2 AUGUST 1902, Page 23

Love with Honour. By Charles Marriott. (J. Lane. 6e.)— There

is a well-developed story in Love with Honour, painful, of course—in our judgment, unnecessarily painful, for the situation might have been otherwise brought about—but still skilfully con- structed. It is not, however, for the story that we value it. It is full of really fine studies of character. Perhaps the best is Ainger, the artistic artisan, with his fine sense of colour, his high standard of work—" There is no such thing as a good joint or a bad joint in cabinet work. It is a joint or not a joint at all," is one of his utterances—and his simple, self-restrained enjoyment of life. "Major Ramrod," too, with his outlook on life, narrow but clear, and unfaltering in its obedience to duty, is good. The broken- down gentleman—Danvers, alias Cairns—is a difficult figure well drawn. The outlines of the hero are less firm, but then it is only far on in the story that he begins to "find himself." The book is worth reading for the way in which it puts things. Mr. Marriott, however, now and then falls into something like affectation. "Her whole presence was a warm whiteness with the stillness of a sleeping humming-top," is not exactly enlightening.