of her to say
that.

* * * * *

The heroine of _Miss Fingal_ (BLACKWOOD) is called by her publishers
"a woman whose distinguishing trait is femininity," to which they add,
with obvious truth, "a refreshing creation in these days." Really,
in this one phrase Messrs. BLACKWOOD have covered the ground so
comprehensively that I have little more to do than subscribe my
signature. To fill in details, Mrs. W.K. CLIFFORD'S latest is a
quietly sympathetic tale about a lonely gentlewoman (this you can take
either as one or two words) rescued from a life of penury by the
will of a rich uncle, transferred from her tiny flat in Battersea to
Bedford Square and a country cottage, expanding in prosperity, and
generally proving the old adage that where there's a will there's a
way, indeed several ways, of spending the result agreeably. As I have
said, it is all the gentlest little comedy of happiness, not specially
exciting perhaps. I find it characteristic of Mrs. CLIFFORD'S method
that the only at all violent incident, a railway smash, happens
discreetly out of sight, and does no more than provide its victim
with an enjoyable convalescence, and the attentive reader with the
suggestion of a psychological problem that is both unnecessary and
unconvincing. The best of the tale is its picture of _Miss Fingal_
herself, rescued from premature decay and gradually recovering her
youth under the stimulus of new interests and opportunities. Whether
the now rather too familiar _Kaiser-ex-machina_ solution was needed in
order to rid the stage of a superfluous character is open to question;
but at all events it leaves _Miss Fingal_ happy in companionship and
assured of the success that waits upon a satisfactory finish.

* * * * *

"How can I"--I seem to hear the author of _Elizabeth and Her German
Garden_ communing with herself--"how can I write a story, with all
my necessary Teutonic ingredients in it, which shall be popular even
during the War?" And then I seem to see the satisfaction with which
she hit upon the solution of inventing pretty twin girls of seventeen,
an age which permits remarks with a sting in them to be uttered
apparently in innocence and yet is marriageable or, at any rate,
engageable; making them orphans; giving them a German father and
an English mother, and very mixed sympathies, in which England
predominates; and sending them to America to pass its novelty