THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
ReNNIE EVERTON is an entirely delightful person married to the detestable and hideously pious Edith, who with her daughter Priscilla and her father Lord Arden, contrive to make
e unbearable for him, and turn him out of his study in order convert it into a private chapel. So he falls in love with olet, who has a husband in a private asylum. The husband inconveniently becomes sane, however, just when the two are
are of their love. There is a fine scene of renunciation by iolet, tied until death to a man with only half a mind. The d of Pharisees and Publicans (Hutchinson, 7s. 6d.) is iginal and dramatic, and all through the interest is well stained and flavoured with Mr. E. F. Benson's inimitable
(lomestic perceptive touches. Priscilla at dinner, for instance,
+ants to know what a piscina is, and her grandfather explains : iT' he footman, in a spasm of justifiable impatience, took away rd Arden's uneaten soup and his gesticulating spoon, and ve him some fish, to see if he would eat that." The portrait this dawdling old bore is uncannily vivid. Mr. Benson has list none of his sureness of touch. He paints his canvas with tpo broad and hasty a brush, perhaps, but his figures live in the memory as pleasant, if peceant, human beings.
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