The Countess, and The King's Diary. By Percy White. (Eveleigh
Nash. 6s.)—The second of these stories is a most drearily sad production, and the reader sees no particular reason why the history of so unhappy a man as Archibald Seaton should ever have been written. This gentleman ends a life spent in making himself and every one else miserable in a lunatic asylum, and the fact that the tale is told in the first person does not make it any the livelier reading. Tfie full title of the first story is "The Infatuation of the Countess," and it is not a bad specimen of that difficult type of story which is not long enough for a novel or short enough for a short story proper. The infatuation from which the Countess suffers is for her fencing-master, a gentleman by birth, who is refreshingly unconscious of her feelings, and treats her to confidences as to his love affairs with the heroine. Both tales have not more than a touch of Mr. Percy White's usual felicity of presentation; still, they are fairly readable.
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