IRENE IDDESLEIGH. By Mrs. Amanda M`Kittriek Ross. (The Nonesuch Press.
10s: 6d. net.)—Here and there for some years now people have chuckled over old shabby copies of Mrs. Ross's novel, Delina Delaney, and a few over the less known Irene Iddesleigh. Both books would be entirely in- credible but for the solid fact that they do exist, and were written as straightforward, serious stories. Their manner is so Gothic that Horace Walpole, or Charlotte Brontë at her most uncurbed,. seem relatively restrained and unexaggerated. The hero (it should be mentioned that all the characters save the heroine are, with Mrs. Ross, titled) is -discovered in a " superb apartment " in his " gloomy mansion " which " could boast of architectural designs rarely, if ever, attempted since its construction." Three huge lamps have been placed at respectable " distances from each other near by so that Sir John may " with his accustomed grace . . . peruse some of his evening papers." Everything is on the grandest possible scale. The heroine is sumptuously attired in satin trimmed with sprigs of maidenhair fern. But unfortunately she had a bad heart, loved a common tutor, and though agreeing to marry Sir John, insisted on doing so most improperly attired in dark green poplin. The couple differ : disturbing thoughts
kept tickling his warm enthusiasm with the nimble fingers of jealousy." Eventually Sir John addresses Lady Dunfern thus :-
"Speak! Irene ! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood that now boils in my veins to ooze through Cavities of unrestrained passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue! "
Lady Dunfern escapes and flies to America with the still-loved tutor, who turns out to be. a cad. -She returns to die within the mossy walls of Dilworth Castle. " There she lay, cold, stiff, and lifeless as Nero." Mrs. Ross deals as no other writer, unless it were Nathaniel Lee, in the majestical. Similes, metaphors, anti-climaxes and the most, prolonged alliterations fill her pages. But it is not this alone which will endear the new edition of her novel• to to-day's readers. She has all uncon- sciously the power of being ridiculous in a manner which far out-distances The Young Visiters. The book is excessively amusing, perhaps more so to the younger generation than their elders, who, innured in childhood to The Family Herald, will not quite see why the Nonesuch Press moved to reprint this neglected' treisiiure. The book is beautifully printed and bound, and will make's thoroughly acceptable present to any of the brighter young people this Christmas.
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