As before, the author excellently
conveys the place-feeling, so well indeed that I was sorry when the love
intrigues of the two protagonists necessitated their quitting Africa for a
more conventional Italian setting. I may summarise the plot by telling you
that the particular almond that fell too late to the heroine was somebody
else's husband. But it wasn't so much that she was unable to eat him as
that he proved indigestible when swallowed. The lady was _Gerda_, young and
dazzling bride of the middle-aged _Fred Wooten_, and the gentleman one of
her husband's closest friends, also (before the arrival of _Gerda_) happily
married to a wife whom I found the most attractive person in the book. I
need not further detail the crooked course of untrue love, though I may
hint at a fault in balance, where your sympathy, previously and rightly
enlisted for poor betrayed _Fred_, is demanded for _Gerda_ in her
difficulty with the almond. As usual, Miss YOUNG unfolds her plot with
admirable directness, chiefly through a natural and unforced dialogue, so
easy that it disguises its own art.
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