I 7 d BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
This in response to a bouquet of lilies of the valley which Philip offered to his visitor, as he invited her to take a seat upon the sitter's platform.
" You are business-like, you do not forget that my time is much occupied ; but I am to sit in character, is it not so?"
He thought her voice wonderfully sweet, her foreign accent giving to the tone of it an added charm.
11 1 wish I had designed for you a subject in which the study should have been one of beauty and happiness instead of beauty in misery and despair. But may I not first sketch you as you are ? "
Whether it was that the countess desired to check the exuberance of Philip's frank admiration of her, or that the question arose out of a real interest in his welfare, she suddenly forced him back upon the duty he owed to Dolly Norcott.
" Your mother tells me you are engaged to be married."
" Indeed ! " he said.
" And when are you to be married? "
" I do not know," he said.
" The happy day have you not already marked it with white in your calendar of bliss ? "
" No," he said, busy with his brushes and his easel.
" You do not care to talk about the betrothal. Is it so ?"
" I care most to hear you talk," he replied, his dark eyes turning towards her.
" That is a trick of the painter, eh ? He thus will get the expression of his sitter's face. Well, it depends what the expression is to be. But am I not to see what you have already desired it should be ? Mr. Chetwynd was concerned with the thought that I might be displeased at your painted opinion -of the miseries inflicted by my country on the exile and the prisoner ! Not at all. That I sympathize with you in this, brings me here,"
