Thus, Squire Silcote, the clever old ex-lawyer, is made to retire from the world and brood for many years, and on quite insufficient grounds, in the belief that his first wife had been unfaithful, and had tried to poison him. Nothing short of a condition of semi-insanity could explain his conduct. In other respects the character is finely conceived. Emma Burton, too, is a perfectly natural and charming person until she is employed to revive the old problem of how far a sense of duty can triumph over the power of love. Her devotion to her deformed brother is wrong, because it is unnecessary. But even if this were not the case, it would be irrational in a woman so eminently sensible and unromantic as she is shown to be in the first half of the story. Almost at the beginning of her voluntary service she is represented as realising 'the hideous fate to which she has condemned herself in her fanaticism.' It is quite impossible to make the reader believe that, loving Erne Hillyar as she did, she could for years persist in rejecting him, and that her brother would permit so much sacrifice on his account. The beautiful, crazy Gerty Neville is another instance of perversion. Her silliness is exaggerated in order that she shall weary and disgust the _blasé_ aristocrat who has married her. Some of her chatter is more inconceivable than the 'coo-ee-ing' which Mr. Hornung's 'Bride from the Bush' employed to attract the attention of a colonial acquaintance of hers in Rotten Row. But the distortion which the character of Emma Burton undergoes, and the caricature of Gerty Neville, are, after all, easily pardonable faults in a story rich in noble thought and sympathy, bright with pretty, audacious nonsense, and containing such real personages as Jim Burton and his father and mother, Erne Hillyar, and the Honourable Jack Dawson. Even in _Silcote of Silcotes_ there are intermittent glimpses of finely-conceived character which almost outbalance the eccentricities of the Dark Squire and his sister, the fantastic meddler in foreign intrigue. Kingsley's skill lay chiefly in his portrayal of men, especially of young men, such as the dashing Charles Ravenshoe and his philosophic friend Marston (a study of the George Warrington type); Lord Welter, Lieutenant Hillyar, and Colonel Tom Silcote, reckless profligates, but likeable fellows all; Frank Maberly, the athletic curate; and Sam Buckley, the type of an Australian country gentleman. With old men he was less successful. Lord Saltire, the placid good-natured cynic of _Ravenshoe_, is, however, a clever exception. 'All old women are beautiful,' says Kingsley in one of his stories, and he never portrayed one that was not. His best are Miss Thornton and Lady Ascot. The younger women, excepting Mary Hawker and Adelaide Summers, are rather slightly drawn. Even Alice Brentwood is a somewhat indistinct personage compared with the Australian girls of Mrs. Campbell Praed and Ada Cambridge.