In a cool spacious apartment, overlooking a Moorish courtyard, filled with orange-trees in green tubs and various semi-tropical plants, Alice and Miss Fane are sitting reading. The post has just come in, and Miss Fane is revelling in an abundant supply of letters, which flutter and rustle in an aggravating manner as the cool sea-breeze steals in and plays with them, and seems to try to snatch from their recipient the full enjoyment of their contents. The breeze plays tenderly and lovingly with Alice Saville’s stray little curls, but she reads on and takes no notice. Nothing short of a “Levanter” would rouse her from her study--“Ivanhoe.” The world of fiction has been opened to her at last! Miss Fane thinks that “there is no harm in the Waverley novels, with the exception of the ‘Heart of Midlothian;’” _that_ is carefully put aside; any of the others Alice may read; and Alice is rapidly devouring them. Her crewel-work lies neglected on the floor; her cup of tea stands at her elbow untasted; and all her thoughts are entirely engrossed in the storming of Torquilstone Castle. Miss Fane and Alice had spent the autumn in visiting Rome, Florence, and Nice, and were spending a few weeks in Malta before returning to London, where they were to reside together; and Alice was to make her _début_ the ensuing season. She found Valetta altogether delightful. Fresh from her studies, with the history of the Crusades, and of the Knights of Rhodes and Malta still green in her memory, the half-mediæval half-oriental aspect of the place fascinated her beyond measure. Many an hour did she spend in the old Cathedral of St. John, endeavouring to decipher the tombs with which its numerous chapels are paved. Her knowledge of French and Italian helped her to find out the meaning of their Latin inscriptions, and many and various were the stories she mentally wove about those valiant, war-worn, monkish soldiers lying beneath her feet. “Exploring” was Alice’s favourite recreation, as she was not, strictly speaking, “out” as yet; and balls, dancelettes, and yachting picnics were unknown pleasures. The long narrow streets, the “Nix Mangiare” stairs, the odd steep ascents, were an amusing and delightful novelty to her light active feet, but a sore detested pilgrimage to Miss Fane’s gaunt old bones. The mysterious little shops that line these queer streets of stairs were another perennial source of interest, including the sleek cats that sat sentry in almost every doorway. The Maltese themselves were capital subjects for sketches or study; whether they lay flat on their backs, basking in the sun, with their caps pulled over their faces, or lounged in lazy groups about the corners of picturesque old houses, or drove their huge betasselled mules up and down the steep stradas, they were ever and always a fresh novelty to Alice. She little knew that she herself outrivalled the “fried monks” as one of the “sights of Malta;” or that