The testimony is crushing, the offender is condemned to die, and mounts the scaffold proclaiming his innocence. The revelation of the relationship in which he stands to his denouncer is made too late, and Dr. Langton arrives with the proof of the young lady's meditated suicide just in time to see his own illegitimate son swing in mid-air as the drop falls, and the shoutings of the crowd announce that all is over. The perseverance and tenacity of purpose which bear an author through the labour of executing three goodly volumes unaided in the task by incident, description, or dialogue, are beyond all praise. '_Il est si facile de ne point écrire_,' exclaims Boileau. But the lady-writers of modern times evidently reverse the saying--with them it far more difficult to refrain. _'Six Months Hence.'_ Being Passages from the Life of Maria _née_ Secretan. Three volumes. Smith, Elder and Co. In the anonymous author of this story we have, we suspect, a new writer of fiction, and of considerable power. The novel is mainly a psychological one--although full of tragic incidents, and complicated in its plot. Indeed, the story is constructed with a mechanical ingenuity, which in the minuteness and mosaic of its incidents, is not unworthy of the author of the 'Lady in White.' The story is told autobiographically by the heroine, in a plain matter-of-fact way; full, however, of psychological self-analysis that would do credit to the author of 'Dr. Austin's Guests,' especially in the delineation of Fortescue's madness. The heroine enters upon a situation as governess in the family of Mr. Armitage, of Harcourt Villa, Hastings; who, being left a widower, with a son and daughter, Charles and Helen, has married, a second time, a woman of coarse nature and unscrupulous character, who has one son, Fred, a little boy of six. A Mr. Fortescue, an accomplished and wealthy young man, is a constant visitor at the villa, and is the presumptive lover of Helen, although he has never declared his love. Helen, and Maria, the governess, who are of the same age, become fast friends; gradually, however, Mr. Fortescue transfers his attentions to Maria, whose first guilt consists in yielding to ambitious desires, and permitting in herself and Mr. Fortescue treachery to her friend. The incipient attachment is strengthened by a long nursing of little Fred, who meets with an accident; the rescue of Maria from the tide by Mr. Fortescue precipitates matters, and they are secretly engaged to be married; two or three days before the intended disclosure of the engagement, and a few days before the intended marriage, Mr. Armitage dies, having, through the machinations of his wife, made an iniquitous will, whereby little Fred is made his heir in the event of his attaining the age of twenty-one; should he die before that age, the estates revert to the natural heir, no other provision being made. Maria and Mr. Fortescue are married. On the very week of their arrival at Dalemain Castle, Mr.