'Mrs. Loftus's health is endangered, not by her recent illness, of which no trace appears, but by some anxiety. She does not deny that she is suffering from great depression. Unless that anxiety, whatever it may be, can be removed, her morbid condition, if prolonged, will give rise to grave apprehension as to her future.'
Mr. Loftus had heard something very like this before—about nine months ago. He had removed a mountain in order to remove with it the first cause of her unhappiness, and now unhappiness had reappeared. No one had guessed—no one had been allowed to guess—what an effort his marriage had been to him. And it had availed nothing. He dropped the letter into the fire, and, as he did so, exhaustion and an intense weariness of lifelaid hold upon him. He knew well the touch of those stern hands, but this evening, as he sat alone in the library, it seemed to him as if he had never endured their full pressure until now.
'O World, O Life, O Time.O these last steps on which I climb.'Shelley.
'O World, O Life, O Time.O these last steps on which I climb.'Shelley.
Forthose who do not sleep, life has two sides—the side of night as well as day—and the heaviest hour of the day or night is the hour before the dawn, when the night-lamp totters and dies, and the ashen light of another day falls like despair on the familiar articles of furniture, the chairs, the table, the wardrobe, which have been up all night like ourselves, taking the imprint of our exhaustion through the interminable hours, and which look older andmore haggard than ever in the changed light which brings nor change nor rest.
Those who sleep at night, for whom each day is not divided by a gulf of pain, who look upon the darkness as a time of rest, and the morning as a time of waking, know one side of life, perhaps, as the passers-by in the street know one side of the hospital as they skirt it—the outside wall.
Mr. Loftus slept ill, and the night after Sibyl's return he woke early. The gray light was just showing above the white blinds as he had seen it so many, many times. Would the morning ever come, he wondered, when he should no longer open his eyes upon the dawn, when 'these last steps' should be climbed, and effort would cease, and weariness might lie down and cease also?
The premonitory tremor, the shudder of coming illness, laid its hand upon him, and with it came that physical recoil of the flesh from solitude before which the strongest will goes down.
Involuntarily he got up and went to Sibyl's room. He opened the door noiselessly and looked in.
The room felt deserted. He went up to the bed; it was empty. A great fear fell upon him. Had she left him? Poor, poor child! had she left him, as that other wife had left him in the half-forgotten past, buried beneath so many years? Can any man whose wife has forsaken him ever quite forget that he has once been deserted, that the road which leads away from him has known a woman's footsteps, and another may walk in it? He stood still and listened. The spirit had over-mastered the flesh. All suffering had vanished.
From the next room, Sibyl's sitting-room, which opened out of her bedroom, a faint sound came. He noiselessly crossed, and looked through the half-open door, and thanked God.
Sibyl was lying on her face on the polished floor in her night-gown, moaning and sobbing, a white blot upon the dark boards.
He had seen her lie like that once before, among the bracken in the park, in the entire abandonment of young despair. The vague suspicion of many weeks dropped its disguise, and stood revealed, an awful figure between them, between the old man in his gray hair and the young, young wife.
He withdrew stealthily, regained hisown room, and sat down in the armchair.
That passion of tears could flow from one source only. He knew Sibyl well enough to know that she had no tears, no strong emotion, for anything except that which affected her own personal happiness. Her slight nature could not reach to impersonal love, any more than it could reach to righteous anger. All this apparent failure of health and listlessness had a mental cause, as he had always feared, as he now knew for certain. She was unhappy.
'She has ceased to love me,' said Mr. Loftus to himself, 'and she is in despair. Doll loves her, and she has found it out. Those tears are for Doll.'
There was a long pause of thought.
He started at the remembrance thatshe was probably still lying on the floor in her thin night-gown.
He got up, and tapped distinctly at the door of her bedroom. At first there was no reply, but after the second time there was a slight hurried movement and a faint 'Come in.' He went in. She had crept back into bed, as he had hoped she would at the sound of his tap.
'May I have your salts?' he said, taking them from the dressing-table. 'I have waked with a headache.'
