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"Nora!" Mrs Harrigan was not pleased with this jest Any reference to the

past was distasteful to her ears She, too, went regularly to confession,

but up to the present ti ashamed of her

forranted that upon her

shoulders rested the future good fortune of the Harrigans They had nition She found it a battle within

a battle The good-natured reluctance of her husband and the careless

indifference of her daughter were as hard to combat as the icy aloofness

of those stars into whose orbit she was pluckily striving to steer the

fa head that the reluctance of the

father and the indifference of the daughter were the very conditions that

drew society nearward, for the si two persons who

did not care in the least whether they were recognized or not

The trio invaded the lace shop, and Nora and her reed to bury the

war-hatchet in their mutual love of Venetian and Florentine fineries

Celeste pretended to be interested, but in truth she was endeavoring to

piece together the few facts she had been able to extract from the rubbish

of conjecture Courtlandt and Nora had

of her own intier They certainly must have formed an

extraordinary friendship, for Nora's subsequent vindictiveness could not

possibly have arisen out of the ruins of an indifferent acquaintance Nora

could not be moved from the belief that Courtlandt had abducted her; but