A Fatal Past. By Dora Russell. (Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.)
—This can hardly be considered one of its author's best efforts. The plot interest, indeed, is very considerable, and is sustained from start to finish. Moreover, the question of who's who could not well be presented in a more puzzling form than it is here. There, for example, is Lady Ennismore, who is really Mrs. George Roche. for her past is not quite dead, as she anticipates, but confronts her in the person of a very objectionable, but very resolute, first husband. There is the Romeo, young Francis Roche, and the Juliet, Margaret Drummond,—but it would obviously be unfair to say who they are, and still more who they are not. The true heroine of the story is the too-much-married Lady Ennismore, who, beyond doubt, is sorely tried as, trying to shoot her first husband, whom she hates, she only succeeds in killing ber second husband, whom she does not hate. The young people of the story have, of course, rather a bad time of it. They are told repeatedly that, on account of this mysterious, unmentionable, and " fatal" past, they never can marry. But they marry all the same, and are happy in a commonplace way. Indeed, A Fatal Past can best be described as an excellent story of a conventional kind.
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