Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/194

192 I prefer a gayer and lighter species of reading. Of pictures I like portraits—of books I like novels—novels of modern life, times, and manners: even if very bad, they amuse. I am not sure if laughing at them be not as pleasant as laughing with them." Edward Lorraine.—" But what is the tale?" Lady Mandeville.—"Do not be impatient. Cannot you see that this dwelling on my opposite tastes shows how very admirable the story must be which could carry me so completely out of them? I insist upon telling you how I came to read it. Mandeville had dined out: Emily, most unkindly, had not a prescience of my loneliness, and stayed at the Hall. I got tired, very tired of myself. At last I saw a little volume lying on the table—took it up in that worst of moods for an author—faute de mieux,—opened it carelessly—read a few pages, and grew so interested, that I let the fire quite, the lamp nearly, out; and when Henry came home, I am not sure whether I did not take him for one of his ancestors stepped down from a picture-frame. Moreover, I could not sleep till I had finished it. There is the very book." Edward Lorraine.—"My old favourite