A Supreme Moment. By Mrs. Hamilton Synge. (T. Fisher Unwin.
6s.)—Mrs. Synge has succeeded in making a very interesting story out of extremely simple, and even unpromising, materials. A man of independent means—a valetudinarian of settled habits and middle age—who lives in the country with his sister, offers a home to the orphan daughter of an old college friend. Brother and sister have lived together for years a life of a2most suffocating regularity, with this difference, that Bertram, au excellent and conscientious person, is thoroughly content with his cotton-wool life, while Agatha is dimly conscious of wasted opportunities,—of the heavy price paid for an undeviating adhesion to routine. The process of emancipation and enlighten- ment is hastened by the arrival of Estelle Bampfylde, a graceful, artistic, exotic creature who has lived chiefly abroad. Agatha's common-sense is tempered by sympathy, while Estelle, for all her charm, lacks will-power and judgment. From the contact and mutual interaction of these two widely contrasted characters un- expected developments ensue, which are all the more interesting from the author's quiet and unsensational methods. The title does not seem to us well chosen, and the absence of a " full close" to the story is rather tantalising, for the narrative leaves off without any very clear indication as to the subsequent career of the two principal characters. Still, as a delicate and suggestive study of discontent on its nobler as well as its emotional side, the book has a psychological interest which lifts it far above the plane of the average novel of manners.
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