The Squire of Lonsdale. By Edith C. Kenyon. (Frederick Warne
and Co.)—This is a pleasantly exciting story of an old- fashioned sort. There is, of course, a good deal of mystery as to who is—or rather as to who is not—the Squire of Lonsdale, and this is due to the old story of an unacknowledged, and even re- pudiated, but still perfectly real, marriage. And then Mary, the pretty and good girl of the story, and granddaughter of the old Yorkshire rector, has for lovers the familiar rivals. There is Dr. Darrington, the good man, and Dr. Barrage, the bad man who tries by all sorts of underhand tricks to circumvent Darrington in love and in business alike, and who even all but succeeds in murdering him. He takes to drink, and as, after figuring for a short time as Squire of Lonsdale, he has to give up his position to a man he despises, it is quite unnecessary to indicate what his ultimate fate is. Mary's plain sister Lais fixes her affections on the to all appearance quite " ineligible " school- master, Ernest Jackson, but as after, of course, his fair share of trouble, and with the help of his mother, who ought really to have made her appearance as dea ex machina at a much earlier stage, he becomes Squire of Lonsdale, it is needless to say that both sisters are made on the last page as happy as need be. Dr. Barrage is a good sketch of a weak, bad man ; there is a little, at least, of Meg blerrilies in Judith Winterton ; and the other girls in the story are fine specimens of English womanhood. Miss Kenyon's style flows as smoothly as her plot.
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