Essays from the Guardian

There is surely something of natural magic in that! The wilder capacity of the mountains is brought out especially in a weird story of a haunted girl, an episode well illustrating the writer’s more imaginative psychological power; for, in spite of its quiet general tenour, the book has its adroitly managed elements of sensation—- witness the ghost, in which the average human susceptibility to supernatural terrors takes revenge on the sceptical Mr. Wendover, and the love-scene with Madame de Netteville, which, like those other exciting passages, really furthers the development of the proper ethical interests of the book.