Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/222



2io BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.

making so much of the countess also set the young man thinking about her afresh, and with just a scintillation of something like a chivalric sense of duty in regard to the defence of persons accused in their absence.

But when he gave an arm to Dolly and an arm to Mrs. Milbanke, and followed his mother and Walter in to dinner soon afterwards at Westbury Lodge, he was quite at his ease again, and the countess might have been in Paris or St. Petersburg or anywhere else for all he cared ; you see it was rather a convenient disposition, Philip's ; and yet he had the quality of constancy too, no doubt, once it was fairly invoked.

Dolly, in the daintiest of dinner gowns, considered with due regard to the tone and style of her sister's dress, and also taking into artistic account the surrounding decora- tions, looked divine. Mrs. Milbanke was in her best form. Walter was genial as host could possibly be ; and Lady Forsyth, in black Irish poplin (she was mindful of her country in everything she did, thought, or wore), with her emeralds and her shamrock, a handsome example of the British old lady ; fair, well-nurtured, with long, white hands, grey hair and plenty of it, a voice that was still young, and a natural, easy gracefulness, that did not ape youth, either in dress or manners !

The Italian trip was discussed at length over dinner, and Philip began to find himself positively yearning to be off. Venice had always been to him like a fairy tale of mediaeval romance, with a floating city in it ; with cos- tumes of Oriental loveliness, and with warriors of Oriental picturesqueness and Anglican valor ; with women golden- haired, violet-eyed, and with that Venetian form of mouth that was made for love and pictures. He had seen with his dreaming eyes the brown and yellow sails on the many-hued lagoons, and he had heard the tell-tale whis- perings of the outgoing sea as it slipped by the gorgeous palaces on moonlight nights. There was only one break