I suspect that _Mr. Simpson_, who gives his name to the story _Simpson_ (METHUEN), can hardly have shared my own exhausting acquaintance with modern fiction, otherwise it is unlikely that he would have behaved as he did. What happened was this. _Simpson_, though on the wrong side of forty, well off and eminently lovable, was unmarried. Finding a charming old house in the country, he conceives the idea of renting it as a kind of bachelor residential club where he and other congenial cronies can enjoy the life of ease untroubled by any form of feminism. Well, that, to start with, one might fairly describe as "asking for it." But when I add that the old house in question was the property of a still young and charming widow you will probably agree with me that poor _Simpson_ hadn't even a dog's chance from the beginning. It is possible that this fore-dooming may a little spoil your enjoyment of Miss ELINOR MORDAUNT'S otherwise pleasant tale. Naturally, so far from women being banished from its pages, they simply abound; and the tale of the progress of the bachelor club resolves itself into a chronicle of proposals. There is however an attractive variety about the love affairs, of which I liked best that of the youngest couple. With two there is a note of tragedy; and though the courtship of _Gilbert Strong_, a respectable country lawyer, and the wild gipsy whom he marries may strike you as fantastic, the end of their romance is well told with a fine suggestion of inevitability. On the whole an agreeable and easy-going tale, though without any unusual claim to distinction. * * * * * [Illustration: IT WAS AN AMBITIOUS YOUTH WHO, WHILE TRAVELLING ON THE CONTINENT, WAS OFFERED THE CROWN OF ONE OF THE SMALLER STATES AND REFUSED IT, SAYING, HE "DISLIKED THESE BLIND-ALLEY OCCUPATIONS."] * * * * *