NOVELS OF THE WEEK.*

Tire books of Miss Beatrice Whitby are not specially distin- guished for originality, and many writers are her superiors in the construction of their plots or the marshalling and man- ceuvring of their puppets; but very few of her contemporaries can vie with her in a certain indefinite charm of manner, which renders almost everything she writes very pleasant reading. Bequeathed is as pleasant—it is impossible to avoid using that hard-worked adjective—as her former books, and the slight sketch which she gives of the delightful girl brought up on early Victorian principles proves so attractive as to inspire genuine regret when the exigencies of the story demand the elimination of this charming creature in the fifth chapter. Her daughter, the real heroine of the book, is more of the conventional type of modern heroines, and therefore not so sympathetic.

Philip Grantham, A.K.A., the hero of Max O'Rell's Woman and Artist, lived a life of ideal conjugal bliss with his superbly handsome wife and their little daughter in St. John's Wood until in an evil hour he doubled the role of artist with that of in- ventor. The immediate results were magnificent, for the French Government gave him a million francs for his patent—a new sort of shell—and he took a splendid house in Belgravia at a rent of £1,000 a year. But his angelic wife pined for the old rus in urbe in St. John's Wood, and the lost delights of their solitude a dear. And when to further his schemes the selfish husband insisted on his divine Dora's making herself agree- able to General Sabarolf, a notorious Russian Lothario, and her little daughter died of diphtheria, the cup of her sorrows brimmed over. However, in the end all comes right; Philip calls out and wings the Russian, a satisfactory explanation of his apparent neglect is forthcoming, and husband and wife happily kiss again with tears. This is a tremendously senti- mental book, a veritable apotheosis of domesticity, in which * (1.) Bequeathed. By Beatrice Whitby. London: Hurst and Blackett. Ns.] ---(2.) Woman and Artist. By Max O'Bell. London : F. Warne and [Ss. Cd.]—(3.) The Magic Word. By Constance Smith. London : 'shiner and Co. [3s. 6d.]—(4.) His Lordship's Leopard. By D. D. Wells. London : W. Heinemann. [is. 6d.]—(5.) The Devil and the Inventor. By Austin Fryeri. London : C. A. Pearson. [38. 6d.]—(3.) Charlotte Leyland. By M. Bevies. London : Grant Richards. [6s.]—(7.) _Kiddy. By Tom Gallon. London : Hutchinson and Co. fes.]—(8.) Bettina. By MAT Crommelin. London : John Long. [6s.1—(9.) Comrades True. By Annie Thomas (Mrs. Pender ()nag). London : Chatto and Windus. [6s.]—(10.) Love, Sport, and a Double Arent. By W. B. Gilpin. Loudon: The Leadenhall Pram. Cat Ida one constantly finds oneself in the position of an intruder, while the tripe-and-oniony flavour of Max O'Rell's humour— lie is, to quote his favourite adjective, so "saucy "—will prove a constant source of agony to the fastidious reader. In point of taste the book is simply deplorable ; and this is all the more to be regretted in that its moral is unimpeachable, and its attitude uniformly Anglophil.

Miss Smith's lively story, The Magic Word, belongs to that sub-section of the romance of adventure which treats of revolutions in Republics,—mostly South American Republics. In this case, by an effort of praiseworthy detachment, the role of villain is assigned to an English aockbroker, who after being implicated in an ugly finan- cial scandal, emigrates to the Republic of Santa Fine, where under an assumed name he becomes Minister of War. Two people set out simultaneously on his track,—his devoted belf-sister, who still believes in his innocence, And an Italian Prince resolved to avenge himself on the financier for driving his (the Prince's) brother to suicide. It

need hardly be added that the Prince falls in love with the sister; what we are less prepared for is the development of the cynical dilettante into the intrepid man of action who saves the situation and rescues the President from a plot chiefly organised by the wicked brother. There is, perhaps, a rather larger admixture of rose-water in this revolution than would have been employed in similar circumstances by, say, Rosas ; and the penitence of the villain is too sudden to be convincing. But with all deductions, this is a good specimen of the mildly exciting novel.