'Can I do anything for it?' she asked, but without moving, her miserable eyes following his thin, gaunt figure in its gray dressing-gown.
'Nothing, my dear, except forgive me for disturbing you.'
'I was not asleep,' said Sibyl, yielding to the impulse, irresistible to some women,to approach the subject which they are trying to conceal.
He took the salts, and went back to his own room, closing the door carefully. But he did not use them. He sighed heavily as he sat down again in the old armchair in which he had so often watched the light grow behind the Welsh hills.
There was another pause of thought, and he remembered again Doll's confession of the day before.
'Poor children!' he said—'poor children!'
And he remembered his own youth and its devastating passions, and the woman whom he had loved in middle life, and how nearly once—how nearly—— And he and she had been stronger than Doll and Sibyl.
'God forgive me!' he said; 'I meant well.'
There was another pause.
'I knew her love could not last,' his mind went on. 'It was too extravagant, and it had no foundation. But I thought it would last my time, and it has not. I have outlived it; I am in the way.'
Mr. Loftus had never willingly been in the way of anyone before. His tact had so far saved him. But a kind intention had betrayed him at last.
'I am in the way,' he repeated, 'and I am fond of them both, and I think they are both fond of me. But they will come to hate me.'
The light was strong and white now, and a butterfly on the window-sill, that had mistaken spring for summer, waked, and began to beat its wings against the pane.
He rose wearily, and opened the old-fashioned window wide upon its hinges. The butterfly flew away into the spring morning.
'My other butterfly,' he said—'my pretty butterfly, who mistook the spring for summer, breaking your heart against the prison windows of my worn-out life—I will release you, too!'
He took up the little silver flask that always stood on his dressing-table at night and lived in his pocket by day, and which contained the only remedy which a great doctor could find for his attacks of the heart, by means of which he had been till now kept in life.
'I have a right to do it,' he said. 'I can only help them by going away. And if I am in the wrong, upon my head be it.'
He checked himself in the act of emptying the contents of the flask into the dead fire.
'A right?' he said. 'What right have I to shirk the consequences of my own actions? what right to be a coward? No; I will not go away until I receive permission to do so. I will stay while it is required of me.'
He sighed heavily, and replaced the flask upon the dressing-table.
'Patience,' he said. 'I thought I had seen the last of you. I am tired of you. But, nevertheless, I must put up with you a little longer.'
'As the water is dried upon sands, so a life flieth back to the dust.'—Sir Alfred Lyall.
HowSibyl spent the morning that followed she never knew. She dared not go out of doors. The world of spring, with the new breath of life in it, mocked her. The song of the birds hurt her. She felt as if she should scream outright if she saw the may-blossom against the sky. She wandered aimlessly about the house, and at last crept back to her own room and lay down on her bed, and turned her face to the wall.
The day went on. Her maid brought her soup, and drew down the blinds, and was pettishly dismissed.
The afternoon came. They were mowing the grass on the terrace on the south front. The faint scent of newly-cut grass came in through the open window, and seemed, through the senses, to reach some acute nerve of the brain. She moaned, and buried her face in the pillows. Presently the mowing ceased, and everything became very silent. A bluebottle fly, pressed for time, rushed in, made the circuit of the room, and rushed out again.
Far away in the other wing, on the ground-floor, she heard the library door open. She knew Mr. Loftus's slow, even step. It crossed the hall; it entered the orangery; it came out through the orangery door, down the stone steps tothe terrace below her window. She could hear his step on the gravel outside in the crisp air. Crack gave a short bark in recognition of the spring, and satisfaction that the long morning of arranging papers and the afternoon of letter-writing were at last over.
The steps dwindled and died away into the sunny silence. It seemed to Sibyl's overwrought mind that he was walking slowly out of her life, and that unless she made haste to follow him she would lose him altogether. With a sudden revulsion of feeling, she sprang to her feet, and put on her hat and shoes. Then she braved the spring, and went swiftly out.
