call dubious.
The latest victim to this tendency is _Lily_, heroine of _The Lonely
House_ (HUTCHINSON). It was situate, as you might not expect from its
name, at Monte Carlo, and _Lily_ had come there as the paying guest of
a courtesy uncle and aunt of foreign extraction, about whom she really
knew far too little. They had tried to postpone her visit at least
for a couple of days, the awkward fact being that the evening of
her arrival was already earmarked for an engagement that Auntie
euphemistically called "seeing a friend off on a long journey." If you
know Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES at her creepiest, you can imagine the spinal
chill produced by this discovery. Gradually it transpires (though how
I shall not say) that whenever the _Count_ and _Countess Polda_ were
in want of a little ready cash they were in the habit of "seeing off"
some unaccompanied tourist known to have well-filled pockets. So
you can suppose the rest. If I have a criticism for Mrs. LOWNDES'
otherwise admirable handling of the affair it is that she depends
too much on the involuntary eavesdropper; before long, indeed, I was
forced to conclude either that _Lily_ possessed a miraculous sense
of overhearing, or that the acoustic properties of the lonely house
rendered it conspicuously unsuited for the maturing of felonious
little plans. But this is a trifle compared with the delights of such
a feast of first quality thrills.

* * * * *

The extraordinary cleverness of _A Woman's Man_ (HEINEMANN) is the
thing which most impresses me about this life story of a French man of
letters, at the height of his fame somewhere in the eighteen-nineties.
He is made to tell his own story, and pitfalls for the author must
have abounded in such a scheme, but Miss MARJORIE PATTERSON seems
to have fallen into very few of them. _Armand de Vaucourt_ is a
self-deceiving sensualist who justifies his amours as necessary to
literary inspiration and neglects his wife only to find, too late,
that she has been his guardian angel, her love the source of all that
was worth while in his life and work. There have been such characters
as _Armand_ in fiction who yet made some appeal to the reader's
affection; it is the book's worst defect that _Armand_ makes none.
His recurring despairs and passions grow tedious; his final but rather
incomplete change of heart left me sceptical as to how long it would
have lasted had the book carried his history any furthe