Mr. D. D. Wells's good-humoured attempt to disarm serious criticism of his latest " absurdity " would have been more effective if he had abstained from so elaborately artificial a

means of vindicating his title—His Lordship's Leopard— as the introduction of a character of the name of Spotts.

lt plays havoc with the equanimity of the reader to go in

fear and trembling of a riddle for nearly three hundred pages. For the rest, the story attains a very fair measure

of success in the pursuit of its unambitious aim of pro- viding food for innocent mirth. In it we read how the son of an English Bishop, whose efforts as a novelist have been frowned upon by his father and aunt, proceeds to New York to storm the citadel of literary fame, and produces a novel the title of which is chosen by some Spanish spies as their password. Simultaneously he retains the services of an impecunious travelling company of actors to "boom" his book by asking for it, and they are consequently arrested by the police. He engineers their escape into Canada, and invites them over to England to stay with the Bishop, with the result of emancipating him from the tyranny of his sister and other consequences of a wildly improbable order. The book reminds one a good deal of those farces in which doors are everlastingly banging and the characters spend most of their time under tables or behind curtains. The fun, in short, is mostly of the 'knockabout" order, but it is by no means bad of its noisy and obvious kind.

The latest variation on the Faust legend is that given us by Mr. Austin Fryers in The Devil and the Inventor. His

hero, a commonplace middle-class young man of an inventive turn, whose lack of an assured competence is the only obstacle in the way of securing the consent of the father of his lady-love, strikes a bargain with it mysterious and Mephistophelian stranger possessed of miraculous powers. The stranger undertakes to supply the inventor with every possible means for the execution of his inventions, on the understanding that if he fails to realise £250 within three weeks of the completion of any such invention, he shall then and there become the prey of his patron. The young man's first venture takes the form of a soundless piano,—which may serve as a sufficient indication of the romantic quality of the story, or allegory. It is, one might say, a nice chatty little story, in which the element of the diabolic is duly attenuated for parlour consumption.

Charlotte Leyland belongs in scheme to the class of bio- graphical novel which has come so much into vogue of late Years. After a clever sketch of the heroine's tempestuous 'user at school, the thread of her life is taken up when, as a homeless orphan with only 240 a year, she endeavours to mike a living by typewriting and secretarial life in London. The trials and temptations of the "bachelor girl" are described in these pages with a good deal of cleverness, though the reader's interest in the heroine is somewhat impaired by her undisciplined and irritable nature. One resents the incident of her engagement to the maudlin decadent, and the long series of amantiutn irae between Charlotte and the man she marries makes for weariness and at times disgust. However, their subsequent and complete reconciliation proves a welcome and unexpected divergence from the " insurrectionary " formula to which nine-tenths of the book may be referred, and in spite of its gratuitous poignancy it marks a notable advance on the author's earlier work.

Mr. Tom Gallon's new story, Kiddy, is a rather improbable essay in effusiveness which reminds one forcibly of the weakest aspect of Dickens, while of Dickens's energy and humour there is no trace. It is not inferior to the usual works of this author, and people who have enjoyed Cometh Up will doubtless enjoy Kiddy.

There are Russians, and kidnappings, and distant echoes of Siberia in Miss May Crommelin's Bettina, but the average reader will find it a little hard to fathom the motive of the wicked " Gaddi " in carrying off his young mistress in the unceremonious fashion in which he manages that feat. How- ever, it seemed good to " Gaddi," the steward, that Bettina, in order to find out that she was really a Russian Princess, should undergo such an adventure instead of being informed of her parentage through the method of the international 21d. post, and Prince Baratinsky, her father, who lived all alone, save for the inevitable " Gaddi," on the island of Santa Restituta, was certainly too feeble of intellect to have much say in the matter. " Gad& " afterwards wishes to kidnap her in more serious fashion, but is frustrated by a Naval Lieu- tenant. The best thing in the book is the opening scene— the abandonment of Bettina as a baby—which is decidedly striking. But the whole book is readable, though the action at the end is a little involved and confused.

Comrades True is a fairly good story of a decidedly common- place society (country house) type. The reader cannot help re- senting the process of bringing the book "up to date" by intro- ducing the incidents of the present war as a little "cheap." So much happens in the book after the outbreak of the war, that one has a feeling that to bring the dates right the book must have been finished only just in time for the, binder, for the double wedding on the last page can hardly have taken place earlier than the middle of May. Certainly "a great deal of water ran under the bridge" for Miss A nnie Thomas' s characters since last October; indeed it is difficult to avoid the conviction that the incidents at the end must have happened in the late summer, which is impossible, as the summer is barely here. Miss Thomas is too careful a writer for this really to be the case, but the suggestion of it to the reader's mind is decidedly uncomfortable.

Love, Sport, and a Double Event announces its subject quite correctly in its title. The book is entirely about stables, and people who live in that world will doubtless enjoy it very much. It is written in a breezy style, but cannot be re- commended to " unhorsy " readers.