est possible manner--and the hours which Miss Liston gave to
work were devoted by Chillington to maintaining his cordial relations
with the lady whose comfortable and not over-tragical disposal was
taxing Miss Liston's skill. For she had definitely decided all her
plot; she told me so a few days later. It was all planned out; nay, the
scene in which the truth as to his own feelings bursts on Sir Gilbert
(I forget at the moment what name the novel gave him) was, I
understood, actually written; the shallow girl was to experience
nothing worse than a wound to her vanity, and was to turn with as much
alacrity as decency allowed to the substitute whom Miss Liston had now
provided. All this was poured into my sympathetic ear, and I say
sympathetic with all sincerity; for, although I may occasionally treat
Miss Liston's literary efforts with less than proper respect, she
herself was my friend, and the conviction under which she was now
living would, I knew, unless it were justified, bring her into much of
that unhappiness in which one generally found her heroine plunged about
the end of Volume II. The heroine generally got out all right, and the
knowledge that she would enabled the reader to preserve cheerfulness.
But would poor little Miss Liston get out? I was none too sure of it.

Suddenly a change came in the state of affairs. Pamela produced it. It
must have struck her that the increasing intimacy of Miss Liston and
Chillington might become something other than "funny." To put it
briefly and metaphorically, she whistled her dog back to her heels. I
am not skilled in understanding or describing the artifices of ladies;
but even I saw the transformation in Pamela. She put forth her strength
and put on her prettiest gowns; she refused to take her place in the
see-saw of society, which Chillington had recently established for his
pleasure. If he spent an hour with Miss Liston, Pamela would have
nothing of him for a day; she met his attentions with scorn unless they
were undivided. Chillington seemed at first puzzled; I believe that he
never regarded his talks with Miss Liston in other than a business
point of view, but directly he understood that Pamela claimed him, and
that she was prepared, in case he did not obey her call, to establish a
grievance against him, he lost no time in manifesting his obedience. A
whole day passed in which, to my certain knowledge, he was not alone a
moment with Miss Liston, and did not, save at t