THE OLD EXPEDIENT. By Pansy Pakenham. (Chap- man and Hall.
7s. 6d.)—" It is expedient," said Caiaphas of old, " that one man should die for the people " ; and Lady Pansy Pakenham, in this original and intriguing fantasy, has sought to give a modern interpretation to the same principle. Oliver Gaunt, at heart a dreamer and idealist, is prisoned spiritually by the respectable society in which he moves, having the Prime Minister for his brother-in-law and a beautiftd, but vulgarly ambitious, woman for his wife. The early chapters give us some natural glimpses of London Society. The scene then sharply changes to a little Irish island, where Mark Finnigan, self-made and wealthy, is " ruling," with ostentatious display, as " King." To him Oliver is sent on an important mission by the British Government ; but he is entangled by his chivalrous love for the " King's " deformed and despised daughter. The plot resolves itself into an allegory, in which all the forces of brute reality are arrayed against Oliver's sensitiveness and send him at last to his doom. It is an ambitious scheme at which Lady Pansy has aimed, and she has not quite succeeded in giving it artistic unity. But this first novel reveals sterling qualities of insight, feeling, and imagination, and is uniformly well written.
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