reason for a respectable future. Shortly before it was to take place, Pelham had disappeared, leaving it to his mother in a letter to declare his changed sentiments to the young lady.

Meanwhile he had ventured in a sailing boat from St. Malo over to a French fishing-village, when a storm overtook him, but he was rescued by Madeleine. After a fortnight's stay at her house, until his boat was repaired, he sailed away, leaving as a farewell to the girl the avowal of his love. All Madeleine's thoughts, hopes and fears were from now centered rouud Sebastian Pelham, but she never thought for a moment that she would ever have him back again. One bright summer's day she saw a boat skimming across the waves with two men in it. Sebastian sprang ashore, assured Madeleine of his undisturbed affection, and that it was impossible for him to live without her, and she felt all the conviction in his passion to believe him. Without delay he took her across to St. Malo, where a priest was supposed to wait to marry them with the necessary marriage certificate, and he put a ring on her finger. After two months of a magnificent honey moon, they returned to her small cottage.

Only her grandmother, with whom she was living, had discovered the truth bit by bit. The girl had not been married at all, the certificate was a false one, and the priest was a man, bribed to act as one. Pelham, distressed at her great grief, vowed to marry her before their child would be born, and it would be all right. Owing to the unwonted cold of the place and the absolute want of comfort and wonted luxuries to one so spoiled, he was seized by consumption during the winter. Madeleine ministered to him with all the devoted love, repayed by his passion, which made her forget altogether that she was not his true wife in the sight of men. Nor did she give any thought to the baby which was coming. Spring arrived and brought a great change in his illness, the doctor giving him up. Although her grandmother tried to explain to her that Pelham has brought shame on her and that she must press him to summon a priest to marry them, before he dies, she did not for a long time wish to trouble him with her selfish fears during his last hours, nor would she remind him of that sorrow and shame which must be her portion. To end her grandmother's sorrow, at last she took a heart and asked him to be legally married to him for the sake of their child. Repenting of all the evil things he has done, and willing to do her and the child justice before he dies, he sends for the priest. He arrived one minute too late, and Madeleine was not married and her child was born a month later.

So runs the story related to old Mrs. Pelham by Madeleine herself in simple words, unaffected by pain, fear nor remorse.

After two years in which Mrs. Pelham had in vain been seeking for her son, she had traced him, with the aid of her lawyer, to his lonely grave in the cemetry of the little village of Les Petites Roches. Joy had left her, and the great dream of her life, her Sebastian, had vanished into nothingness. All her remaining feeling was centered in that sense of justice, due to her nature, to do the best for the dishonoured child who had come into the world. As to the mother of the boy, she had no in

tention of being oversevere with her; she knew her son and his ways too well; but as to tolerating her society, or allowing her to have anything to do with her son's child, this did not even once enter into her mind. Willing to adopt the child as her own, present him to the world as her grandson, and make him her heir, she will do all that position and wealth can do for him and his future, on the sole condition that Madeleine gives him up and promises never to see him again, when her solicitor will provide her regularly with a sum to put her into a position never to want again. After a passionate fit of moaning and crying, Madeleine's natural power of self-control told her that the fight must be fought, whether she fell under the weight of the heavy cross which she was about to carry, or not. That pain unspeakable was soothed by the feeling of duty that she did not want to be unworthy and deprive her child of a career of honour.

Calm and erect, as though no emotion could ever move her, the mother with her child to her heart accepts Mrs. Pelham's conditions on that lonely grave. "Take the boy and give him the inheritance you have promised. Give him all the good things of life, the honour of right living, the best education man can give, and instil into him the noblest principles that can animate man's heart. But remember, when you teach him all about the things of this world, that there is another and a greater, where God grant that he and I may meet. Teach this child to know God, as well as you will certainly teach him to know man. I surrender him absolutely,

until the time comes, and it may never come, when he will want me more than you. I give him up until he wants me more than you." So far the Prologue. In a masterly manner the authoress pictures her young heroe's future in his grand mother's house, his Varsity-life at Cambridge, his work and his marriage, the rock on which his ship of goodly promise foundered. She leads us deep into the social problems of the day. Sebastian Pelham is an illegitimate son, whose birth is to be kept a secret by a web of lies and falsehoods about his pedigree, cleverly concocted by his grandmother. In appearance a well drawn representative of old England's best society; his nature the very essence of pure chivalry; warm and affectionate of heart; a firm belief in his fellow-men; endowed with the richest mental capacities; striving without being ambitions; modelling his life after a great example of what a brave man's life ought to be; all faith in absolute goodness in women, until there came a first shock, given him by the girl in his youth; a second shock, given him by the woman when he was a man, when the wickedness of his wife makes him loose all faith in women and he pronounces them to be bad and frail. Arrived at that point of utter bitterness and hatred, filled with the lust of revenge, Madeleine crosses his way in the hour of need. Her warm look, revealing all that sympathy after which he had been longing all his life, makes him feel that he is no longer lonely, and the touch of her hand brings his manhood back to him. "Take me home with you, mother", he said simply and Mother Love is triumphant.

