26 OCTOBER 1889, Page 25

Skill Wins Favour. By Mrs. George Elliot Kent. (Roper and

Drowley.)—This is a story constructed on the usual lines of an intended surprise. Paul Sudbury, a poor artist, wins the heart of the well-born Miss D'Avonmore, and, after a variety of troubles, turns out to be some one, not to reveal Mrs. Kent's plot too clearly, very different from what he has been supposed to be. The tale is too long, and perhaps we may say, too didactic. If the conversations had been unsparingly retrenched, and the whole reduced to about half of its present length, the reader, whose patience, unless it is of unusual excellence, will be exhausted, would have been better satisfied. Still, Skill Wins Favour has a certain interest.