of the magnificent courage with which she faced the burden of
deputy-motherhood, it made one miserable as well. The task she had
undertaken was a prodigious one, for the sisters she had to rear
were, you must understand, vexed with sex instincts of the type of
the modern novel, and so in a large measure she failed, even though
she sacrificed strength, happiness and even her own love-story in
the effort to keep them straight. The tale is set out with every
circumstance of sordid misery, in which the spiritual beauty of
the heroine is meant to shine, and undeniably does shine with
real strength and purity. The successive deaths of the mother and
step-mother, the shabby London lodgings, the fall of _Veronica_, the
selfishness of _Beat's_ boy-friend, and the loathsome trade of her
lover--these, and more horrors and lapses beside, are all taxed for
the general effect in so able and vivid a fashion that the authoress
succeeds to admiration in making her readers nearly as uncomfortable
as her characters, long before the climax is reached. The end comes
rather less wretchedly than could have been expected, but even so
surely this is genius partly run to seed. The greatest tragedies are
not written in these minor keys. _Beat_, woman and heroine, is so
admirable that one fain would know her apart from all this unredeemed
welter of sex and selfishness.

* * * * *

I confess I should have thought that the fictional possibilities
of being as like as two peas to Royalty were fairly exhausted. But
apparently Mr. EDGAR JEPSON does not share this view; and it is only
fair to admit that in _The Professional Prince_ (HUTCHINSON) he has
contrived to give a novel twist to the already well laboured theme.
_Prince Richard_ (precise nationality unstated) was so bored with