p--quite the most distinguished Bishop of the day."

It was not until next morning that Lettice had time to ply her brother
with questions as to his examination and his Cambridge experiences
generally. She did not ask about the visit to London which he had also
paid. She had been to London herself, and could go there any day. But
Cambridge!--the goal of Sydney's aspirations--the place where (the girl
believed) intellectual success or failure was of such paramount
importance--what was that like?

Sydney was ready to hold forth. He liked the position of instructor and
was not insensible to the flattery of Lettice's intentness on his
answers. But he was a little dismayed by one of her questions, which
showed the direction of her thoughts.

"Did you hear anything about the women's college, Sydney?" For Girton
and Newnham were less well known then than they are now.

"Women's colleges! No, indeed. At least, I heard them laughed at several
times. They're no good."

"Why not?" said Lettice, wistfully.

"Now, Lettice," said the youthful mentor, severe in boyish wisdom, "I
hope you are not going to take fancies into your head about going to
Cambridge yourself. I should not like it at all. I'm not going to have
_my_ sister laughed at and sneered at every time she walks out. I don't
want to be made a laughing-stock. Nice girls stay at home with their
mothers; they don't go to colleges and make themselves peculiar."

"I am not going to be peculiar; but I don't want to forget all I have
learned with you," said Lettice, quickly.

"You have learned too much already," said the autocrat, whose views
concerning women's education had developed since his short stay in
Cambridge. "Girls don't want Latin and Greek; they want music and
needlework, and all that sort of thing. I don't want my sister to be a
blue-stocking."

Lettice felt that her lot in life ought not to be settled for her simply
as Sydney's sister--that she had an individuality of her own. But the
feeling was too vague to put into words; and after Syndey had left her,
in obedience to a call from his father, she sat on in the long, low room
with its cushioned window-seats and book-covered walls--the dear old
room in which she had spent so many happy hours with her teacher and her
fellow-pupil--and wondered what would become of her when Sydney was
really gone; whether all those happy days were over, and she must
henceforth content herself with a life at Mrs. Campion's s