Miss M. J. Farrell, who has entertained us in the past with stories of fox hunting and horse racing in Ireland, has chosen for her latest novel a quite different background and a set of characters hitherto foreign to her pen. Excellent and full flavored as her hunting tales are, one does not regret the change. It is probable that "Devoted Ladies" is Miss Farrell's best novel to date. Certainly she finds in it an opportunity for the exercise of a stinging wit and an extraordinarily acute and vital faculty of observation. This, together with the graceful and luminous prose style which readers of her previous novels will remember, forms an irresistible combination.

The novel opens in London, at a party given by Sylvester Browne for a group of his pseudo-literary and artistic friends and acquaintances. Sylvester, a successful playwright and novelist, takes a somewhat ghoulish delight in...