Then there is Leonora Airlie, the daughter of that girl his father had jilted, the woman who ascends the ladder of life with him as his girl

companion, student-fellow at Cambridge, until she becomes his wife and brings ruin upon him. Her ambitions desire to reach up to his mental capacities at the Alma Mater is satisfied when both she and he come out first in the Honours List of the Classical Tripos. A most unsuitable comrade for his life, most unworthy of his noble mind, in character and feeling his very reverse. In appearance most attractive, possessing all the graces of a woman, she is wanting in every inward womanly charm; very beautiful, with a spirit face altering each moment; fascinating and subduing, carrying the airs of a queen, quite capable of marking out her own career. Brilliant in speech, she knows that there are men, ready to die for her, and even a man's heart, if she must step on it, will not keep her back from what she means to do. She only married Sebastian Pelham for power and position, and, in very truth, can consider herself one of the most popular women in London. When Verschoyle, her constant admirer, has, in his own interest, put the venom into her proud soul that she has been married by a nameless one, she no more thinks of that man's superior qualities, his foremost and much honoured position in life, but her low and common nature rages against him who has dared to take her in her honour, in the glory of her youth, in the fulness of her beauty, and hold her in his shameless arms, and had given her a name which was not his to bestow. She feels lowered to the very dust, and loathes the man who has brought her to this bitter shame. Her uncontrollable hatred has torn asunder that decent veil with which old Mrs. Pelham has all the time so anxiously tried to cover her dead son's memory, she herself has proclaimed the ghastly secret to the world, and her brutality has actually killed the old lady.

Poor old Mrs. Pelham! A scape-grace son, on whom she has lavished a weak affection in his youth, has brought nameless misery into her existence. Her character is severe, a lack of sympathy is in her manner, her sombre and dark eyes never smile with love at her warm hearted grandson who always longs for a look of affection from her. She is a woman of sorrows, and the ploughshares have gone deep over her soul. The web of lies which she has drawn around her believing friends, about the two graves at the far off little cemetery at Les Petites Roches, about the mother who has left her life for her child, about that dead mother's noble French origin, all these press upon her conscience by day and night like a heavy nightmare, filling her with ever wakeful suspicion against her surrounding. She has kept from her grandson's knowledge his father's history, because she will keep him unfettered by her painful recollections and from knowledge which can do him no good. Leonora Airlie was never to her taste, but, from her point of view the marriage between the two playmates means richess connected to his immense fortune.

Cedric Verschoyle, the evil spirit to them all! He is distantly related to Mrs. Pelham, a clever and noted London surgeon, always looking at his unsuspecting cousin with keenness and watchfulness, with a deep and deadly hatred, only waiting for an opportunity to strike his apparently fortunate kinsman a deadly blow. He has traced his enemy to the little far off

French village, and has found out all about the two graves at the cemetery of Les Petites Roches. He knows nothing against the man, but much against his pedigree. He calls him illegitimate to the face of old Mrs. Pelham, who fears her foe, and trembles before him. However, he mesmerises Leonora with his love, although knowing her many faults and vanities better than her husband, but loves them all. She dislikes his presence and wishes him to leave her, because she wants to become good, at least in a sort of commonplace way, when alone subject to Sebastian's perfect influence, even telling him that she feels like looking into the face of evil when she looks into his face. He is fully aware of his tormenting qualities, but spite and hatred towards Pelham make him from the beginning be on the side of the innocent girl Mrs. Pelham wants to improse on, and will protect her against disgrace. Before Leonora's engagement to Sebastian Pelham, he played with her inconsistant feelings, but when she thought she felt sure of him, he told her he would not marry, and preferred to love many women a little rather than one all in all. And at last, after he has helped to kill poor old Mrs. Pelham, thoroughly ruined Pelham's family-life, and revolted Leonora's feelings, he feels certain of his precious victim, and finally holds the run away wife in his vicious arms.

Last not least there is Beaufort, Pelham's schoolmaster and friend, a beautifully drawn character. His life holds its tragedy, unspoken, but ever-present, underlining his sunny sympathetic nature, his calm face with those truthful, serene eyes. Good and learned, he is always found working at the magnum opus of his life. His best friend is his vast library of the works of the Ancients, in whose company he is happiest. His books are all alive to him, more alive many of them, than some of the fellowcreatures whom he meets day by day. He manages to convey a certain sense of repose to each person he comes in contact with; his is a calm of power not of indolence, and the restless natures of the most restless boys in his form settle down into calm under his influence. He has taken into his house his orphan niece, Lilian de Moleyns, the child of his only sister, a tender hearted, very sympathetic ltttle creature with an early developping great beauty of mind, her sunny nature reflecting warmth wherever she is. She has the extraordinary merit of being liked both by men and women. To her, Sebastian was the friend of her childhood, the knight-errant who has listened to her baby sobs, always good to her in a very special way, and she gives him in return the whole-hearted love of a simple child. Mr. Beaufort has taken into his house after the death of his old housekeeper, Madeleine Le Farge, a French woman, who has answered to his advertisement in a London paper of a general servant and companion to his niece. For three years she has been their faithful servant, helping them with the greatest tact in a thousand ways, and ministering to their needs, her sad history not being suspected by any of them, character, whatever her unhappy youth has been.

-

a noble

Finally a few remarks about the value of Mrs. Meade's novel. Her language is beautiful throughout, her characters are genuine and taken out of England's best society. From first to last the book teems with interest,

full to the brim of observation of life and character. Admirably conceived as a whole, and most skilful in its details, the novel cannot be too highly recommended and deserves to be widely read.

Frankfurt a/M.

J. H. W.

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