* * * * *
A great tranquillity had fallen upon Mr. Loftus. He had made up his mind. After a turn along the terrace, he andCrack went into the little wood near the gardens, and sat down under the pink horse-chestnut-tree, just blushing into flower. It would have been difficult to put the arrangement into words, but there was a tacit understanding between the husband and wife that when Mr. Loftus sat under that particular tree he did not mind being interrupted. Sibyl generally fluttered out to him after he had been there a few minutes, though the wood was out of sight of the windows. And he waited for her to come to him now.
Spring had returned at last. But you might have walked through the wood and not known she was there: have seen only the naked trees, and the gray twigs of the alder, bleached white where the rabbits had bitten them in the frost. But if you had stopped to listen and look as Mr.Loftus did, you would have seen and heard her; seen her in the blue haze, and the mystery of change that lurked among the gray twigs, and in the rare primroses among the brown leaves; heard her in the persistent double-tongue of the chiff-chaff, and, not near at hand, but two trees away, in the ripple of the goldfinch, with a little question at the end of it. Is it a hint of immortality, that haunting desire and expectation of happiness which comes with the primroses, that longing for some future year when the spring shall bring with it no heartache, the autumn no contrition; of another year, somewhere in the future, when the ills of life will be done away? Mr. Loftus looked straight in front of him, and his face took an expression as of one whose eyes are on a goal where even patience itself, so visible in every line ofhis quiet face, will at last with other burdens be laid aside.
She saw him before he saw her, as she came towards him. Her heart went out to him wistfully and passionately by turns. She longed to turn to him as a young wife turns to a young husband, and cry her heart out on his breast, and be petted, and caressed, and comforted. But she dared not. Whatever besides she was ignorant of, she had learnt certain things about her husband, and one of them was that she must never show her devotion unasked. And she was seldom asked. Her life was a constant repression of its greatest, its only real affection.
As she came towards him he roused himself and smiled at her. She sat down by him in silence. He had a single primrose in the buttonhole of his coat, and hetook it out and drew it very gently through the Russian embroidery on her bodice.
'When I was young, Sibyl,' he said, 'I was convinced, and the conviction has never wholly left me, that flowers are God's thoughts which He sows broadcast in the hearts of all alike. But we will have none of them, and they drop unheeded to the ground. But the faithful earth receives them—thoughts despised and rejected of us—and nurses them in her bosom, and they come forth transfigured. And that is why, when we see them again, we love them so much, and feel akin to them.'
Her locked hands trembled on her knee.
'It must have been a beautiful thought that could turn into a lily,' he went on, noting, but ignoring, her emotion. 'Iwonder, if it had fallen into a poet's heart, what it would have grown into. Nothing more beautiful, I think. And I know the primroses are first love. I have felt sure of that always. I wonder, my Sibyl, when there is so much in your heart for me, that there are any left to come out in the woods; but there are a few, you see, among the brown leaves.'
'They will soon be over,' said Sibyl, turning her head away.
'Yes,' said Mr. Loftus, with a gentleness which was new to Sibyl, and he was always gentle. 'They will die presently, as first love dies. But nevertheless it is a beautiful gift while it lasts, and we must not grieve because, like the primroses, it cannot last in flowerfor ever. I have lived through so many feelings, Sibyl, I have seen so many die which seemedimmortal, that I have long since ceased to count on the permanence of any.'
He leant towards her, and for the first time he took her slender hands and kissed them. It was as if he were readjusting his position towards her, reassuring her of his trust and confidence and sympathy, supporting her in some great trouble. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, and a sense of comfort came across her desolation, as if she were leaning her faint soul against his soul. He put his arm round her, and drew her closer to him.
'My darling!' he said, and there was an emotion in his voice which she had never heard in it before. Her hat had slipped off, and he passed his hand very tenderly over her hair.
Sibyl's over-strained nerves relaxed. Some of the craving of her heart and itslong yearning was stilled by the touch of his hand. Ah! he loved her, after all—certainly he loved her. Doll was right, after all. How foolish she had been to cry all night! Certainly he loved her.
