CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOKS.
For Honour's Sake. By Jennie Chappell. (Partridge.)—This is an easy-flowing story which runs on familiar lines. In it a marriage takes place which is a mistake, and another which seems one, and it takes over three hundred closely printed pages to rectify matters. To the veteran novel-reader, it may seem as if the author of For Honour's Sake subjected some of her characters to an unnecessary amount of torture, and that, in particular, the quarrel between Vale Deveron and his wife need not have reached the formal stage of a separation, and that Alleyne Ross and Helen Deveron might have come together at least a hundred pages sooner than they actually do. But both couples are in all probability the happier for their troubles, although some of these are of their own creation. At the same time, it is surely a little inartistic of the author of For Honour's Sake to make such a husband as Vale Deveron strike such a child-wife as Irene, even although she was inattentive to her child, and was in the habit of making such a blunder as forgetting to order meat when her husband gave a little dinner. Vale's remorse for his crime seems also rather out of proportion to the enormity of his offence ; for, after all, he uses no more deadly weapon than an antimacassar. The incidents subsidiary to the main plot are well managed ; the minor characters are carefully drawn ; life at the English coast-town of Dorrie- mouth is prettily depicted ; and the smaller illustrations are care- ful and lifelike. Altogether, For Honour's Sake is very much above the average of Christmas fiction expressly prepared for girls.
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