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BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 209

"Did you do much work, Phil?" his mother asked, with a humorous twinkle in her eye.

" Not much," said Philip, smiling in spite of himself.

" You talked a good deal, I make no doubt."

" We had some conversation, of course.'

" She has wonderful eyes ? "

" She has ! "

" And hair that Titian might have painted you said so last night? "

" It is true."

" And her voice, a sympathetic voice eh ? I know you, Philip ; your father was just the same : he admired red hair and violet eyes, and had as sharp an instinct for a pretty woman as any man in the world, God rest him, and one of the kindest fellows that ever broke bread."

" Of course he had an eye for beauty, mother," said Philip, rising from his chair by her side, taking her face in both his hands, and kissing her heartily.

" Well, that's all I've got to say," went on his mother, after kissing him in return, " except that I think Miss Norcott the most desirable match you could possibly make sweet, pretty, admires you, and a good income well invested and securely settled. If your father had settled the whole of his fortune on rne before he lost half of it on that horrid exhibition, we would not have had to consider these vulgar questions of money. I only wish I could go to Italy with you, but I am glad you are going, it puts an end at all events to the possibility of any non- sense in that Russian quarter. I should hate a Russian alliance, just as much as the English Parliament would, even if you had not to change your religion for it ; if I am not much mistaken the countess is a Jewess, and if the Forsyths cling to anything, it has always been so your poor father told me to their Protestant faith."

" Yes, of course," said Philip, but the fact of his mother 14