st Abbess, and every direct
male heir expires punctually on his twenty-first birthday. The actual
agency is a poisoned ring concealed in the frame of a portrait of
the malevolent Abbess and is in the custody of the _Otway_ family,
who enjoy a prescriptive if nebulous right to be stewards of the
property. Just how or why the _Otways_--noble fellows, we are given to
understand--carry out the deceased Abbess's nefarious wishes with such
precision and despatch is not explained. Anyway the mother of the last
victim, who has found out the secret, steals the ring, murders the
_Otway_ of the period, and retires to a lunatic asylum after her son
has himself stolen the ring from her workbox and poisoned himself into
the next world. That finishes it. The ring retires to a museum and the
proper people marry each other. It is a slender and quite impossible
story, but told in a clever way which goes far to redeem its lack of
substance.

* * * * *

_The Graftons_ (COLLINS) is a sequel to Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL'S
former chronicle of the same pleasant family. Herein you shall find
them, pursuing the even tenor of their prosperous way, father, son and
charming daughters, and arriving placidly at the point where, in the
natural sequence of events, these daughters leave the paternal nest
for others provided by eligible mates. Their courtships, and some mild
uncertainty as to whether papa _Grafton_, well-preserved and wealthy
widower, will or will not follow the example of his female offspring,
provide the entire matter of the book. For the rest Mr. MARSHALL is
content to mark time (and very pleasantly) with pictures of English
country life at its most comfortable, and in particular with some
comedy scenes, excellently done, turning upon the often delicate
relationship of Hall and Parsonage. There are a couple of clerical
portraits in the book that seem to me as lifelike as anything of the
kind since _Barchester_. Apart from this the outstanding virtue of
the _Graftons_ is the reality of their dialogue. Precisely thus do,
or did, actual people speak in the quiet old times before the War;
precisely thus also did nothing whatever of any consequence happen
to the vast majority of them. Since, however, the truth and charm of
the tale depend upon this absence of the sensational, I must the more
regret that Messrs. COLLINS, who have printed it exquisitely, should
have been betrayed into a coloured wrapper of almos