Whether you enjoy _The House in Marylebone_ (DUCKWORTH) will depend
entirely upon your taste for the society of a number of hardworking
but sentimental "business girls." For this is the whole matter of
Mrs. W.K. CLIFFORD'S book. I call her girls sentimental, because (for
all that they are supposed to be chiefly concerned with living their
own lives) you will be struck at once with the extent to which they
contrive to mix themselves up with the lives of any male creatures
who venture over the horizon. "Our little republic," says one of its
inmates towards the end of the book, "is firmly feminine and hasn't
done much falling in love." Well, well--I suppose this is a question
that turns upon your definition of the word "much;" to me personally
they seldom seemed to be doing, or thinking about, anything else. Nor
could I help reflecting how much fuller and more vigorous all Mrs.
CLIFFORD'S cast would have found their existence to-day. Perhaps this
feeling explains a slight impatience which the society of so much
struggling femininity eventually produced in me. Young women still
live in houses in the Marylebone Road; they still proclaim republics
of hardworking celibacy, and fall briskly in love with the first
eligible bachelor; but their vocations and their citizenship have
both (_Hoch der KAISER!_) grown out of all knowledge. So that charming
writer, Mrs. CLIFFORD, must forgive me if I could find only an
historical interest, and no very robust one at that, in her amiable
retrospect.

* * * * *

AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE have certainly been well advised about
their sub-title to _The Black Office and other Chapters of Romance_
(MURRAY). For that is precisely what the tales are; and excellently