’She is very good, is Freda, much improved! she never disputes and quarrels with me now.  I hope she will live with us—­indeed I cannot part with her again.’

At Abertewey, Mrs Vaughan asked the colonel whether ’he thought Freda would come away from that thupid wedding, in time for dinner.’

‘If she doesn’t, I will never ask her here again,’ was the reply.  ’Now Freda really is a capital girl, unaffected and sensible; improving every year.  I wish all women were more like her.’

’Tho do I, Gwynne; the ith very nice, tho kind to the children, and not tho thatirical to me as the uthed to be.  I uthed to be afraid of her, but I am not now, at all.  Don’t you think thatirical people very dithagreeable?  I hope Winnie won’t be thatirical, don’t you?  Mamma thaith—­’

’Never mind what she says, my dear.  I hope Freda will come.  All the people will be so disgusted if she does not, particularly poor Sir Hugh.  I wish she would marry him—­but she is too good for him.  Intellectual people ought not to marry those who have no brains.’

’No, thertainly not.  Oh! here they are!  Freda and all.  I hear her voithe.  I am tho glad.’

To Freda’s surprise, every one seemed really glad to see her, and to the surprise of every one, the more they saw of her, the more they liked her.  The very people whom she had shunned as bores, and who had shunned her as ‘tho thatirical,’ now became friendly and pleasant to her, and she to them; how it was they could not tell, but various reasons were assigned for the change.

‘How altered Miss Gwynne is,’ said one; ’I suppose the birth of the brother has made her more humble.’

‘Nothing like London to pull the pride out of our country gentry,’ said a second.  ’Lords at home, they are only one of a multitude there.  Miss Gwynne has learnt her true position at last.’

‘How much more agreeable Miss Gwynne is,’ said a fourth.  ’I suppose it is because she has been living in a clergyman’s family, where they are obliged to be pleasant to all the parishioners.’

‘How much less fastidious, satirical, and overbearing Freda Gwynne is,’ a fourth; ’her very countenance is altered; I am sure there has been some great change in her mind.’

And thus the neighbours rang the changes upon Freda’s change; but Mrs Gwynne Vaughan had been, perhaps, the nearest to the real cause.  She was no longer satirical, no longer striving to find out vulnerable points in people’s characters to laugh at; she had learnt to make allowances for others, who in turn made allowances for her.  Satirical people are very amusing, but rarely welcome, companions; not that Freda was exactly satirical, but she had the gift of finding out every one’s weak points—­a good gift to those who will kindly cover the point, but a bad one to such as like to lay it bare.

The party at Abertewey went off very well; the colonel was in good humour, and devoted to Freda, who tried to treat him as her brother-in-law; and Sir Hugh was more gallant than ever, and long before the evening was over, had managed to tell Freda that he would rather have her without the Park than with it, which Freda pretended to take as a joke on the part of her old admirer.