* * * * * The test of the second water, as sellers of tea assure us, provides proof of a quality for which one must go to the right market. BARONESS ORCZY has not feared to put her most famous product, _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, to a similar trial. Whether the result of this renewed dilution is entirely satisfactory I leave you to judge, but certainly at least something of the well-known and popular aroma of romantic artificiality clings about the pages of her latest story, _Lord Tony's Wife_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), while at the bottom of the cup there is not a little dash of the old strong flavour. On the other hand, though it may be that one's appetite grows less lusty, it does seem that in all the earlier chapters there is some undue proportion of thin and rather tepid preparation for episodes quite clearly on the way, so that in the end even the masterly vigour of the much advertised _Pimpernel_, in full panoply of inane laughter and unguessed disguise, failed to astound and stagger me as much as I could have wished. _Lord Tony_ was a healthy young Englishman with no particular qualities calling for comment, and his wife an equally charming young French heroine. After having escaped to England from the writer's beloved Reign of Terror, the lady and her aristo father were comfortably decoyed back to France by a son of the people whose qualifications for the post of villain were none too convincing, and there all manner of unpleasant things were by way of happening to them, when enter the despairing husband with the dashing scarlet one at his side--_et voilà tout_. The last few chapters come nearly or even quite up to the mark, but as for most of the rest, I advise you to take them as read. * * * * * In _A Certain Star_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) Miss PHYLLIS BOTTOME achieves the difficult feat of treating a love conceived in a romantic vein without declining upon sentimentality, and seasons her descriptions, which are shrewdly, sometimes delicately, observed, with quite a pretty wit. I commend it as a sound, unpretentious, honestly-written book. _Sir Julian Verny_, a baronet with brains and a very difficult temper, falls a captive to _Marian's_ proud and compelling beauty. Then, just before the War flames up, secret service claims him, and he returns from a dangerous mission irretrievably crippled. _Marian_ fails him. True, she disdains to be released, but out of pride not out of love. It is little grey suppressed _Stella_ (her light has been hidden under the dull bushel of a Town Clerk's office) who comes into her kingdom and wins back an ultra-sensitive despairing man to the joy of living and working and the fine humility of being dependent instead of masterful. There are so many _Julians_ and there's need of so many _Stellas_ these sad days that it is well to have such wholesome doctrine stated with so courageous an optimism. * * * * *