skill (so she gravely informed me) to the utmost to reproduce.

She proposed that I also should make a study of him, and
attributed my hurriedrefusal to a shrinking from the

difficulties of the task.
"Of course," she observed, looking at our young friends, who were

talking nonsense at the other side of the lawn, "they must have a
misunderstanding."

"Why, of course," said I, lighting my pipe. "What should you say
to another man?"

"Or another woman?" said Miss Liston.
"It comes to the same thing," said I. (About a volume and a half

I meant.)
"But it's more interesting. Do you think she'd better be a

married woman?" And Miss Liston looked at me inquiringly.
"The age prefers them married," I remarked.

This conversation happened on the second day of Miss Liston's
visit, and she lost no time in beginning to study her subjects.

Pamela, she said, she found pretty plain sailing, but Chillington
continued to puzzle her. Again, she could not make up her

mind whether to have a happy or a tragicending. In the
interests of a tenderhearted public, I pleaded for marriage

bells.
"Yes, I think so," said Miss Liston, but she sighed, and I think

she had an idea or two for a heart-broken separation, followed by
mutual, lifelong, hopeless devotion.

The complexity of young Sir Gilbert did not, in Miss Liston's
opinion, appear less on further acquaintance; and indeed, I must

admit that she was not altogether wrong in considering him worthy
of attention. As I came to know him better, I discerned in him a

smothered self-appreciation, which came to light in response to
the least tribute of interest or admiration, but was yet far

remote from the aggressiveness of a commonplacevanity. In a
moment of indiscretion I had chaffed him--he was very good-

natured--on the risks he ran at Miss Liston's hands; he was not
disgusted, but neither did he plume himself or spread his

feathers. He received the suggestion without surprise, and
without any attempt at disclaiming fitness for the purpose; but

he received it as a matter which entailed a responsibility on
him. I detected the conviction that, if the portrait was to be

painted, it was due to the world that it should be well painted;
the subject must give the artist full opportunities.

"What does she know about me?" he asked, in meditative tones.
"She's very quick; she'll soon pick up as much as she wants," I

assured him.
"She'll probably go all wrong," he said somberly; and of course I

could not tell him that it was of no consequence if she did. He
would not have believed me, and would have done precisely what he

proceeded to do, and that was to afford Miss Liston every chance
of appraising his character and plumbing the depths of his soul.

I may say at once that I did not regret this course of action;
for the effect of it was to allow me a chance of talking to

Pamela Myles, and Pamela was exactly the sort of girl to beguile
the long, pleasant morning hours of a holiday in the country. No

one had told Pamela that she was going to be put in a book, and I
don't think it would have made any difference had she been told.

Pamela's attitude toward books was one of healthy scorn,
confidently based on admitted ignorance. So we never spoke of

them, and my cousin Dora condoled with me more than once on the
way in which Miss Liston, false to the implied terms of her

invitation, deserted me in favor of Sir Gilbert, and left me to
the mercies of a frivolous girl. Pamela appeared to be as little

aggrieved as I was. I imagined that she supposed that
Chillington would ask her to marry him some day, before very

long, and I was sure she would accept him; but it was quite plain
that, if Miss Liston persisted in making Pamela her heroine, she

would have to supply from her own resources a large supplement of
passion. Pamela was far too deficient in the commodity to be

made anything of without such re-enforcement, even by an art more
adept at making much out of nothing than Miss Liston's

straightforward method could claim to be.
A week passed, and then, one Friday morning, a new light burst on

me. Miss Liston came into the garden at eleven o'clock and sat
down by me on the lawn. Chillington and Pamela had gone riding

with the squire, Dora was visiting the poor. We were alone. The
appearance of Miss Liston at this hour (usually sacred to the use

of the pen), no less than her puzzled look, told me that an
obstruction had occurred in the novel. Presently she let me know

what it was.
"I'm thinking of altering the scheme of my story, Mr. Wynne,"

said she. "Have you ever noticed how sometimes a man thinks he's
in love when he isn't really?"

"Such a case sometimes occurs," I acknowledged.
"Yes, and he doesn't find out his mistake----"

"Till they're married?"
"Sometimes, yes," she said, rather as though she were making an

unwilling admission. "But sometimes he sees it before--when he
meets somebody else."

"Very true," said I, with a grave nod.
"The false can't stand against the real," pursued Miss Liston;

and then she fell into meditative silence. I stole a glance at
her face; she was smiling. Was it in the pleasure of literary

creation--an artisticecstasy? I should have liked to answer
yes, but I doubted it very much. Without pretending to Miss

Liston's powers, I have the little subtlety that is needful to
show me that more than one kind of smile may be seen on the human

face, and that there is one very different from others; and,
finally, that that one is not evoked, as a rule, merely by the

evolution of the troublesome encumbrance in pretty writing
vulgarly called a "plot."

"If," pursued Miss Liston, "someone comes who can appreciate him
and draw out what is best in him----"

"That's all very well," said I, "but what of 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 valuablemainly 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