92 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
were of a deep blue, singularly out of harmony, you would think on first meeting their pathetic gaze, with the rich olive complexion of the young fellow's face. His lips indi- cated both refinement and passion. According to those who read character in the fingers, his hands were the hands of both the artist and of the executant, but there were not wanting seeming contradictions of his moral character in his physical anatomy. He gave you the idea of an inter- esting enthusiastic lad ; for young as he was he did not look his years. When he talked, however, his conversation was far beyond them, and you soon discovered that he was more a creature of impulse than a youth of anything like settled ideas ; but at the same time you could not fail to be convinced of his tremendous capacity for the art he had chosen to follow. If in his conversation with Chetwynd he was inclined to depreciate himself, it was not from any want of confidence in his powers, but from a certain feeling of modesty and in protest against the extravagancies of his friend, who saw further ahead than Philip's most ambitious dreams, but who, had he looked into the future with the true eye of prophecy, with the vision of second sight, would have been sorely and sadly troubled at the prospects of his protege and friend.
Philip Forsyth was an art student, his father English, his mother Irish ; his father a railway contractor, who had made and lost a fortune in Russia, and who had been knighted for some special services rendered in connection with an English Industrial Exhibition. Philip was born in St. Petersburg, which city he left with his widowed mother, ten years prior to the opening of this romance, for London.
His mother, Lady Forsyth, had a secured income of a thousand a year, and she added to it a not inconsiderable sum by her contributions to the rebel press of her native city of Dublin. She received at her pleasant rooms at
