_Madam Constantia_ (LONGMANS) is a war story, but of an earlier and more picturesque war. A simple tale, I am bound to call it, revolving entirely round a situation not altogether unknown to fiction, in which the hero and heroine, being of opposite sides, love and fight one another simultaneously. Actually the scene is set during the American struggle for independence, thus providing a sufficiency of pomp and circumstance in the way of fine uniforms and pretty frocks; and the protagonists are _Captain Carter_, of the British service, and _Constantia Wilmer_, daughter of the American who had captured him. Perhaps you may recall that the identical campaign has already provided a very similar position (reversed) in _Miss Elizabeth's Prisoner_. It is only a deserved tribute to the skill with which Mr. JEFFERSON CARTER has told this adventure of his namesake to admit that I am left with an uncertainty, not usual to the reviewing experience, whether it is in fact a true or an imagined affair. In any event its development follows a well-trodden path. We have the captive, jealous in honour, susceptible and exasperatingly Quixotic, doubly enchained by his word and the charms of his fair wardress; the lady's conspicuous ill-treatment of him at the first, a slight mystery, some escapes and counterplots, and on the appointed page the matrimonial finish that hardly the most pessimistic reader can ever have felt as other than assured. Fact or fiction, you may spend an agreeable hour in watching the course of _Captain Carter's_ courtship overcoming its rather obvious obstacles. * * * * *