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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,"