onest, and an agent who was--well, who was
the hero of the book. She had further gathered to herself a crowd of
hangers-on more or less artistic, and all given to requiring small
temporary loans. One of them, however, was a professed social reformer, a
bold bad man of doubtful extraction, who was leagued with the aunt in a
plan to marry _Magdalen_ to himself and secure control of the cash. So
_Magdalen_ gave a Venetian Carnival in her great house, and it came on to
thunder, and she found herself alone in a gondola with the painter
(favourite hanger-on), who attempted, too vigorously, to improve the
shining hour, and it was all rather awkward, when--romantically opportune
arrival of the hero (name of _Denvers_), who flung the painter into the
lake, clasped the heroine in his manly arms, married her and lived
happy----No. That is where you are too hasty. There remained still the
Golden Barrier. For, after an interlude of bliss, back came the intriguing
aunt, the social reformer and all the crowd (save the submerged artist) and
began to accuse _Denvers_ of living on his wife's cheque-book. How it ends
you must find out. If you object that there is very little in all this to
suggest the spirit of fine romance which you have learnt to associate with
the names of AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE, I can only say that (while my rough
synopsis does no justice to some pleasant characterization) I myself
greatly prefer these two writers in their earlier and brocaded mood.

* * * * *

It seems to me that Mr. FRANCIS BRETT-YOUNG has done quite a distinguished
piece of work in _Deep Sea_ (SECKER). I have not cared to miss a paragraph
of it and have certainly carried away an unusually vivid memory of that
unnamed West-country fishing-town which he has so cleverly peopled with his
creatures--with poor, simple, introspective _Jeffrey Kenar_, fisherman that
was, looking at life through the oddly refracting medium of his window of
old glass, and all but seeing visions; comely, bitter _Nesta_, his wife;
simple, loyal _Reuben_, _Jeffrey's_ friend, whose rejection of _Nesta
Kenar's_ overmastering passion turns her love to hate; _Reuben's_ gentle
wife, _Ruth_; and that sleek mortgagee, _Silley_, for whom men like
_Reuben_ toil that he may grow fat, nominally owning their vessels,
actually in heavy bondage to their shrewd exacting masters. There are dark
and deep waters of passion swirling in and out of these simple lives