The Court of Conscience. By Ella MacMahon. (Chapman and Hall.
6s.)—It is difficult to excuse the conduct of the hero of this book towards the heroine, even on the plea advanced by one of the characters that he is a politician. Having a wife whom he has divorced still alive, Mr. Warren Mildmay is persuaded by her greatest friend to conceal the fact from Audrey Denison, his fiancée, because she, holding High Church views, would probably refuse in such circumstances to marry him. He is very properly rewarded for this conduct by her discovering the fact immediately after the wedding, and returning to her maiden name, refusing altogether to consider herself as his wife. Audrey Denison's struggle with her own conscience is finely described. Without going into the question whether or not she is justified in thinking such a marriage to be a sin, it is quite certain, as she is convinced of its sinfulness, that her line of conduct is the only one which it was possible for her to take. In spite of this ethical conflict, the book is by no means altogether serious reading. The character-drawing is above the average, and Miss MacMahon makes excellent use in some of the episodes of her well-known gift of humour. The appearance of one of her novels always produces a distinctly pleasurable sensation in the mind of the jaded novel-reader. They are always above the average both in conception and execution.
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