Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/149

BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 137 and his mother's praises of her. It came into his mind that it would please his mother very much if he married Dolly, and that she was very beautiful, had golden hair, a sweet voice, and cheerful manners, and that sometimes Fate met one half way, as it were, and sometimes clapped one on the shoulder unawares, and that after all it would be a pleasant Fate to be entitled to take Dolly to one's arms, and have her for a lifelong companion.

While Walter Milbanke was fooling Samuel Swynford, it was as good as settled that his hopes were to be utterly crushed. Why, therefore, prolong the description of this evening one moment more than is necessary to aquaint the reader with the main incident of the night? Swynford felt uncomfortable, and said he must go earlier than he had intended; he spoke of some important business he had in the city the next morning at ten, and took a cheerful leave of Westbury Lodge two hours before Philip ; and long before that favored young gentleman said "Good-night," he had been alone with Dolly for three parts of that time, both Walter and his wife having business in another corner of their pretty house; Mrs. Milbanke to see the children put to bed (though they had been in bed for hours), and Walter to answer a couple of letters which had come in by the last post.

It was a blissful time for Philip while it lasted; a dream of a new and unexpected kind of happiness; a dream in which hands clasped hands, and lips touched lips; a dream in which a soft, sweet, blushing girl confessed that she loved him; a dream in which he believed he loved her better than anything or anybody in all the world.

And so it was settled that a fortnight later Philip Forsyth should accompany the Milbankes on a tour through France, Italy and Switzerland, with a long vacation in Venice, and that during their wanderings they should settle the month in which Philip should make Dolly his wife. "Man proposes."