New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1903-12-13
FICTION.
Il Good Portrait of a NezU Type.

THE DUKE DECIDES By Headon Hill. Emo |
PIP. 331 a. Vessels Company.
THE LOST KING. BY Henry ShackeIford. 12mo |
PIP. VII. ~. Brentanos S.
Miss Silberrad has gained ground in her latest
novel "Petronilla Heroven'' is a better book
than any she has hitherto published. 1t owes
this distinction largely to the fact that in the |
heroine she has portrayed a woman of unusual
traits. a woman such as we do not often meet
in the novels of the day. She Is the merest girl
when she is first introduced to the reader, and !
the weight Of the bar sinister rests upon her in
experienced shoulders, but in her girhood |
Petronilla has a curious and appealing individ- |
uality. For her. conventions do not exist; she
trusts to instincts. and these guide her wonder
fully well through the tangle of circumstances |
confronting her in the nominal peace and Sc
curity of the old farmhouse in which she lives.
Demands made upon her resources.
Her grandfather, who Is her sole protector Is
q difficult old gentleman. and she has to use
as much tact in managing him as in managing |
those others who in one way or another COM |
plicate her career. She is, indeed, very man
aging person. but it is not to be assumed that
she is in any way modifying. On the contrary, |
the great charm of Petronilla resides in the es-
sential dignity of her character. Miss Silberrad |
has never shown a more skiIfu hand than in
her treatment of her heroine's unconventional
nature. Petronilla does things from which the
etereotyped heroine would recon with indigna- |
ton, but is she in the slightest degree !
smirched. If she gives the reader pause at all. |
IL is through making him feel that never was a
woman a better hater than this attractive young |
person. But, after all, her hatred is certainly |
justified and, what is more it makes her the
more credible as a human being. The long !
struggle between her and her foe shows her
often in a startling but never in a dscredtable,
light The plot of the story is well laid out, and
in developing it the author shows the same gift
that she shows in her portrait of Petronilla,
she gives her work freshness a new interest.
More than she achieves an effort of dra-
matte intensity. Decidedly. if she on as she
has begun this volume-for she seems to have
found herself for the first time In "Petronilla
Heroven"-she will take rank as one of the
minor noVelists who worth while
The central figure in 1.-The Duke Decides faces
in the first chapter of the book about as ugly
a situation as a man could well be expected to
endure, He is an Englishman living in New
York. and suffering something like poverty. In
the street a man forces himself upon his ac-
Guaintance, and before they have parted has
succeeded In persuading the unfortunate and
nearly desperate young fellow to enter into a
scheme for the theft of fortune in United
States Treasury bonds which American Sen
ator is represented having been charged to
deliver to the BANK OF England ItdnDuTy
commits himself to the enterprise in moment
Of weakness, when he is hopeless as to his fuJ-
ure He goes home, and finds a telegram in
forming him that by the deaths of his uncle
and cousin he has been made the seventh Duke
Of Beaumanoir, with rent roll of two hundred
thousand a year He is at loss what to do.
but finally decides to proceed at once TO Eng
land as his tenpter in crime has ordered him.
and postpone his decision as TO the way in
which he shall attempt to escape from the dis
honorable path he has carelessly entered
Of course he finds in the ship that bears him
across the Atlantic the wife and daughter of
The Senator aforesaid, and we know at once that
Mr. Hill is going to have to do not only with
thieves, but with lovers. He puts his characters
through their PAGES with a becoming sense of
what melodrama requires The story is full of
surprises, and it is almost plausible That it
stretches credulity just little too far does not
make il any the less readable
The author of The Lost King offers at the
outset "a word of explanation" pointing out
the writer's who have believed that the little
Iauphn died in the Temple. and indicating
those who have believed that the lad escaped
For the purposes of this novel. Mr.. Shackelford
adopts the latter hypothesis. and he represents
NAPOLEON. then a young officer making his
way, as giving Indispensable aid I'm the rescue
# the royal child. 1t is fantastic story but II
IS in possible deny the author q NEED of