now provided. All this was poured into my sympathetic
ear, and I say sympathetic in 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 sea-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.

"Well, how goes the book?" I asked.

"I haven't done much to it just lately," she answered, in a low voice.
"I--it's--I don't quite know what to do with it."

"I thought you'd settled?"

"So I had, but--oh, don't let's talk about it, Mr. Wynne!"

But a moment later she went on talking about it.

"I don't know why I should make it end happily," she said. "I'm sure
life isn't always happy, is