A Fair Impostor. By Alan St Aubyn. (F. V. White
and Co.) —The Princess Bordone, as she called herself, was undoubtedly fair and undoubtedly an impostor, but the story is not really her story. Celia Carmichael, daughter of a somewhat disreputable old clergyman, is the heroine, and a very interesting heroine too. She is Mr. Carmichael's daughter by a second marriage, and the mingling of the two strains in her from the well-born father and the low-born mother, together with the social complications that arise from her relationships, are worked up into a careful study. Of the minor characters, the faithful Janet and the " witch " grandmother are effective figures. The men are somewhat vague. Geoffrey Bluett, the squire, makes little impression on the reader ; and Snow, the churchwarden, turns out to be quite different from what we are at first led to expect. We discover that he is a swindler, and a clumsy one "at that." But that is not what we have a right to expect when Nat Snow is in- troduced to us on p. 13. Mr. St. Aubyn has done better work than this.
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