CHAPTER VIII.
This was by no means the last occasion upon which Mrs.Willoughby thought it prudent to take counsel with Fielding concerning the affairs of her friend.

Nor was Fielding in any degree backward to respond with his advice.

He developed, in fact, an interest in their progress quite disproportionate to his professed attitude of the spectator in the stalls.

Mrs.Willoughby lived at Knightsbridge, in a little house, of which the drawing-room overlooked the Park close to the barracks, and he found it very pleasant to sit there of an afternoon and discuss in a cosy duet the future of Clarice.
The subject, besides, had the advantage of inexhaustibility.

On the one side Fielding ranged the suitors, or those whom he considered such; on the other the vagaries of the girl.