214 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
ten romances, the heroine of his unpainted pictures. And just as a certain set of people go mad over Ibsen's unwhole- some plays, so Philip was going mad over the aspirations of young Russia, checked for the moment by the shadow of the Countess Stravensky, whom he regarded as one of those accidental endowments of birth which belong to a bad cause as if in fatal mockery of heaven.
When Philip was with Dolly, the pretty English girl had it all her own way ; when he thought of the foreign coun- tess, ten years his senior, as his mother had reminded him, his pulse rose and his face flushed. He put these physical manifestations down to ambition, to art fervor, to a name- less something that suggested destiny. This did not argue well for the domestic happiness of DoKy Norcott when she should be Mrs. Philip Forsyth.
While it is placed on record that the Countess Stra- vensky had to be reckoned with, in the warp and woof of the lives of Dolly and Philip, in the plans of Lady Forsyth and the pretty sisterly intrigues of Mrs. Milbanke, let it not be understood that our unhappy queen of the ghetto had any desire or intention to interfere with the matri- monial or worldly prospects of Philip Forsyth, except in so far as she might help him on his way. He had deeply impressed, her. For a moment he had reawakened feel- ings which had been dead since her love, her best instincts, her womanliness, her faith in heaven, her hope in the great Father, had been literally cut out of her heart and soul by the Russian knout. It was only for a moment ; and in that moment she saw herself an innocent girl sitting at the feet of her lover in the peaceful home of her childhood. In that moment the perfume of a lovely past fell around her ; and she gazed upon the young artist, who had Lo- sinski's eyes and hair, and Losinski's voice and gait. As the mist cleared, it came to her to think that this was but a vision intended by Fate to whet her appetite of veil-
