A CHEQUERED LIFE.* Mits. DAY'S new novel is not a

trap for the unwary reader, into which he shall walk to be caught by a theory, or a preachment, or by any set purpose ; it deals with life and its pleasures and

pains, with love and marriage, and the blunders occasionally made in both, which are so hard to remedy ; but it is a genuine story, of well-sustained interest. Nevertheless, that the writer's mind is much exercised on two points of our social life which are indeed pressing in this day, and that she has been strongly influenced by them in

the construction of her story, is plainly, though not obtrusively, evident. The unequal measure which society metes to men and women in regard to the pre-matrimonial history of each respect- ively is one of these points ; the other is the absence of earnest- ness that is distinctly characteristic of this age—not in the transcendental sense of the quality, but in the practical sense of it, that should lend a meaning to every day which, whether we like it or do not, goes to our account. Very likely it has been characteristic of all preceding ages, too, but we see it, and feel the effect of it ; we can read the results of it in the scandals and the misfortunes of a time prolific of them, in the loosening of family ties, and the distortion of household relations of which the world hears a great deal too much, and which come of the lack of principle, and the undertaking of serious responsi- bilities without seriousness.

For Mrs. Day's handling of the first of these questions, and it is a burning one, we have nothing but praise. It is open to the objection that between two such amiable and perfectly well- intentioned persons as Lord Rewe and his innocent girl-wife, so ignorant of the world into which she had stepped out of her con- vent schoolroom, that she actually looked upon the pleasant vices of which she heard for the first time as deadly sins, silence and estrangement of so long duration would not in real life have been produced by anything said by a third party. The wife would have gone direct to the husband, and asked him what was the meaning of his mother's hints, or if she had not good-sense and frankness to take this course, the husband would have insisted on an explanation of the change in her demeanour towards himself, especially if the two had previously been such firm friends, as well as true lovers. But this is not, perhaps, a serious objection ; if it were, what could the novelists do ? They must have leave to be a little improbable, or what would become of three-volume fiction ? Mrs. Day takes this leave, but it is her only draft upon improbability ; the sentiments and the conduct of Valentina are entirely consistent with her education and her character, with the shock of her introduction into a world in which men are free to indulge in vice unblamed, and women are supposed to know all about it, but to be quite unaffected by that knowledge in their relations with their brothers, their lovers, and their husbands. The truth is told in this novel ; the woman's side of the matter is strongly, but delicately, set forth, as it ought to be, in a day when the arrangements which precede fashionable marriages are printed for public edification, and the mode of announcing them is "On se range "—of course, as applying to the bridegroom—than which a neater insult to the young ladies who are to promise to love, honour, and obey the ranges sinners could not well be devised. It is well to have a picture of the mind of a good, honest, sensitive woman, loving, true, pure, full of the enthusiasm of love and respect which comes from lofty teaching concerning the meaning of duty and the sanctity of marriage,—of her acute shame and indignation, her horrified distrust and bewilderment when she finds herself established for all her life among people who, holding high places in the world, treat all that she abhors, without rendering count of it to herself, with the complacence of familiarity and indifference. The family party into which the young girl from her convent school is admitted is a perfectly respectable one, as the world measures respectability. The Earl of Kelso is an estimable nobleman, and his Countess is a busy, arbitrary woman of fashion, who is not particularly fond of her eldest son, but still thinks he might do better than ranger himself by marrying his cousin Valentina Dudley ; and when he has married her, thinks she had better be knocked out of her innocent, sentimental notions, and made to understand the ways of the world which Lord Rewe has always lived in, and to which she will have to accommodate herself for the rest of her life. The Countess loves her second son, John Scrope, of whom the reader A Chequered Life. By Mrs. Day. London : Hurst and Blackett. might have been permitted to see more with advantage, for he is a pleasant and amusing person, and discusses his own

inability to work in a candid way which takes our fancy, while he plays but little part in the story. The relations between Lady Kelso and her second son are very well conveyed. The easy, fond impudence of the young man, and the softening of the bustling mother, who is so bard and exacting to others, enliven the course of a story which is too uniformly

sombre in its tone. Even in the scenes which are all talk and trifling there is no laughter, except, and that designedly, of the kind that has been likened to "the crackling of thorns under a

pot." Mrs. Day's heroine—we must still go on using the word,

though it is in most instances absurdly misapplied—has two for- midable rivals in her sisters-in-law, the Ladies Elizabeth and Anne Scrope. They are both more interesting than Valentina, as per- sons, though the circumstances of the young wife's life, her trials, her sad awakening, her passing temptation, her final triumph, are very well told, and with a singularly just presentment of her

