Cynthia's Way. By Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick. (Edward Arnold. 6s.)—Cynthia. Blount
was a very charming young heiress who, wearying of facile successes and the interested attentions of detrimental aristocrats, determined to take a leaf out of the book of Haroun-al-Raschid. So she accepted the post of governess in a bourgeois German family, and went through with the job like the well-bred and courageous girl she was. Any one who has read The Grasshoppers" will at once realise how admirably equipped Mrs. Sidgwick is both in local knowledge and humour to deal with the situation. The admirable Frau Klopps, the in- sufferable Frau von Erlenbach, Wanda, the maudlin senti- mentalist, and her attractive but quarrelsome little brothers and sister, are all intensely amusing portraits, and if the general impression conveyed by the novel is that Germans are often greedy, envious, snobbish, and ridiculous, at least one honourable exception is provided in the hero, Adrian von Reinmar, who is not by any means unworthy of his good fortune in engaging the affections of the disguised but highly delectable millionairess.
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