17 APRIL 1886, Page 22

Lord Vanecourt's Daughter. By Mabel Collins. 3 vols. (Ward and

Downey.)—No reader of this novel can complain of want of variety or surprise in the incidents. Early in its course we are con- fronted with a problem which would, we think, very much exercise the casuist. " What is a daughter to do when she sees her father virtually murder her grandmother?" (He sees the old lady, who is blind, standing at the edge of a precipice, and tells her to go straight on, unluckily for him in the hearing of his daughter and a man- servant.) She renounces him, and when he locks her up in her room (Miss Mabel Collins has but little belief in the personal liberty of a British subject), she escapes. Then follows an interval of comparative peace, which the reader, who may be by this time a little tired of strong sensation, will certainly enjoy. The heroine takes to dairy- farming with distinguished success, and is happy as circumstances permit. All this part of the story is very enjoyable, the reader's pleasure being not a little enhanced by the humorous eccentricities of the servant whom the heroine engages to "do for her." We shall not follow Miss Collins's story to the end. Let it suffice to say that it keeps up its character throughout. When in the third volume we begin to look for a new sensation, we are not disappointed. For who should appear on the scene but a certain Colonel, an adept in theosophy, and possessed of a certain mysterious gold bar, which is charged with the will of a still greater adept, and with which he is able to perform marvellous things, always, it must be understood, in the cause of justice and right. A reader who is not inconveniently critical about probabilities, and in the matter of theosophy is content to ignore the discoveries of the Psychical Society, will be much entertained with Lord Vanecourt's Daughter.