Maud Mainwaring. By Cecil Griffith. Three vols. (Saunders and Otley.)—There
are some elements of interest in this story, but there is. notmore than enough of it for one volume, and it is most unneces- sarily spun out into three. The description of Maud Mainwaring's. home with which the book opens, and of the shifts to which the family is put by the extravagance of the father, promises well for the whole novel. Further complications are induced by the half declared love of Basil for Maud, her discovery of the cheque just wet with his name and of the paper full of his signatures. Bat, after all, these things come to. nothing. Basil Strickland might have proposed at any time with quite as good reasons as he has for proposing late in the third volume. The secrets, to the discovery of which Maud has looked forward with such terror, are disposed of far too easily. The rival love affair comes to so regular a daouement that it need not have delayed us for a single chapter. There is some good character sketching (not quite character painting) in Maud Mainwaring, and the tone is pleasant, but we had a- right to expect more than this, and we are disappointed.
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