Conflict. By Constance Smedley. (A. Constable and Co. (Is.)— The
reader who, delighting in the modern novel of business, thinks he has found what he wants in this book will experience a considerable disappointment. The opening scone takes place in the most promising fashion in an office in Birmingham, and the heroine, Mary van Heyton, is a truly businesslike young, person. But a sudden attack of the fell disease beloved of novelists, brain fever, removes poor Mary from the scene of her congenial labours, and placea her for rest and refreshment among a set of most unpleasant Bohemians, in whose society the reader will take as little pleasure as did the heroine herself. envier, the head of the opposition firm to " 13erryfield's " (which is inherited by Mary before the brain fever), cannot escape the reproach of being the conventional villain drawn by a lady novelist. The leaven of "Berryfield's" makes the novel worth reading ; but the critic cannot but regret that a story with so promising an opening should not attain to the level which seems to be promised by the first few chapters.
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