When an unstable young wife, getting tired of a pedantic husband in
the way so familiar to students of novels, goes off with a companion
more to her taste, anyone can foresee trouble, or what would there be
to write about? When, further, her detestable lover, seeking change
and fearing the financial lash of his properly indignant parent,
terminates the arrangement, even an observer of real life can
guess that her return to her rightful lord and master must entail
disagreeables; but only a reader well brazened in modern fiction could
expect Don Juan promptly to make love to and marry the husband's
sister without a word of apology to anyone. This kind of rather
unsavoury dabbling in problems best left to themselves generally
concludes with the decease of most of the characters and a sort
of clearing up, and to this rule, after many years and pages of
discomfort, MARY E. MANN'S new story, _The Victim_ (HODDER AND
STOUGHTON), is no exception. Not a very attractive programme, but all
the same the volume has one or two redeeming features. For one thing,
the sister is clearly and attractively drawn, and so is the picture on
the wrapper, though it represents no particular incident to be traced
in the pages of the volume which it adorns. Writing more strongly than
is perhaps her wont, Mrs. MANN has taken some trouble to emphasise the
fact that in these cases of uncontrolled passion the major penalty
of guilt is borne not by the offenders themselves but by the first
generation succeeding. This does need saying occasionally, I suppose,
and to that extent _The Victim_ redeems itself from the charge of
trivial unpleasantness.

* * * * *

Mr. J. RATH has really discovered a new type of heroine, new at least