The Secret Son. By Mrs. Henry Dudeney. (Methuen and Co.
6s.)—The Secret Son is a story of three generations, all entangled in the misery of betrayed love. In one case the man is the offender, and in two the woman ; and before long we are involved in moat intricate relationships, of wives and lovers, husbands and children. Stated thus baldly, the story seems one of monotonous unpleasantness : it is, in fact, touched with real tragedy. Mrs. Dudeney has a capacity for big emotions and an admirable boldness in discovering them ; the passions run riot, yet they are broad and true, and, in some sense, classical. Her writing is pure; it is, above all, sincere, with the simplicity of the Sussex peasants whom she describes ; but when she leaves the cottages for the big house she becomes Consoious of the laws-which-must-be-obeyed of fiction, and fails to convince us with the family vulgarity of the Chinnerys. Our chief regret is that the long gaps in time necessitated by the including of four generations in a short novel rob Nancy's character of some of its reasonableness ; she is, nevertheless, a portrait of which Mrs. Dudeney may well be proud.
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