mot marry a widower with children whom ho prefers to
herself, with difli- eult relatives, and a dangerous fixture in the shape of a nurse determined
that the young stepmother shall not have fair-play. Mrs. Victor Domarcay's troubles do not last very long, but they are many and various, and we do not think that in real life a marriage contracted with so little enthusiasm on either side would have been a happy one, -even after the wife had won the regard of her stepchildren, outlived the difficult relative, and gotten rid of the obstructive nurse, for there is in the character of Victor Demarcay a want of manliness, not dependent on circumstances or surroundings, -which must have exposed him to contempt at ll times. The hero of the story cuts a poor figure throughout ; the children are much truer to nature, and more interesting ; and the young wife, who tolls the story, tolls it well, without inordinate egotism, and is a very nice creature herself, though one hardly likes her cold-blooded way of considering a proposal of marriage from a man who is almost a stranger to her, and who does not even affect to be in love with her. She warms up in the third volume, and the description of her distress on finding that Colonel Demarcay, the difficult relative of her husband, has constituted her unborn child his heir, to the detriment of her stepson, and that she is therefore placed at an additional disadvantage as regards Victor, is clever. No other portion of the story is up to the mark of that, but the style of the whole is fair. The author pays her readers the compliment of taking pains.
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