The main theme of this romance is the situation created by the marriage—a marriage of love—of a comparatively poor man, proud, chivalrous, and tender, to a wealthy heiress: a girl of refined and generous instincts, but something of a wayward 'spoilt child,' loving to use the power which her fortune gives her to play the Lady Mæcenas to a crowd of impecunious flatterers, fortune hunters, and unrecognized geniuses. On a critical occasion, thwarted in one of her mad schemes of patronage by her husband, who tries to clear her society of these sycophants and parasites, she petulantly taunts him with having been a poor man himself, who happily married money. Outraged in his love and pride, he offers her the choice of coming to share his poverty or of living on, alone, amid her luxuries. There begins a conflict of wills between these two, who remain in love with each other—prolonged naturally, and embittered, by the efforts of the interested hangers-on to keep the inconvenient husband out of Lady Mæcenas' house—but ending in a happy surrender on both sides.
THE HAPPY HUNTING GROUND
By Alice Perrin, Author of 'The Anglo-Indians.'
A lively and entertaining story of Anglo-Indian life dealing with the matrimonial adventures of a young lady whose forbears have all been connected with the Indian services, and who is sent out to India to find a husband in her own class of life, but marries an official of humble origin ignorant of the circumstances of his birth. Troubles and disappointments, which come near to real tragedy, end in the triumph of grit and sincerity over social barriers.
THE FLYING INN
By G. K. Chesterton.
This story is partly a farcical romance of the adventures of the last English Inn-keeper, when all Western Europe had been conquered by the Moslem Empire and its dogma of abstinence from wine. It might well be called 'What Might Have Been,' for it was sketched out before the legend of the Invincible Turk was broken. It involves a narrative development which is also something of a challenge in ethics. The lyrics called 'Songs of the Simple Life,' which appeared in The New Witness, are sung between the Inn-keeper and his friend, the Irish Captain, who are the principal characters in the romance.
THE WAY OF THESE WOMEN
By E. Phillips Oppenheim, Author of 'The Missing Delora.'
In this story Mr. Phillips Oppenheim, who is never content to remain in the same rut for long, has boldly deserted the somewhat complicated mechanism which goes to the making of the modern romance. He has contented himself with weaving a tensely written story around one Event, and concentrating the whole love interest of the book upon two people. The Event in itself is one simple enough, its use in fiction almost hackneyed, yet the circumstances surrounding it are so tragical and surprising, its hidden history so unexpected, that it easily serves as the pivot of an interest arresting from the first, startling in its latter stages, almost breathless in its last development.