186 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR,
wealth of silken hair, a round undulating figure, the lovely lines of which were indicated in the graceful folds of a flowing muslin tea-gown.
" How long will it take you to dress ? "
"Half-an-hour."
" Then Philip shall escort me to Lady Forsyth's and return for you, he need not go in."
" I ventured to ask your mother one day when I was in an inquisitive mood, why she insists upon living in Gower- street," said Mrs. Milbanke, when the brougham was rolling quietly upon its rubber tires by the north side of Regent's Park, and making its way through the north gate and along by the Zoo, " one of the ugliest not to say the most unfashionable of streets."
" And what did she say ? " Philip asked, anxious to take an interest in any subject which Mrs. Milbanke might consider worthy of discussion.
" Because her house at a hundred and fifty a year was worth six of the Mayfair houses at three or four times the rent, and because she had bought the lease, and further- more because she liked the house, and furthermore still you know your mother's graphic manner because a fashionable neighborhood is not necessary to a woman who can bring fashion to her rooms wherever they may be."
" My dear mother has a great opinion of her social position," said Philip, " and the best people so-called and certainly the most interesting do go to see her."
"That's true," said Mrs. Milbanke, " but I have not told you all she said ; she asked me what I meant by liv- ing in St. John's Wood did I call that a fashionable local- ity ? I said if it was good enough in the past for Landseer, George Eliot, Douglas Jerrold, Charles Dickens, and in the present for an old lady friend of Her Majesty's, half- a-dozen R.A.'s, and no end of literary men of the first mag-
