where, in the course of
unravelling the plot, one of the judges is moved to exclaim, "This is
the most hopelessly complicated story I ever had the pain of listening
to!" His lordship certainly has my sympathy. Personally speaking, the
first twenty pages of it nearly gave me a nervous breakdown, so wild and
whirling were the events into which it plunged. Let me start the thing
for you. _Ronald Warrington_, who was heir to the aged _Duke of
Glenstaffen_, eloped with _Mrs. Greville_, assuming for no very
understandable reason the name of his friend and secretary, _Essendine_.
So, the pair being established at an hotel, the supposed _Mr. E._ goes
to a station to buy an evening paper, is fallen upon by the real one,
and thrust into a train to attend the deathbed of his ducal relative.
_Essendine_ himself, entering the hotel to explain matters to the lady,
finds (1) that she is the wife who divorced him before marrying
_Greville_; (2) that she has just died of heart disease. Next, being of
a placidity almost inhuman, he decides to bury the corpse as that of his
wife, and not worry anyone with explanations. What he didn't know then,
or I either, was that another lady was at the moment gadding about
London in one of _Mrs. Greville's_ cast-off frocks, and pretending to be
that much-married female. And when in due course she is murdered, and
the strangely apathetic widower, _Mr. Greville_, who never set eyes upon
her, is arrested for the crime--well, you may begin to think that the
judge's remark was an understatement. What I should like to ask Mr. J.
W. BRODIE-INNES is, if this is his notion of an "indiscretion," what
would he have to say of a real social error?

* * * * *

AT THE MUSEUM.

[Illustration: _Soldier (on leave from the trenches visiting the sights
of London--before enlarged model of common flea)._ "Yes, that's it,
father! That's the kind I was tellin' you about. But it ain't much of a
specimen."]

* * * * *

The name of the author of _Youth Unconquerable_ (HEINEMANN) is given on
the title-page as _Percy Ross_. But I would willingly take a small wager
on the probability that this name conceals a feminine identity. For one
thing, no mere man surely would attempt the task of depicting the sweet
girl graduate in her native lair, often as the converse has been done.
Certainly it is improbable that he would manage to convey such an
impression of actualit