re_.'

Owen was astonished at everything, but at nothing so much as at his
sister. Netta had always aped the fine lady, and made the most of her
few accomplishments; but now it was all like a fairy-tale, and the
heroine was Netta, transformed by some fairy into a princess. By turns
coquettish, affected, simple, languishing, accordingly as she feared she
was too like her natural self--the Netta of the Farm was no more, and
her representative was, to Owen at least, an anomaly. How she could have
acquired such an amount of small talk, and such a mincing speech in nine
months, was an enigma to him. London, Paris, the opera, the fashions,
even the picture galleries, were alternately in her mouth; and she
poured out tea and coffee, and laughed a silly laugh, much to her own
satisfaction, and Owen's disgust, whilst all the men were looking at
her; for assuredly she was very pretty.

'Owen,' she said, during a sudden pause in rather a noisy conversation,
'I hear Rowland is quite a fashionable preacher. Howel means to ask him
down here, I believe. Miss Simpson went to hear him--didn't you, Miss
Simpson?'

This was drawled out, and Owen felt very much disposed to get up and
shake his sister, as he had often done when she came from school with
any new airs and graces. But he contented himself with saying,----

'Rowly's a capital fellow, Netta, fach, and doing his best. Whether he's
a fashionable preacher or not I don't know, but he kept us all awake at
Llanfach one Sunday for half-an-hour, which is something.'

'Your brother is so amusing! so _naif_! I die of him!' said Madame
Duvet.

'Very original!' remarked Miss Simpson; 'I do like originality--'

'Then you must like Netta,' said Owen; 'for there was never any one of
our family the least like her.'

'Oh yes! you are, about the eyes. _Malin!_' said Madame Duvet.

After breakfast, Owen tried to get Netta a little to himself, but there
were distant calls to make, and drives and rides to be arranged, which
caused him to be unsuccessful in his efforts. So he fell to the lot of
Mr Deep, who took him to see Howel's hunters and dogs, and all the other
wonders of Abertewey.

'Deep by name, and deep by nature,' was Owen's reflection, after his
morning with his new acquaintance. 'He has managed to get all my secrets
out of me, one excepted; but he has not confided any to me in return.
One thing I suspect, however, that he has a turn for horse-racing and
betting.'

Howel and