in its lighter aspects. Lady de Bohun, with her pathetic face,
is a most amusing creature, with all her tragedy, and she is on
the whole the most perfectly characterized personality in the
story. The author gives you a real sense of her beauty, her
grace, her being always charmingly in a hurry and always late.
The greatest scene is hers: the scene in which she meets her
divorced husband with his second wife. One may suspect some of
the other scenes, but one must accept that scene as one of
genuine dramatic worth. Too much of the drama in the book is
theatre rather than drama, and yet the author's gift is
essentially dramatic. He knows how to tell a story on his stage
that holds you to the fall of the curtain, and makes you almost
patient of the muted violins and the limelight of the closing
scene. Such things, you say, do not happen in Brookline, Mass.,
whatever happens in London or in English country houses; and yet
the people have at one time or other convinced you of their
verity. Of the things that are not natural, you feel like saying
that they are supernatural rather than unnatural, and you own
that at its worst the book is worth while in a time when most
novels are not worth while.




Footnotes

"The Right of Way." A Novel. By Gilbert Parker. Harper & Brothers.

"The Ruling Passion. Tales of nature and human nature." By Henry
Van Dyke. Charles Scribner's Sons.