The Cardinal and Lady Susan. By Lucas Cleave. (Greening and
Co. 6s.)—The beginning of this book is much the most interesting part ; the subsequent history of the heroine, Lady Susan, has a decidedly irritating effect on the reader. The situation which is the crux of the book is ingeniously conceived and well bandied. By a series of circumstances a very pro- minent member of the College of Cardinals is called upon to entertain in his house a beautiful young lady who is no sort of relation to him, but who is the daughter of his early love. The description of the arrival of this young lady at the Cardinal's villa about twenty miles from Rome is full of humour. She comes from America, her mother having been half American, and brings in her Willi aA antoomObile, two piebald cobs, a dog, and ;Unary other appartenancee which make the cortege look, as Lady Susan says; rather like a travelling circus. She insists on driving the Cardinal out into the neighbouring country in a carriage to which the piebald cobs are harnessed tandem. The central situation, as we have said, is distinctly entertaining, and the pictures of Rome further on in the book are interesting; but from the moment that Lady Susan begins seriously to fall in love with the Cardinal the novel degenerates. Her marriage, undertaken in a fit of pique, is not a success, and the story'becomes at the end a little sordid. But it is worth reading, if only for the humour of the beginning and for the careful detail with which the character of the Cardinal is described.
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