--We have received a copy of this work from
Messrs. West &
Johnston.
Its author is also author of "
Darrell Markham," and other works well known to the public.
The tale is a very simple and, we think, not a very edifying one.
A retired merchant, of great wealth, falls in love with and marries a fourth-rate actress, whose splendid promotion makes her the envy of all the surrounding old maids and gossiping widows, who, having no business of their own to attend to, very charitably fill the void which want of occupation is so certain to occasion in the minds of all persons who possess such a thing as a mind, by taking the affairs of other people under their charge.
In the course of a year or two the lady who has excited so much interest dies, leaving an only child, the heroine who gives her name to the novel, and who from that time becomes the idol of her father.
The heiress of boundless wealth, indulged in every whim and caprice, suffered to learn or not to learn as she may think proper, never having been taught to check a single passion or to obey any authority but the impulse of her own wishes, with a good natural disposition, and no accomplishment save that of a dashing horsewoman, the young lady grows up as wilful, spoilt, and ungovernable a country hoyden as it is common to see. At the age of sixteen she falls desperately in love with her own groom, whom she had been taught by a cunning female confidant to consider a nobleman cheated of his birthright, and reduced to his present low condition by some person or persons, we forget whom, nor is it necessary to remember.
Her father, too late, interposes an authority which he had never before exerted, and which he now finds quite ineffectual to restrain her headlong passion and headstrong will.
He sends her to
Paris to finish her education — she rewards his affection by eloping with the forbidden groom.
She marries him, and soon finds out that he is a low creature, who has but one object in view — to plunder her, namely, of all the money she can raise.--At length he quits her, or she quits him, and she returns home, where her history during her absence is unknown.
It is reported to her that her husband is dead, and she sets up for a young lady.
Of course she is soon surrounded by suitors, to one of whom, a young officer of great talents and accomplishments, who had served in the Crimea with distinction, she becomes attached.
She agrees to marry him, provided he will trust her so far as to require of her no account of the manner in which she spent one whole year of her life — that part of it, namely, including her residence in
France.
This he declines to do — the match is broken off, and she accepts his rival — a great, stupid, clown of a country
Squire, half booby and all horses jockey, without culture and without refinement, but good-natured, and trustful to such a degree as to take her, missing year and all. They are married, and thereupon the first husband makes his appearance, and is received as a sort of stable superintendent by the husband incumbent.
His object, of course, is to extort money by threats of a discovery, and he succeeds in doing so, until he is murdered on returning from an interview with her by a half-witted hostler who had been dismissed from the establishment.
Suspicion fails on her; but finally all things are cleared up — the true murderer is hung — and the other parties dismissed to the happiness usual in novels.
Such is an outline of this story.
It is of what is called the
intense order; an order that we do not particularly affect, but which is very pleasing to young gentlemen and young ladies who have no sorrows that they can properly call their own, and in default of such borrow from the fictitious world to supply themselves.
We cannot say that we think very highly of the moral; but, fortunately, in this country young ladies do not fall in love with their grooms, and therefore there may be no harm done.
