t me to, was staring hard
at the supposed one, so that there I must acknowledge myself defeated. With
a stolen invention, an old gentleman found shot in his room, and a son
under a vow to avenge his father, the story provides plenty of thrills, and
the "Silver Tea-shop" itself has the fascination that business ventures in
books often exercise. It seems to be run on such lavish lines for the
prices charged that I found myself looking hungrily for its address. I wish
the author had not referred to her hero as having "mobile digits" and
burdened her ingenuous story with anything so important as a prologue. By
making the villain's deserted offspring not one baby girl only, or even
twins, but triplets, Miss EVERETT GREEN provides waitresses all of one
family for the "Silver Tea-shop," and that, though a happy arrangement, is
a little too uncommon to add to the likelihood of an unconvincing tale.

* * * * *

When a book is succinctly labelled _Love Stories_ (DORAN), at least no one
has any right to complain that he wasn't warned beforehand of the character
of its contents. As a matter of fact, human nature being what it is, I have
little doubt that Mrs. MARY ROBERTS RINEHART has hit upon a distinctly
profitable title. Indeed I believe that this has already been proved in the
Land of Freedom, from which the work comes to us, where (I am given to
understand) the vogue of sentimental fiction is even greater than with
ourselves. What the name does nothing to indicate is that the stories are
almost all of them laid in or about hospital wards. For some, perhaps most,
of the author's admirers this may serve only to increase the charm; for
others, who prefer their romance unflavoured with iodoform, not. Undeniable
that she has a smiling way with her, and a gift of sympathetic enjoyment
that carries off the old, old dialogues, even imparting freshness to the
tale of the patient _in extremis_ who persuades his attractive nurse into a
death-bed marriage, treatment that the slightest experience of fiction
should have warned her to be invariably curative. Perhaps the best of the
tales is "Jane," which tells very amusingly the results of a hospital
strike that in actual life would, I imagine, have provided little humorous
relief. By this time you may have gathered that what matters about Mrs.
RINEHART is not what she says but the way that she says it; upon which hint
you can act as fancy dictates.

*