24 APRIL 1897, Page 12

Clara Hopgood. By Mark Rutherford. Edited by his Friend, Reuben

Shapcott. (T. Fisher Unwin.)—We must own that we have not been able to take in the bearing of this story. The characters in it do not act in the way that we should have expected them to act. Why so disastrous a termination to the love-making of Madge and Frank ? It is as unexpected as it is painful to the reader who has followed its course. The moral of the story of these two sisters, for Madge occupies as large a space in the tale as Clara, would seem to be that the more conventional a woman's bringing up, and the more according to common pattern her ways of thinking, the better it will be for her. But this can hardly be what "Mark Rutherford" intends.