Venus' Doves. By Ida Ashworth Taylor. 3 vols. (Hurst and
Blackett.)—The title of this story is somewhat misleading, since only one of the female characters, Violet Yorke, shows any of the sim- plicity of a dove ; and even she finds it desirable, at the age of eighteen, to leave her father's house in a fit of resentment, with a vague intention of taking refuge with her artist-friend George Vereker, whose affection for her she believes to be disinterested friendship. He is absent ; but his friend and her former host, Reginald Charteris, meets her at the door, places her under his sister's care, secures her father's consent, and marries her in a week. Then begins a series of mutual mistakes and misunderstandings, Violet being constantly thrown by circumstances into equivocal positions with Vereker, who makes no secret to her of his devotion, in spite of her marriage, and her husband feigning indifference. She falls in love with her husband, the clouds are removed, and everything set right in the third volume. There is a flavour, to say the least, of old acquaintance in the characters and the situations alike ; but the story is aa readable as many other novels, and is free from remarkable faults and inconsistencies. The interest, too, is well maintained to the end, though the ultimate fate of the subsidiary characters—of George Vereker, for example—is left to imagination.
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