10 DECEMBER 1887, Page 48

Montressor household, with its head, the broken actor with so

many bad habits and good instincts ; but then, it is waste which makes her book, for all its exceptional plot, real and alive. We have not enjoyed it, we acknowledge, so much as many of her stories ; but there is not a chapter in it which has not helped to disabuse us of the fear that Mrs. Oliphant was losing her force.