A HISTORICAL STORY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1686, 22 June 1904, Page 22

A HISTORICAL STORY

“Bindweed.” By Nellie Iv. Blissett, London. Constable and Co., London. Whitcombe and Tombs, Wellington.

There is in this novel a happy commingling of fiction and fact. The scene of the story is cast in the south-east of Europe, where a new kingdom has been established. As there is the assassination of a king and queen in the narrative, the identity of the monarchy is hut thinly veiled in the name of Salitza. The first introduction to the heroine, Liane Markovitch, is in the “Paradis des Dames,” a fashionable millinery house. Her beauty attracts the attention of a Russian attache, who visits the Paradis with the wife of his chief, a good-for-little sort of woman. A revolt is fomented by Russian intriguers. The attache fights as a Salitzan, and Liane’s father is killed. . She marries a man for whom she cares little, and because of her indifference to him and misconduct with Our of, the attache, her husband commits suicide. The King is the attractive figure in the b’ook. He awakens sympathy. Surrounded by enemies and intriguers, he plays his game xvith considerable skill, but he is only a pawn in the hands of Russia. He, too, comes under the spell of Liane’s beauty,' and what at first is a romantic affair deepens into a strong and true attachment. What follows need not he related. Mrs Blissett gives us a vivid and admirable bit of work. There is ski’lful characterisation, and the plot of the novel is clearly and cleverly wrought. The story ends with the tragic denouement that startled the world last year.