ies away even from the first
encounter a haunting and rankling recollection of a tall man in blue;
while the tall man in blue, Adjutant von Nordenfels, "from the moment
she stood before the officers in her cold protest and unrelenting
pride," was madly in love with the countess. The feelings of these two
young people being thus from the first removed from the region of doubt
and conjecture, what few slight obstacles contrive to separate them for
a time carry little weight with the reader. There is a dearth of
incident which the side-play of the coquettish maid, Nathalie's
_femme-de-chambre_, fails to relieve. The marquis and Manette are the
traditional nobleman and soubrette, and flourish before us all the
adjuncts of the stage. We give a fragment from a soliloquy of Manette's
which suggests the foot-lights and an enforced "wait" in a comedy during
a change of dress for the principal actors: "I adore Countess Nathalie,
and am thankful for my blessings. And yet I have my disappointments, my
chagrins. To-day, for example, what a field for genius! what a chance
for never-to-be-forgotten impressions! A dozen officers! Not a woman in
Aulnay but madame and me. Oh, just heaven, what possibilities! My rich
imagination dressed us both in the twinkling of an eye. For the
Countess Nathalie gentle severity was the key-note of my
composition,--heavy black silk, of course. There it lies. Elegance and
dignity in the train. Happy surprises in the drapery. Fascination in the
sleeves. Defiance, pride, and patriotism in the high collar, tempered by
regret in the soft ruche.... She would have been a problem and a poem;
while I, in my cheerful reds, my dazzling white, my decisive short
skirts, my piquant shoes, my audacious apron, am a conundrum, a
pleasantry, an epigram." This would be very pretty on the stage, but a
waiting-maid who calls herself an "epigram" passes our imagination under
any other circumstances. In fact, Miss Howard seems to us to be
altogether on a false tack in this novel,--to have utterly abandoned
realism, and in its place to have imposed upon us scenes, characters,
and actuating motives which have figured over and over again in book and
play, and to which she has not succeeded in imparting any special
vivacity or charm. The novel falls far below "Guenn," in which the
author riveted and deepened the impression of her first clever little
book, "One Summer."

"Married for Fun." Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.