6 AUGUST 1904, Page 23

as the author thinks this incompatible with commonplace earthly happiness,

it is not a very cheerful point for a novel to aim at. There is one excellent piece of character-drawing in the story, that of the heroine's mother. This lady is quite helpless and self-absorbed, but she is really delightful, and it is a feat to have made her prettiness and charm wholly convincing to the reader. Eleanor, the daughter, who is much "the better woman of the two," is not nearly so attractive, and as this is exactly as it would be in real life, the author may be congratulated on a piece of very difficult and very subtle realism.