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It’s Mary Jane Holmes time again, and if you like her, you’ll like this. Darkness and Daylight has a special claim on my affections, because it features a Secret Insane Wife, and obviously that is my favorite, favorite thing. But this is a book for connoisseurs of fictional coincidence as well as connoisseurs of fictional insane wives, and I like to think that I’m both. I mean, I suppose it’s not too strange that the Massachusetts estate Grace Atherton inherits from her elderly husband is next door to the childhood home of Richard Harrington, the man she jilted when she was a teenager in England. Or that Harrington reencounters the little Swedish girl he saved from drowning in Germany that one time. Or that Arthur St. Claire falls in love with his wife’s long-lost half-sister who is supposed to be dead, although that’s pushing it a little. But that all three should be true in one book? Or that the Swedish girl (Eloise Temple) and the long-lost sister (Marguerite Bernard) are one and the same, and that Grace Atherton adopts her from an orphanage in New York under the name of Edith Hastings? That’s almost more than I can deal with. Although, to be fair, “almost more than I can deal with” is Mrs. Holmes’ specialty.

If those names sound familiar, it’s probably because these people show up as minor characters in my beloved Tracy Park. Or possibly you’ve read one of the other Mary Jane Holmes books in which a main character is named Hastings.

I know I’ve just given away a large part of the plot, but don’t worry — you would have figured all of that out pretty quickly anyway. The key to dealing with Mary Jane Holmes is realizing that, yes, all the characters are related to each other/secretly connected/actually also other people. Or possibly their children.

Here’s what actually happens: Grace Atherton, of Brier Hill, takes nine-year-old orphan Edith Hastings from the orphan asylum to be her waiting maid. Shortly afterwards, Richard Harrington returns home to Collingwood, which is basically next door. Grace turned down Richard’s proposal of marriage when she was seventeen because she didn’t want to take care of his insane father. Two things about Richard have changed since she last saw him: first, he’s no longer in love with her, and second, he’s blind. That time he saved Edith from drowning when she was two, he caught a fever and his eyesight started to go, although at the point when he’s introduced, he can’t possibly have been completely blind for more than a couple of years (The internet being what it is, oughtn’t there to be a website where doctors make fun of 19th century novels?). Anyway, Richard and Edith get acquainted, and they grow fond of each other.

Soon Grace’s cousin Arthur St. Claire comes to visit, and he’s also kind of taken with Edith, so much so that when Grace tries to send her back to the orphanage, Arthur goes to Richard and talks him into adopting her. Meanwhile, Edith sees Arthur’s photograph of a young blonde girl and somehow knows that her name is Nina. Of all the things in this book that mess with my suspension of disbelief, none compare with Edith’s remarkable memory. She’s been Edith Hastings since she was three, and yet she’s got strong memories of Germany, Florida, various family members, music, and the French language. Half a dozen times I stopped reading to try and make sense of that, and half a dozen times I decided that the best course was probably not to think about it too hard.

Let’s skip ahead eight years. Edith is s

Under Two Flags, by Ouida, is the mother of all books about running off to join the foreign legion, although technically when Bertie Cecil leaves England for Algeria, he joins the Chasseurs d’Afrique, a cavalry regiment. Bertie is an officer in the Life Guards, which seems to mean that he gets to hang out with other [...]