She could not speak. She could not weep. She could only lean against him. She had never known him like this before. It was this that she had always wanted, all her life, long before she had ever met him.
'You have been so good to me,' he went on, 'from the first day of our married life when I was ill. Do you remember? And I know that your dear love and kindness will not fail me while I live. I thank and bless you for all you have given me, your whole spring of primroses; and now that spring is passing, as it must, Sibyl, as it must, not by your fault, take comfort,and when other feelings come into your heart, as they have come in, do not reproach yourself, do not cut me to the heart by grieving, but remember that I understand, and that my love and honour and gratitude can never change towards you, and that I too was young once: as young as—Doll, and there is no need for you and him to be so miserable. It will only be—like a—long engagement.'
As the drift of his words gradually became clear to her, Sibyl insensibly shrank back as from an abyss before her feet. But in another moment she took in their whole meaning. She pushed him from her with sudden violence, and stood before him, her hands clenched, her eyes blazing, her slender figure shaking with passion.
'How dare you!' she stammered. 'How dare you insult me?'
He put out his hand feebly, and she struck it down.
'What is Doll to me?' she went on, 'to me,your wife! Oh, will you never, never understand that I love you, that I worship you, that I care for nothing in the whole world but you, and that I cried all night because you married me out of pity?' Sibyl wrung her hands. 'Oh! how dared you do it, how dared you swear to love me before God, if you did not, if you could not? I am too miserable. I cannot bear it—I cannot bear it!'
He sat like one stunned. His hand went to his heart.
In a moment her arms were round him, and his head was on her shoulder.
'Forgive,' he repeated over and overagain, between the long-drawn gasps which shook him from head to foot.
And then the battle for life began.
She found his little flask in his pocket, and managed to make him swallow the contents.
He struggled, but she upheld him. Her strength was as the strength of ten.
At last, all in a moment, the struggle ceased, and a light came into his fixed eyes of awe and thankfulness, and—was it joy?
He did not move. He did not speak. His whole being seemed absorbed in that of some vast enfolding presence.
She called him wildly by name.
He trembled, and his troubled eyes, with all the light blown out of them, wandered back to seek hers. Death looked at her through them. He saw her as across a gulf. He recognised her.He remembered. He had hoped that when he came to die it might be quietly, without a scene, but it was not to be. He made a last effort.
'Not for pity—for——' he gasped, his ebbing breath winnowing the air. But Death cut short the lie faltering on his lips, and his head fell suddenly forward on her breast. She held him closely to her, murmuring incoherent words of love and tenderness, such as she had never dared to speak while he had ears to hear.
* * * * *
How long she had knelt beside him, holding him in her arms, the frightened servants, who at last found them after sunset, never knew. And when they came to lay him in his coffin, they saw on one of the thin folded hands a faint blue mark, as from a blow.
Sibylwas an inconsolable widow. Her grief reached a depth which placed her beyond the succour of human sympathy, and Lady Pierpoint, who had lost her young husband in her youth, was felt to take a superficial view of Sibyl's bereavement.
She shut herself up at Wilderleigh for a year and refused comfort, and then suddenly married Doll, the only man except Mr. Gresley whom she had allowed to see her during her widowhood.
In rather less than a month after hermarriage with him she made the interesting discovery that he was the only man in the world who really understood her. His gift of platitude, harmonizing as it did with hers, was an inexhaustible source of admiration to her. She was wont to say in confidence to her woman friends, that, devotedly as she had loved her first husband, she had found her ideal in her second one; and that it was to Doll she owed the real development of her character, a subject in which she took great interest.
For some years, while her daughter remained an only child, she was passionately devoted to her. But when her son was born she ceased to take much interest in the little girl, who was by this, time rather spoilt, and consequently tiresome. Doll, who proved exemplary indomestic life, took to her when Sibyl forgot her, and became deeply attached to her. Later in life Sibyl became inconsolably jealous of her daughter.
THE END.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
NOVELS FROMMR. EDWARD ARNOLD'S LIST.
