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144 purpose had been to please her friend or to please herself. Was it that she preferred his society to Weber's music? He knew that she had a passion for Weber. "You have lost the opera," he said, when she reappeared; "but let us have an opera of our own. Play something; play Weber." So she played Weber for more than an hour; and I doubt whether, among the singers who filled the theatre with their melody, the master found that evening a truer interpreter than the young girl playing in the lamplit parlor to the man she loved. She played herself tired. "You ought to be extremely grateful," she said, as she struck the last chord; "I have never played so well."

Later they came to speak of a novel which lay on the table, and which Nora had been reading. "It is very silly," she said, "but I go on with it in spite of myself. I am afraid I am too easily pleased; no novel is so silly I can't read it. I recommend you this, by the way. The hero is a young clergyman, endowed with every charm, who falls in love with a Roman Catholic. She is rather a bigot, and though she loves the young man, she loves her religion better. To win his suit he comes near going over to Rome; but he pulls up short and determines the mountain shall come to Mahomet. He set bravely to work, converts the young lady, baptizes her one week and marries her the next."

"Heaven preserve us, what a hotch-potch!" cried Hubert. "Is that what they are writing nowadays? I very seldom read a novel, but when I glance into one, I am sure to find some such stuff as that! Nothing irritates me so as the flatness of people's imagination.