was something so spiritual and far away in the look of her pleading eyes that it failed me to hold out to her any hope of recovery. She had only lately fallen ill, she told me, but knew that she was dying, for her sister’s last words to her were “Tornero per te.”[33] She scarcely knew at the time what was meant by these ominous words. Footnote 33: “I will return for thee.” “But two nights ago, signorina,” she said, “I looked up and saw Anna by my bedside; she had fulfilled her promise and came back for me.” Poor Giulia! I only saw her once again, and that was on the morrow, when she was carried past our windows on the way to the Campo Santo. According to the custom of those days (I do not know if it still continues), she lay with her face exposed on a bier of magnificent crimson velvet, embroidered with gold, attended by a long procession of priests and mourners for the dead. Her beautiful long hair crowned with fresh roses, her gala dress thrown loosely over her, to be removed when the funeral reached the cemetery, and the fair young creature to be thrown headlong into one of those noisome holes which were opened daily for the interment of the dead. [Sidenote: RIDING PARTIES AT NIGHT] With the exception of two attacks of illness which befell me and my sister, and which were productive of a good result in the friendship we formed with the chief physician of the place, our summer at Naples was most enjoyable. As usual, we had our cavalcades, in which we were always joined by the two Boddington sisters and a compatriot of ours, Hugh Cholmondeley, afterwards Lord Delamere; so that with my two brothers, my sister and myself we formed no insignificant troop of horses. But summer was at its height, and our rides were nocturnal. The horses were ordered at 10 P.M., and we rode till one and two in the morning, for, as I heard a passer-by once say under my window:— “A Napoli non e mai notte.” How beautiful were those moonlight rides along the coast towards Posillippo, with the Mediterranean glittering and sparkling, and occasionally dotted by fishing-boats, with their flickering lights, while Vesuvius at intervals threw up volleys of flame and columns of smoke.