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Rh But you have been reading, and perhaps that book is more interesting than my interruption."

"No!" was the quick answer. "Although I come often, I seldom read much here."

I now took a seat beside her, in order to have a look over the volume. She handed it to me, and I read on the cover: "The Career of the Lovers of Yacla."

"I presume it is a work of fiction," I said.

"No; a biography," was the reply. "Yet there are many chapters that indeed resemble fiction," she continued. "I suppose there are many romantic works of fiction in your language."

"Yes" I said; "but the great bulk of them at the present time treat of courtships and unhappy marriages, contracted from interested motives apart from love, such as wealth and social position,—indeed, where love was only a secondary consideration, if it existed at all; also of disputes about money matters, intrigues, and law-suits over the property of heirs and heiresses. Nevertheless, it has become a very important, if not the most important, department of our literature, a literature of which any country might be justly proud."

"Is not the hour fixed for our departure from Atazatlan approaching?" she asked.