A Human Trinity. By Ronald Macdonald. (Methuen and Co. Os.)—A
Human Trinity is an interesting novel of modern social life, though the heroine is hard to believe in. The woman of forty, properly managed, may be an attractive figure as a heroine in fiction, bat it is not easy to believe in the extreme beauty and youthful looks of Lady Mary Frozier, and also in her achievements as one of the first painters of the day. Great artistic power attributed to a character's in fiction involves such a strain on the reader's credulity that it should never be bestowed- by an author unless it is absolutely indispensable. Now, Lady Mary Prosier could have filled her part in the book quite as satisfactorily if she had been represented as an artist of moderate power, in whom it would have been quite easy to believe. The character of her unacknowledked son, Anthony. Le Dane, is almost too good to be true. It seems unlikely, also, that a scandal should be started in London on the mere accident of a likeness between two acquaintances ; but the critic acknowledges that a plot must be produced somehow, and that the relations between the three principal characters, the author's "human trinity"—Lady Mary, Anthony, and Bethune—must, for the purposes of the story, have been sooner or later discovered. The novel, if unconvincing, is good reading, and the second part of the book, called "The Two," which contains an account of the early relations between Bethune and Mary, is treated with great delicacy and considerable power, though it seems inconsistent with Bethune's character to have deserted Mary, instead of acknow- ledging his guilt to her guardians. The author has some difficulty in managing the beginning of his story ; but if the reader will persevere with the first five or six chapters, he will be rewarded by finding that he takes considerable interest in the fate of the different personages of the drama.
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