mingled strength and weakness, of her self-consciousness and her reserve. Strongly contrasted in every respect, the sisters are distinct types, of which the experience of most of us can show us specimens. Lady Elizabeth is a fine character, and care- fully drawn, in all the variety of aspects in which we see her throughout the story, which is not a complicated, but is a well constructed one. The steady repression of self, the lofty motive, the active well-doing, and the serviceable piety of Lady Elizabeth, coming to her aid in a trial of which Valentina's disillusion is but the merest shadow, and supporting her through it until the end—not the compensation— are well brought out, and take away the flavour of bitterness, of mournfulness, the impression of "a vain shadow," in which the others walk, and which without these things of good repute would depress the reader. It is long since we have been so much interested in any fictitious situation as in Lady Elizabeth Scrope's listening to the story of treachery, sin, and shame, which Adelaide Hare, her mother's secretary, pours forth to her, under the influence of her gentle kindness to a dependent who is neither interesting nor amiable ; and learning in its details the hollowness of all her own hopes, the unworthiness of the man she loves, the solemn obligation of a wrong to be righted, if she can ever do it, the closing in around herself of the dull, grey life, for evermore. There is not a touch of exaggeration, not the least shade of affectation, in the description ; throughout the

whole of this scene the writer sustains the strength and the harmony of the loftiest female character she has yet drawn, and we are prepared to find the unappreciated young woman afterwards breaking utterly with the empty life which

she can neither bear for herself, nor better for those whom she loves. Her powerlessness in the latter particular is one of the truest touches of observation in the book ; her

mother, her father, her sister, all go their several ways, and have their several notions of life, each equally little con- tent, but between her and them is the gulf fixed of utterly different principles, purposes, aspirations, and convictions. -Valentina is divided from her sister-in-law by the feeling that Lady Elizabeth is one of those who deceived her with the fair

seeming under which lay vice and deceit, and which in itself was mere shocking indifference; by Valentina's own reserve, and by another barrier, which the reader must discover for himself, and having discovered, will perceive to have been contrived with skill

and developed with taste and delicacy.

Lady Anne, who marries a millionaire early in the story, and

finds out that neither money nor the kind indulgence of a good-natured man can make happiness, and dies young after a life of dressing, flirting, and foolishness, faithfully tended by her

brother's wife, by whom her shallow nature has somehow come to be stirred to the perception at least of human duties and claims, is

also very well drawn. There is a scene in which she breaks out to her mother, with all her discontent and the inexorable ennui of her life, which is very clever, in its true-to-life delineation of the wretchedness of self-love and self-indulgence, and of Lady Kelso's first misgivings concerning the perfect wisdom of her schemes for the disposal of her daughter. The scene ends thus, after Lady Anne has been crying violently, and declaring herself the wretchedest of women :- "' I want another handkerchief she sobbed. 'Oh mother, if this was to be all my life, why did you not warn me before ? why did you not tell me that my marriage was not triumph, but a sacrifice ? Is there no more joy, no more anything in life except this forlorn neglect, these hopeless, stupid, aimless days? It is a pity I ever was born. Is it that your life has been so happy, or that you have worn hard to the galling yoke, that you can sit here and not mind ? No, don't begin to speak, and put me off with mere words, that only mock one's common-sense ; don't dare to tell me common-place maxims, or Bible texts; they mean nothing to me now, they are all very well for happy, prosperous people—Lady Kelso sat helpless, with wrung heart, under her daughter's passionate outburst. What but common-places had she indeed to offer ? Lady Anne sprang up, with a look that made her mother quake. I am not going to pass such a life as mine much longer,' she said, with compressed lips, and eyes in which the tears were beginning to dry. I have friends of my own, as you say, but not in the sense you mean. If Arthur Powys does not mend his manners shortly, I shall show him what a neglected wife can do, not by way of amusing, but revenging herself. Any of those are hotter than he is. I shall take ono as my special friend,— nay, more I will run away with him.'—' For Heaven's sake, Anne, think of what you are saying ; it would be utter ruin. Arthur Powys is not a man to forgive.'—' It is I who have to forgive ; I should want none of his forgiveness. Don't look so dreadful, mamma! I shall not take you into my secrets ; you shall not have to answer for my misdeeds. I am more generous than that ; I am not going to retaliate on you.' —Lady Kelso's heart sank at this innuendo ; she was to blame, then, in her daughter's mind. She gasped out, 'For God's sake, Anne, think what you are doing !' Lady Anne, now studying herself in the glass, turned round, on her mother's exclamation. 'Good heavens, Mamma, what a face! You look as if you had seen a ghost ! I am sure my story is nothing new ; there are heaps of people just as bad, or worse.'

And then Lady Anne bathes her eyes, and cheers her mother up with a description of a " lovely " ball-dress, after which she has a relapse into misery and upbraiding; and finally exhibits her- self in the Park. Very impressive is the death of this poor, weak, vain, selfish creature, the natural result of such training and such views of life. One is glad she does not come to any real harm, and feels a thrill of compassion for her when she cries out, on her death-bed, "I am going out into the darkness, I know not where, and all alone ; and there is not one of you can hold me back !"

The story has an under-plot, in which there is some very careful character-drawing. A lawyer, who is a good man in his way, but insists on the utter banishment and oblivion of the family black-sheep, is very well portrayed. Valentina gains upon the reader so much, that one wants to have a some- what clearer notion of the man whom she really and steadily loves from first to last, and who is the least satisfactory, the least dis- tinct of the personages in a story greatly superior in power and interest to its author's earlier novels.