20 APRIL 1895, Page 24

All That Was Possible. By Howard 0. Sturgis. (Osgood, Mcllvaine,

and Co.)—There is a great deal of cleverness of a kind that sometimes recalls "John Oliver Hobbes," in this slight story. It is eminently fashionable, being but an " episode,"— and an " episode " in the life of an actress. " Mrs.' Sybil Crofts, " comedian," is of course not married, but has been "under the protection" of a young aristocrat. He is compara- tively "exemplary." His mother says," Dear Medmenham gives me no anxiety," although (or because) "a little bird tells me there is a liaison of some sort with quite a superior sort of girl." Sybil herself has helped to reform George by way of preparation, as events turn out, for his marriage with Lady Florence Marlowe. "I cured him of gambling ; he only did it because he was bored ; and of drinking brandy-and-soda in the morning." Like most "protectors " on the stage and in fiction, George treats " Mrs." Crofts with "kindness," in the way of an annual allowance after desertion. So she is able to go with her maid, Virginie—Virginie is a delightful because not too French sketch—to a lonely part of Wales. There poor Sybil discovers, in a variety of ways, that she cannot escape from what, in her heart, and owing to her birth and education, she does not regard as a " sin." She is still fascinating, and, to do her justice, she is no adventuress ; had she been such she could scarcely have been on terms of intimacy with the " Dear Milly" to whom she tells her story in lettere. First a young lad falls in love with her, and then his guardian. The latter, Robert Henshaw, is a " strong " and apparently good man, and she takes for granted that the love-making he indulges in is meant to end in marriage. She discovers that he contemplates only " protection," that, in fact, he believes that she, having bees a " mistress " once, must be a " mistress " to the end of her chapter. This discovery, and her subsequent running away from Renshaw, bring a peculiar but clever and delicately written story to a some- what abrupt but not unnatural end. Of the fashionable but essen- tially repellent class of books to which it belongs, All That Was Possible is one of the least objectionable that we have seen.