By the Author of 'The Red Badge of Courage.'
BySTEPHEN CRANE.
Cloth, 2s.
Saturday Review.
'From first to last it goes with immense vigour and sympathy. But the story must be read for its power to be understood; quotation fails, for the simple reason that it is a bare story and nothing beyond. Apart from its distinctive qualities, English readers will welcome this book as an indication of the growth of a real and independent critical method across the Atlantic, side by side and directing really original work.'
Athenæum.
'A striking scene of the relations, in a rough world, between a boy and his mother.'
Speaker.
'Stephen Crane proved conclusively in "The Red Badge of Courage" his possession of an extraordinary power of vivid and accurate vision expressed with startling poignancy of phrase; and in his later production, "George's Mother," we find the same rugged directness and almost savage intensity, the same contempt for conventional graces of style, and the love for violent colouring, which marked his previous work.'
Daily Chronicle.
'The gradual progress of deterioration in George Kelcey is very briefly but very cleverly and convincingly set out.'
St. James's Gazette.
'It is atour de forceof description and analysis, this terrible scene of George's debauch—not in the least laboured, or Zolaistic, or photographic, but amazingly actual, and lightened with a grim sense of humour.'
By the Author of 'Into the Highways and Hedges.'
ByF. F. MONTRÉSOR,
Author of 'Into the Highways and Hedges,' 'The One Who Looked on.'
Crown 8vo., cloth, 2s. 6d.
Academy.
'The quiet excellence of Miss Montrésor's little book may likely enough cause it to lie unnoticed among its thrilling companions. There is, none the less, more of art and literature in two short sketches than one is likely to meet with again in a hurry. If inferior work, gaudily bedraped, gets all the encores, in the shape of many editions, I cannot think she will greatly care. Such work as hers only comes, as the proverb has it, by prayer and fasting. And she will receive ungrudging praise from those who revere sterling merit, and respect labour at once unobtrusive, competent, sincere.'
Guardian.
'"Worth While" is a real idyll of a life's sacrifice, most sweetly and touchingly told.'
Glasgow Herald.
'Both the stories in this volume are of very superior quality. The characters are distinctly original, and the workmanship is admirable.'
Manchester Mercury.
'Although the two stories contained in the present volume are comparatively short, they serve to display the author's peculiar gifts in a striking manner.'
Liverpool Courier.
'Two most pathetic and beautiful stories make up this little volume. The writer is to be congratulated on the delicate beauty of her stories.'
By the Author of 'The Apotheosis of Mr. Tyrawley.'
ByE. LIVINGSTON PRESCOTT.
One vol., crown 8vo., cloth, 6s.
Westminster Gazette.
'Thisis an undeniably clever book. A picture of self-sacrifice so complete and so enduring is a rare picture in fiction, and has rarely been more ably or more finely drawn. This singular and pathetic story is told all through with remarkable restraint, and shows a strength and skill of execution which place its author high among the novel-writers of the day.'
Daily Telegraph.
'There is no doubt that this is a striking book. The story it has to tell is thoroughly original and unconventional, while the manner of telling shows much restrained power.'
Spectator.
'Mr. Prescott has evidently a future before him.'
Pall Mall Gazette.
'Mr. Prescott has given us a clever and an interesting book. We have seldom read of such superhuman courage, such transcendent love, as Mr. Prescott has shown us in his masterly picture of Captain Cosmo Harradyne, of the Fighting Hussars. A story which we confidently, nay, earnestly, recommend to our readers; they will thank us for doing so.'
National Observer.
'A book which has much cleverness of treatment, an excellent style, a great deal of interest, a high ideal, and a real pathos. Perhaps it is not necessary to add that a novel of which so much can be said is one greatly above the common run of fiction. The book should be, and we have no doubt will be, read with real interest by many people.'
'One of the best stories of the season.'—Daily Chronicle.
ByADALET.
One volume, crown 8vo., cloth, 6s.
Speaker.
