“She will really be valuable mainly as a foil,” observed Miss Liston; and she added generously, “I shall make her nice, you know, but shallow—not worthy of him.”
“And what are you going to make the other girl like?” I asked.
Miss Liston started slightly; also she colored very slightly, and she answered, looking away from me across the lawn, “I haven’t quite made up my mind yet, Mr. Wynne.”
With the suspicion which this conversation aroused fresh in my mind, it was curious to hear Pamela laugh, as she said to me on the afternoon of the same day, “Aren’t Sir Gilbert and Audrey Liston funny? I tell you what, Mr. Wynne, I believe they’re writing a novel together.”
“Perhaps Chillington’s giving her the materials for one,” I suggested.
“I shouldn’t think,” observed Pamela, in her dispassionate way, “that anything very interesting had ever happened to him.”
“I. thought you liked him,” I remarked, humbly.
“So I do. What’s that got to do with it?” asked Pamela.
It was beyond question that Chillington enjoyed Miss Liston’s society; the interest she showed in him was incense to his nostrils. I used to overhear fragments of his ideas about himself, which he was revealing in answer to her tactful inquiries. But neither was it doubtful that he had by no means lost his relish for Pamela’s lighter talk; in fact, he seemed to turn to her with some relief—perhaps it is refreshing to escape from self-analysis, even when the process is conducted in the pleasantest 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 the family meals, exchange a word with her. As he walked off with Pamela, Miss Liston’s eyes followed him in wistful longing; she stole away upstairs and did not come down till five o’clock. Then finding me strolling about with a cigarette, she joined me.