The White House. By H. E. Braddon. (Hurst and Blackett.
6s.)—No one who reflects otl the length of time during which Miss Braddon has been working and on her enormous output can help being surprised at the unimpaired freshness and strength of her latest book. Miss Braddon is entirely mistress of the art of telling a story. Her novels are not always very true to life, and seldom have much subtlety of character-drawing, but they are excellent narratives, and carry the reader on with great satisfaction from the first page to the last. The White House is not a story laid in Washington, the name being that of a large mansion belonging to a millionaire in Park Lane. For the sake of this house, her country house, and her position as her father's heiress, the heroine condescends to act in an exceedingly mean and deceitful manner. Whether so saint-like s. man as William Murray, with whom she contracts a secret marriage, could possibly have been brought to allow her to conceal the fact may be doubted. Murray leaves her on her refusal to acknowledge her marriage, but in real life he would certainly have insisted on informing her uncle of the event, considering that her property was to pass to this gentleman if she married. However, if Miss Braddon has chosen to construct her story on improbable lines, it cannot be denied that the book is interesting reading. Few people will care very much for Claudia, the heroine; and they will probably think the best things in the book are the descriptions of the industrial town of Skepton. The novel is a long one, and would perhaps bear compression in the first part, but it is vigorously told and the reader's attention does not often flag.
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