Always and Forever, chapter 8

Although I think Oliver is being lamentably slow about wooing Amabel, I'm far happier with Always and Forever than I was with All Else Confusion. That's a relief; I feared that familiarity would breed contempt with every Betts title, but now I've realized that I have a special level of contempt for the dreadful Jake.
But I digress. When last we left our heroine, she was being stalked by Miriam, and Oliver was in love with her. Both of those things are still true here. Miriam comes to call on Lady Haleford, who is frail enough to see visitors for only a few minutes at a time. She suggests that Miriam and Amabel go on a walk; in the course of the walk, Miriam persuades Amabel that Miriam is about to marry someone named Oliver, a doctor in London who likes to help the less fortunate - in fact, he just helped some pathetic girl get a job. The level of detail here, and the idea that this would come up in a 10-minute conversation, would make me suspicious; Amabel swallows it hook, line and sinker.
However, this conversation has a silver lining (at least for the impatient reader), because after it Amabel realizes she's in love with Oliver. She's upset that he apparently loves Miriam, and refuses to listen when he tells her there's "a great deal I wish to say to you" (p. 221). He soon hears that Miriam has come to visit, so I imagine he'll straighten everything out in chapter 9. But in the meantime, he'll have to rescue Amabel again; her mother gets pneumonia, and Keith insists that Amabel come home to take care of everything. (This scene is reminding me of the end of Lois Duncan's Daughters of Eve, when Jane's mother is in the hospital and her abusive father says Jane will have to take over now. Sadly, unlike Jane's father, Keith won't be feeling the business end of a cast-iron skillet anytime soon).