Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/231

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EY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 219

East End are mostly Jews. Why England should allow these waifs and strays to be cast penniless upon her shores, was one of the questions that puzzled Anna in her studies of English freedom. But she did not stay to debate these or any other questions, she only remembered the sufferings of her race, and in whatever city she found herself she sought out poor and wretched Jews, and gave them her bounty with words of sympathy and hope, " for surely," she said, " our term of probation is drawing to a close f and the day of promise is at hand."


CHAPTER XXIX.

THE HEART OF A MAN IS DECEITFUL.

IT is not for the author of this history of Love and Adverr- ture to attack or defend his hero. Philip Forsyth will fulfil his destiny, whatever his biographer or the reader may have to say to it. He is not the first who might have exclaimed in regard to two women, " How happy could I be with either, where t'other dear charmer away." Or, at all events, not the first who had thought in this wise of two desirable ladies.

The psychological novelist, or the student of physical and spiritual motives in man, would no doubt bend his intellectual energies upon an investigation of the dif- ference between the influence of the countess and that of Dolly Norcott on the sentiments and emotions of the young and impressionable artist. Did he love the coun- tess? And were his feelings toward Dolly the mere outcome of passion ? Were the Westbury Lodge influ- ences physical and worldly, and the Russian impressions spiritual and divine ? Or vice versa ? Philip, it is plain, stood, as between the countess and Dolly, somewhat in the