I received very meekly this qualified compliment, without revealing the humiliating fact that my feeling for art had probably less to do with the matter than my sympathy with the artist; then observed, "It seems much waste, for me, of all of us, to be the first to go to Italy." "I would rather go to Paris," said Jenny, who belonged, at this stage of her career, to a very advanced school of aesthetics, and looked upon Raphael as rather out of date. "If only some one would buy my picture I would have a year at Julian's; it would be the making of me." "For heaven's sake, Jenny, don't take yourself so seriously," cried Rosalind, rising and laying down her proofs; "one day, perhaps, I shall come across an art-student with a sense of humour--growing side by side with a blue rose. Now, Elsie," she went on, turning to me as Jenny, with a reproachful air of superior virtue, lifted up her paint-brush, and, shutting one eye, returned in silence to her measurements--"now, Elsie, let us have further details of this proposed expedition of yours. How many little Brogi shall you be required to teach?" "There is only one pupil, and she is eighteen," I answered; "just three years younger than I." "And you are to instruct her in all the 'ologies?" Rosalind had taken a chair at the table, and, her head resting on her hand, was interrogating me in her quick, eager, half-ironical fashion. "No; Mrs. Grey only says English and music. She says, too, that they are one of the principal families of Pisa. And they live in a palace," I added, with a certain satisfaction. "It sounds quite too delightful and romantic; if it were not for Hubert, as I said before, I should insist on going myself. Pisa, the Leaning Tower, Shelley--a Marchesa in an old, ancestral palace!" And Rosalind's dark eyes shone as she spoke. "Ruskin says that the Leaning Tower is the only ugly one in Italy," said Jenny, not moving her eyes from the Japanese pot, cleft orange, and coral necklace which she was painting. "But the cathedral is one of the most beautiful, and the place is a mine of historical associations," answered Rosalind, her ardour not in the least damped by this piece of information. As for me, I sat silent between these two enthusiasts with an abashed consciousness of the limitations of my own subjective feminine nature. It was neither the beauties or defects of Pisan architecture which at present occupied my mind, nor even the historical associations of the town. My thoughts dwelt solely, it must be owned, on the probable character of the human beings among whom I was to be thrown. But then it was I who was going to Pisa, and not my sisters. "Does Mrs. Grey know the Marchesa Brogi personally?" asked my mother, who also was disposed to take the less abstract view of the matter. "Oh, no, it is all arranged through the friend of a friend."