‘The Law and the Lady’ is one of the most ingenious and most repulsive of Wilkie Collins’s novels, and we doubt, if having begun, that anyone would leave it unfinished. The heroine marries a man and soon discovers that she is his second wife, and that he has been tried in Scotland for the murder of his first, — the jury returning a verdict of’ Not proven, ‘ which, not establishing his innocence, simply declared that the evidence was not sufficient to convict him. She resolves to devote her life to the task of proving her husband’s guiltlessness, and sets to work, without his knowledge. When he becomes aware that she has learned his secret, he leaves the country, convinced that she must despise him. The narrative of the wife’s labors is intensely interesting, and marked by the ingenuity in handling and adapting evidence in which Mr. Collins is pre-eminent. In time the two are reunited, and later the wife’s task is accomplished. Two characters, so original as horrible, figure in the story, — Miserrinius Dexter and his niece, Ariel. Though Dexter could not possibly belong to real life, he is the most striking and absorbing personage in the book. Whether the author violates physiological probabilities by endowing this mere atomy with the furious passions which controlled him, we shall not undertake to decide ; but it is certain that the rules of Scottish courts must differ widely from ours if they permit a witness under examination to argue and declaim as did Mr. Dexter at the trial of Macallan. Like all the author’s novels, this one is wholly devoid of warmth and tenderness and the light of human affections : even in the love of Macallan and Valeria there is a somber reserve. But his admirers will find in the story no reason to abate their admiration for his power of construction and development.
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