"Take my characters from life?" she would
exclaim. "Surely every artist" (Miss Liston often referred to
herself as an artist) "must?" And she would proceed to
maintain--what is perhaps true sometimes--that people rather
liked being put into books, just as they like being photographed,
for all that they grumble and pretend to be afflicted when either
process is levied against them. In discussing this matter
with Miss Liston I felt myself on delicate ground, for it was
notorious that I figured in her first book in the guise of a
misogynistic genius; the fact that she lengthened (and thickened)
my hair, converted it from an indeterminate brown to a dusky
black, gave me a drooping mustache, and invested my very ordinary
workaday eyes with a strange magnetic attraction, availed
nothing; I was at once recognized; and, I may remark in passing,
an uncommonly disagreeable fellow she made me. Thus I had passed
through the fire. I felt tolerably sure that I presented no
other aspect of interest, real or supposed, and I was quite
content that Miss Liston should serve all the rest of her
acquaintance as she had served me. I reckoned they would last
her, at the present rate of production, about five years.
Fate was kind to Miss Liston, and provided her with most suitable
patterns for her next piece of work at Poltons itself. There
were a young man and a young woman staying in the house--Sir
Gilbert Chillington and Miss Pamela Myles.
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