'Certainly one of the most interesting and valuable works of fiction issued from the press for a long time past. Even if we were to regard the book as an ordinary novel, we could commend it heartily; but its great value lies in the fact that it reveals to us a hidden world, and does so with manifest fidelity. But the reader must learn for himself the lesson which this remarkable and fascinating book teaches.'
Daily Chronicle.
'A Turkish love story written in excellent English by a young Ottoman lady, would be a book worth reading, if only as a curiosity; but when, as in this instance, it is of uncommon merit and originality, it is particularly welcome. It is deeply interesting, fascinatingly so. It is as a picture of family life in Turkey that this book is so interesting, possibly because the picture it provides is unexpectedly agreeable. As a study of Turkish life in our times, when Western civilization is beginning to penetrate into the seclusion of the harem, this book is a valuable contribution to contemporary literature. It is a well-merited compliment to its author to say of "Hadjira" that it is one of the best stories of the season.'
Pall Mall Gazette.
'An interesting and readable book.'
St. James's Gazette.
'The book is excellently written. As a clearly truthful account of modern Turkish life, from the woman's point of view, it is as valuable as it is interesting. We shall hope to have more from the same pen.'
Guardian.
'A curiously interesting bit of work.'
ByALICESPINNER,
Author of 'Lucilla,' 'A Study in Colour,' etc.
Crown 8vo., 1 vol., 6s.
Saturday Review.
'"A Reluctant Evangelist" is as good as its predecessor "Lucilla," which we were glad to be able to praise last year. The West Indies, with their "colour problem," their weird romance and undercurrent of horror, will last a long time as background for new stories.'
Glasgow Herald.
'It is into the wonderland of the West Indies that Miss Spinner takes us: into a region of hot sunshine, of blue sky, of sparkling sea. All the stories are excellent, and will repay perusal.'
Pall Mall Gazette.
'Good, too, is Miss Spinner's budget of short stories. "Buckra Tommie" is an exquisitely pathetic story. The writer is evidently at home in the South Seas, and with the out-of-the-way humanity she meets there.'
Irish Times.
'A charming little series of stories. They are very daintily written, and although the incidents upon which they turn are not always very striking, they are at all events novel, and they have been conceived with much dramatic power.'
Cape Times.
'These short stories are all distinctly good.'
Englishman.
'We can strongly recommend these stories. They are varied and interesting, and have a distinct literary merit.'
ByMAUD OXENDEN.
One volume, crown 8vo., 6s.
Scotsman.
'The writer is to be congratulated on the strength with which she portrays men and women, and describes the passions of love or of grief that sometimes fill the mind. There are other personages in these pages, whose experiences of love and joy and grief are under other circumstances than those indicated; but if the writer had depicted none other than the three personages that appear in the tragic scene in London she would have scored a distinct success. An admirably-written book.'
Sheffield Telegraph.
'We have not read anything so tenderly touched with pathos, and at the same time so delicately told, for a very long time. Indeed, "Interludes" is about as good a piece of literary work of its class as we could wish to read, and is worth a high place in the works which appeal to the emotional in our nature.'
Bradford Observer.
'The stories evince a considerable and disciplined faculty of invention which, though it produces situations of intense interest, never becomes riotous or extravagant. We will close our too brief note with an expression of the pleasure we have felt in reading these chaste and beautiful fancies.'
Guardian.
'There is much that is both clever and original in Miss Oxenden's "Interludes." There is often very genuine pathos, and nearly all the volume is interesting.'
Twenty-Second Thousand.
By the Hon. and Rev.JAMES ADDERLEY.
Small 8vo., elegantly bound, 3s. 6d.; paper, 1s.
Daily Telegraph.
'Written with a vigour, warmth, and sincerity which cannot fail to captivate the reader's attention and command his respect.'
Saturday Review.
'Let us express our thankfulness at encountering, for once in a way, an author who can amuse us.'
Star.
'The book is charmingly written.'
Guardian.
'Not only do we agree with Mr. Adderley in his general objects, and in many of his fundamental principles, but we believe that the path of reform lies very much in the direction to which he has pointed.'
