existence, in restoring two variously dilapidated mansions--Graythorpes,
her husband's home, and Doller Place, left her by an appreciative aunt.
When not thus employed she would be reading a paper on Homes (given here
_in extenso_), or comparing those of other persons with her own. I don't
want you to get the impression that _Shuttered Doors_ is precisely arid; it
is too full of ideas and vitalities for that; but it does undoubtedly
demand a special kind of reader. Incidentally, Mrs. HICKS BEACH should
revise her chronology. For _Aletta_, who was married at twenty-eight and
died at sixty-two, to have had at that time a grandson on the staff of the
Viceroy of India, he must have received his appointment before the age of
fifteen--which even in these experimental days sounds a little premature.

* * * * *

Do not allow yourself to be misled by the fact that the portrait on the
paper cover of _Maureen_ (JENKINS) does, I admit, remarkably suggest a lady
whose mission in life is the advertisement of complexion soap. You probably
know already that the methods of Mr. PATRICK MACGILL are made of sterner
stuff. This "Story of Donegal," which I have no intention of giving in
detail, is the history of the course of true love in an Irish village, full
of types which, I dare say, are realistically observed; verbose in places
to an almost infuriating degree (not till page 61 does the heroine so much
as put her nose round the scenery), but working up to a climax of
considerable power. _Maureen_, I need hardly say, was as fair as moonrise,
but suffered from the drawback of an irregular origin, which took the poor
girl a great deal of living down. Nor need I specify the fact that most of
the male characters in the district are soon claimants for her hand. Really
this is the plot. Having betrayed so much, however, nothing shall persuade
me to expose the bogie scenes on the midnight moor, where the villain
combines his illicit whiskey manufacture with his courtship, and where