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220 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.

position of Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy, though he would not have admitted it to himself. If he had never seen the Countess Stravensky, he might have had a calm, domestic career with Dolly Norcott ; but the Russian Jewess exercised a strange fascination upon him, and he upon her. To what extent they were each under the other's influence was made clear to them, as it will be to us, under somewhat prosaic circumstances. The Mil- bankes had started for Venice via Paris, and had left it for Philip to join them at the little hotel in the Rue Castig- lione, where Walter Milbanke had taken a very pleasant suite of rooms. Philip had gone down to Charing Cross close upon train time, and had found every seat occupied, except one in a coupe nearly at the end of the train, upon which coupe the forbidding notice " Engaged " was very prominently displayed.

As Fate would have it, the coupe was occupied by the Countess Stravensky, and as if that same watchful fate had been more than usually active in the interests of Anna and Philip, the lady was thinking of the person who was seek- ing a seat in the Dover express. The countess had com- posed herself to a journey of silent thought. She was alone. Her maid was in a second-class carriage, having a flirtation with Ferrari's servant, for Ferrari deemed it necessary to be attended on occasion, for appearances and conveniences, by a valet of knowledge and experience. The countess, however ostentatious her establishments in Russia or Paris, only confided in one maid, who found her service both profitable and pleasant.

The queen of the ghetto was troubled with sensations that were entirely new to her since the tragic days of Czarovna. It was a relief from the dark and hypocritical ways of her woman's life to cherish the gleam of sunshine that had somehow crept into her heart with her visit to Philip Forsyth's studio. Though she might never see the