476 



The Review of Reviews. 



moment all the other men and women in the room 

 became mere walkers-on, persons to form a background 

 for the real actors in the Lygon drama — he and she and 

 Mrs. Ferrers. And as Lygon had gone down in his 

 esteem when he had supposed him victim to the 

 odalisque, now he went up in his esteem when *he saw 

 the quality of his conqueror. 



The trio stood out in relief from all the frivollers 

 about them, showing both in brain and body as being 

 upon a higher evolutionary level, with their battle of 

 life to be fought upon the higher ground of their finer 

 and further evolved humanity. 



Lady l^ygon, who before her rival's entry had seemed 

 a trifle indeterminate perhaps, now, with the coming of 

 her rival, took up her position in the foreground of the 

 drama. 



Malet, all vigilance, saw by the instant of profound 

 gravity which supplanted the smiles he had been lavish- 

 ing upon the Duchess, and by the momentary blazing of 

 his eyes as they met those of Mrs. Ferrers, that Lygon 

 was no common philanderer, but was, on the contrary, 

 one capable of an unswerving fidelity to his true mate. 

 And at once the drama became of vital and absorbing 

 interest. 



For of these two women, both so beautiful and clever, 

 and yet so different, which was the man's true mate — 

 his wedded wife or that other? 



It would not be fair to give here the result of 

 the duel between the two fair women, but it can 

 be seen that the story is of absorbing interest. 



Lamorna is on a different plane, though, like 

 Mr. Benson, Mrs. Sidgwick has chosen her people 

 from the rank and file of the upper middle class. 

 There is no need to emphasise the straightfor- 

 ward directness of her method of telling the 

 story, the clearness of her characterisation, or 

 the charm with which she keeps the reader's 

 attention fixed from beginning to end — that 

 goes without saying. The problem in this case 

 is so difficult that the reader feels to the quick 

 the agony it must have caused Lamorna. She, 

 a clever, sensible girl, has become a sort of 

 guardian to a cousin a few years younger, but 

 idle, desultory, and wayward. Pansy is en- 

 gaged to a fine young fellow, who has had to go 

 to South America. Meantime, on the Continent, 

 she meets a fascinating man, a woman-hunter, 

 whose wife, loving him in spite of all, bears with 

 his infidelities. The inexperienced Pansy, whose 

 craving is to have even only one " glorious 

 hour," falls into Colonel .'Xuray's clutches and 

 runs away with him, returning after a day or 

 two with opened eyes and desperate fear. Is 

 Lamorna to tell the true lover when he returns? 

 The moral of the story is that young girls should 

 be told by their mothers or those acting in place 

 of a mother about the realities of life ; ignorance 

 on this point does not often conduce to bliss. 



Maurice Helme, the great oculist, meets in 

 Switzerland a daughter of one of the guides, 

 who is almost the counterpart of the beloved 

 wife he had lost but a few months after their 

 wedding. Roslein was in her early teens when 

 he met her first, but the attraction he felt for 

 her drew him to her mountain home year after 

 year. 



A scoundrelly young man, part guide, part 

 smuggler, guesses that Helme loves Roslein, 

 and vainly seeks to kill him. One of the most 

 thrilling incidents in the book is that in which 

 this young man, whilst acting as guide to 

 Helme, either by accident or of intent drops him 

 down a crevasse : — 



For a second the rope as it tightened held him sus- 

 pended, then it gave — cut through, he thought after- 

 wards, by a knife-edge of ice — and he slid down, down, 

 mazed beyond thought, and with only a vast dull wonder 

 in his mind that he was still .alive. 



It was the snow that came in with him that saved him. 

 He was in a kind of flume in the ice which ran down- 

 wards at an angle of seventy degrees. The sides were 

 like polished glass. ... At first he was too be- 

 wildered to notice anything. . . . Then as he 

 slipped downwards he saw below him the wonderful 

 pale blue-green illumination of the glacier ice — growing 

 not in intensity, for in no sense was it intense, but 

 always of the thinnest and rarest imaginable, but grow- 

 ing in quality and visibility. He had been in crevasses 

 and ice-caves without number, but never had he seen 

 anything to equal this. There the glacier light was 

 always more or less mingled with the light of the day 

 or the sun. But here was the ice-light all pervasive in 

 its transparent luminosity. It was like thin blue-green 

 sunshine. . . . Helme struggled on; the air was 

 fresh and sweet and cold. . . . He climbed and 

 fell, he sprawled and stumbled. He slid and rolled 

 down smooth, dark inclines and landed at the bottom 

 in icy pools, bruised and bewildered. But the fact that 

 he was constantly falling made him hopeful that was 

 getting down hill. 



And so Helme progressed with pain and 

 bruises until he came to one hideous place where 

 the glacier had cracked right across and the gap 

 was ten feet in width, he judged. But he 

 crossed it, and hour after hour he wormed his 

 way amongst monstrous shapes and nightmare 

 fancies, fighting on, because to give up was to 

 die. 



A characteristic touch is the way in which, 

 when recovering after his perilous adventure, 

 Helme examines his hands with care, fearful 

 lest those delicate instruments of his onerous 

 work had been damaged in his struggle for life. 

 There are many other interesting characters in' 

 this pleasant novel, which will certainly enhance 

 Mr. Oxenham's reputation. 



A NOVEL OF THE ALPS.* 



Mu. OxENHAM has forsaken the Channel 

 Islands, but only to show us that he can deal 

 equally well with a glacier country. 



* The Quest of the Golden Rose, By John 

 Oxenham. (Metliuen.) 



WHEN PLATO WAS A YOUTH.* 



Mr. St.acpooi.e, as always, throws a glamour 

 over his readers — gifting us with new vision 



* The Street of the Flute-Player. By H. De 

 Vere Stacpoole. (John Murray. 6s.) 



