him. These results were in the main involuntary; but it is only just to
add that _Smart_ was not above assisting nature to take her course.
Thus, some years before the opening of the story, he had deliberately
buried one poor lady alive in a cave containing sulphide of mercury.
Never ask me why. I am as muddled by this as I am over his further
conduct in leaving with the corpse every possible clue in the way of
letters and ciphers that could bring his guilt home to him. In any
ordinary novel he would have been convicted in a few chapters; but _A
Tail of Gold_ wags (if I may use the term) so leisurely, and its action
is so much impeded by false starts and repetitions and general
haphazardness, that there is no telling how long it might not have
continued but for the limitations of volume form. No, I can't pretend I
liked it much.

* * * * *

Madame ALBANESI, in _The Cap of Youth_ (HUTCHINSON), cannot be accused
of excessive kindness to her own sex, for the charming women of the
book are almost snuffed out by two poisonous females, _Lady Bollington_
and _Lady Catherine Chiltern_. Indeed these ladies are a little too much
of a bad thing, and, not for the first time, I am left thinking how
wonderfully Madame ALBANESI'S novels might be improved if she could
persuade herself to bestow an occasional virtue upon her wicked
characters. The heroine, _Virginia_, escaped from the hands of one of
the pair only to fall under the thumb of the other. I must admit,
however, that _Lady Catherine_ had some reason to be angry at having
_Virginia_ suddenly dumped upon her as a derelict daughter-in-law. Why
_Brian Chiltern_ married in haste and then left his wife to endure such
impossible conditions you must find out for yourself, but I fancy you
will agree that his delicacy of feeling amounted to sheer stupidity.
Nevertheless this story is bound to be popular, and I should have had no
complaint to make if I did not feel that its author has it in her to do
better work.

* * * * *

Even readers to whom American humour is generally a little indigestible
may glean some smiles from _Penrod_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), provided
that it is taken in small doses and not in the lump. If this book were
to be considered a study of the normal American boy I should cry with
vigour, "Save me from the breed," but as a fanciful account of a
thorough and egregious imp of mischief I can, within l