Daily Chronicle.
'The story is one of a novel kind, and many people will find it interesting and very suggestive.'
Rock.
'A little but very notable volume.'
Record.
'A little book, but one of which much will be heard.'
ByMARY GAUNT.
One vol., 8vo., cloth, 3s. 6d.
Spectator.
'It is interesting to watch the literature which is coming over to us from Australia, a portion of which is full of promise, but we may safely say that of all the novels that have been laid before readers in this country, "Dave's Sweetheart," in a literary point of view and as a finished production, takes a higher place than any that has yet appeared. From the opening scene to the closing page we have no hesitation in predicting that not a word will be skipped even by the mostblaséof novel readers.'
Daily Telegraph.
'In every respect one of the most powerful and impressive novels of the year.'
Tablet.
'Essentially a strong book. The writer has a wonderfully clean way of describing the elemental facts of life, and lets her plummet-line go down deep into the depths of human tears. The book is of interest down to the last line.'
Weekly Sun.
'The narrative is throughout animated, and rises occasionally to heights of great dramatic power, whilst the picture of life in the diggings is delineated in a way that compels admiration.'
Morning Post.
'The action is rapid and well-developed, the incidents exciting, as becomes the nature of the subject, and the human interest unusually deep.'
Times.
'A vigorous and dramatic story of the early gold-digging days in Victoria. "Dave's Sweetheart" is a good story.'
Guardian.
'Many books of Australian life have come before us lately, and to none of them are we inclined to give more honest praise than to "Dave's Sweetheart."'
Speaker.
'Alike from a dramatic and a literary point of view, "Dave's Sweetheart" is admirably told, with restraint and with distinction.'
ByROBERT BLATCHFORD,
Author of 'A Son of the Forge,' 'Merrie England,' etc.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo., cloth, 6s.
Bradford Observer.
'A splendid narrative of the barrack life of the rank and file.'
Eastern Morning News.
'There is not a dull page in the book.'
Glasgow Herald.
'Most vigorous and picturesque sketches of barrack life.'
Scotsman.
'Entertaining throughout, and reveals high literary ability.'
Dundee Advertiser.
'A really vivacious book; the incidents are so well selected that the reader never wearies from start to finish.'
Liverpool Post.
'The book is both clever and amusing.'
Broad Arrow.
'For this well-conceived, well-written, and well-informed little story we have little but commendation to offer.'
ByN. WYNN WILLIAMS,
Author of 'Tales of Modern Greece.'
Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d.
Dundee Advertiser.
'Well worth perusing.'
National Observer.
'Mr. Williams's story of modern Greece throws a curious light on her corrupt politics, on petty oppression, and on the conscription, with its attendant hardships to the peasant population.'
Glasgow Herald.
'A powerfully-written and vivid little story.'
By the Author of 'Aunt Anne.'
By Mrs.W. K. CLIFFORD,
Author of 'Aunt Anne,' 'Mrs. Keith's Crime,' etc.
Cloth, 2s. 6d.
Queen.
'One of the cleverest books that ever a woman wrote.'
Morning Post.
'It is thatrara avis—a volume characterized by knowledge of human nature and brightened by refined wit.'
World.
'A book that will gladden the hearts of those who love literature for its own sake.'
Review of Reviews.
'Many writers have pictured to us a woman, but none more successfully than Mrs. Clifford, whose Madge Brooke stands forth distinct and almost flesh and blood—a human document.'
ByISABELLA O. FORD,
Author of 'Miss Blake, of Monkshalton.'
Cloth, 3s. 6d.
Guardian.
'It is a relief to turn from many of the novels that come before us to Miss Ford's true, penetrating, and sympathetic description of the lives of some of the women of our day.'
Bradford Observer.
'Those who have followed and admired Miss Ford's active social and political work will be interested in this latest work of hers, and will understand its special characteristics. It only remains to be added that the literary workmanship of the book is excellent.'
Hearth and Home.
'A decidedly clever book.'