THE LADDER OF FOLLY. By Muriel Hine. (Bodley Head. 7s.
6d.)—The pace of this novel is sometimes slow, and the plot is a little obvious. But Miss Hine's admirers will enjoy once again her natural descriptions of characters and scenes. Ann Massingby is the daughter of an official raised to the peerage through the ambition of his butterfly wife. Educated by two kindly, old-fashioned aunts in Lincolnshire, Ann grows up shy, sensitive, and unspoiled, to the annoyance of her mother, who has herself neglected the child. At the age of seventeen, Ann visits with her parents a South Coast resort. Here she meets with many adventures and difficulties. Ann, brought through dis- illusionment to the verge of tragedy, is saved by the timely reappearance of Luke Carborne, an old friend, a Harvard professor, who has been kept in America by loyalty to a slowly dying sister. This is not Miss Hine's best novel. But it has, nevertheless, much simple charm.
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