e her openly-expressed scorn for the unnaturalness of the
average conventional novel, has not disdained employment of some of its
time-honoured methods. Occasionally she is at pains to explain the
feasibility of coincidences employed to secure dramatic interest. They
are certainly never of an impossible kind, and no one would deny the
truism that real life abounds in them. But has not a distinguished
writer aptly pointed out that there are matters in which fiction cannot
compete with life? As a rule, however, where a few such weaknesses
exist, they do not count for much with the average reader when the
principal scenes are as finely drawn as those in _A Marked Man_ or
_Fidelis_, or _The Three Miss Kings_. The latter story in some details
puts a greater strain upon the credulity than any of the other novels,
yet so well conceived and absolutely natural are the characters of the
three girls, and so humorously and pictorially presented the chief
incidents in their development, that the dubious points of the plot
become almost insignificant. The qualities of the novel as a whole are
similar to those which obscure the artistic defects of _Geoffry Hamlyn_,
and which for thirty-seven years have made it one of the most popular of
Australian stories.

In the presentation of tragic or pathetic incidents lies Ada Cambridge's
chief power, as far as her plots are concerned. In _A Marked Man_ it is
accompanied by her highest achievements in portraying a variety of
well-contrasted character. _Fidelis_, which opens at the Norfolk village
of the earlier novel, and reintroduces the Delavels, contains fewer
developed characters, as may also be said of _A Marriage Ceremony_. But
the three novels are equal in the high standard of their emotional
quality. No quotation of moderate size could do justice to any of the
principal scenes of _A Marked Man_: the chivalrous sacrifice of Richard
Delavel's youthful marriage; the inward repentance of it for twenty-two
years; the revival of his love for Constance Bethune; his painful
anxiety for her health, hungry enjoyment of her companionship, and
anguish at her death; and his own death soon afterwards. In the more
briefly detailed tragedy that brings into such striking relief the
sprightly drama of _A Marriage Ceremony_, there is a scene giving a fair
example of the author's style in touching passages. When Hilda, deeply
in love with Rutherford Hope, hears of his union with another woman, she
takes th