lary as a mining engineer and all the money he could borrow from
friends in losing games of poker to a man who made a profession of
winning them. Why he should have wanted to do this (for it seemed to be
his solitary serious vice) in a place like Sta. Malua I cannot imagine.
But there it is. For one reason or another the marriage was delayed, and
after a long mental struggle _Jno. Maddison_, who had fallen in love
with _Molly_, decided to tell her what kind of man her idol of romantic
chivalry really was. It raises, you see, a nice point of ethics, since
_Edmund Serge_ was popular at the club and, except for the brand of the
poker on his forehead, a pretty good fellow. Unfortunately Mr. HASLETTE
rudely slices the knot of his difficulty by making _Edmund_ embezzle
money and abscond at the critical point of the story. The telling of the
yarn is a little humdrum, but gains from a comparative leniency in the
matter of local colour--for I feel that Sta. Malua is the sort of place
which might have been rather ruthless about this--and the suspended
banns keep the interest fairly warm. But I am not sure that _Johnnie
Maddison_ might not have been nicer if he had escaped a suspicion of
priggishness and lost a trifle now and then at progressive whist.

* * * * *

In Miss ELEANOR MORDAUNT'S new volume called _The Island_ (HEINEMANN)
all the tales have a common interest through their association with a
corner of Empire easily recognisable by those who have ever seen it. I
remember how greatly I have already admired Miss MORDAUNT'S power of
vivid and picturesque scene-painting; there are several stories in this
book that show it at its best. I wish I could avoid adding that there
are others that seem to me entirely unworthy of their author, at least
for any other purpose than that of boiling the pot. One of the best of
the tales, "A Reversion," is both dramatic and realistic; it bears a
strong resemblance to a sketch that recently made a successful
appearance at the Hippodrome; indeed the good qualities of Miss
MORDAUNT'S stories are precisely those that would help their development
into excellent little plays. One thing that I cannot help wishing is
that the writer had trusted a little more to my imaginative
intelligence. There is a certain kind of detail that is best confided to
this sanctuary, and Miss MORDAUNT'S difficulty seems to have been in
realising when all the sayable things had been said. At least