the first girl?"

"Oh, she's--she can be made shallow, you know; and I can put in a man
for her. People needn't be much interested in her."

"Yes, you could manage it that way," said I, thinking how Pamela--I
took the liberty of using her name for the shallow girl--would like
such treatment.

"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