THE GILDED CUPID. By Elizabeth Murray. (John Lane. 7s. 6d.)—Poor
Gloria ! She was so young and so beautiful and so rich—no wonder every man she met fell in love with her, or at any rate asked for her hand in marriage. But Gloria was not the kind of girl to throw herself away on the first person who proposed to her. Besides, Papa, having married a dubious royalty himself, was quite determined that his daughter should one day have an indisputable coronet on her notepaper. Unfortunately Gloria's social ambiticins involved what she naively called "seeing life," which in practice meant dancing the Tarantella in deshabille at a rather questionable night-club. From this haunt of the " fast set" she is rescued, very much the worse for drink, by the strong silent hero, who carries her off by main force in her under- clothes. A timely rainstorm makes it impossible for the part) to reach London without grave risk of pneumonia; so there is nothing for it but to spend the night at the hero's country house,-situated conveniently close. The result of this escapade is, of course, matrimony between Gloria and the strong silent hero, though not without various contretemps both before and after the ceremony. Miss Murray tells. this seemingly com- monplace story with considerable success, because she pos- sesses the gift of writing convincing dialogue and knows how to manipulate her plot so as to Weep the reader curious to the end. The Gilded Cupid is hardly a book to set the Thames on fire, but it has a certain efficiency not always evident in the work of more established writers.
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