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BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 189

evanescent influences. He was imaginative, had mixed ideas of duty, a longing ambition, was proud, had thoughts that were the outcome of momentary influences, good impulses but a short memory for them. He had one great redeeming quality industry ; but for this he might have been classed among the geniuses who are content to dream, the geniuses who only lack for success the spur of industry. If the narrator of these adventures believed in the evil eye or in interposition of some supernaturally evil factor in a young man's life, he would declare that the face at the Opera had for Philip the evil eye under whose influence he would fall and suffer ; but that is perhaps only because one has to record what appears to be a strange, sudden change in the young man's conduct and destiny from the moment he saw the face of the Countess Stravensky at the Opera ; anyhow it is certain that when the shadow of the Countess Stravensky fell upon the life of Philip Forsyth he became another being, and probably Richard Chetwynd might say " and all the better for Philip Forsyth," since the inspiration of the face at the Opera had given the young fellow's art just the touch of imagination it needed, just the idea of purpose and intention which had made it for the first time in the opinion of Chetwynd a tremendous reality of promise.

As the brougham glided along that most wearisome and monotonous of all London thoroughfares, Albany-street, Philip recalled what Mrs. Milbanke had said about the foreign lady who smoked cigarettes at Lady Marchmount's, and then for the twentieth time he wondered what could be the meaning of Lady Marchmount professing to ignore the countess' presence in her box on that memorable night at the Opera. For the twentieth time he went over the whole of the circumstances ; and for the twentieth time came to the conclusion that there must be some feud be- tween the countess and th<* young wife of the Russian