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 voila
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.
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