ad to see you, Freda,--sister Freda, you know, now,--and
looking so well.'

'Yeth, ith'nt the looking well. I think the lookth younger than when the
went away.'

'Handsomer, at any rate. I may pay you a compliment, now, Freda.'

Freda could not return it. Colonel Vaughan looked more than six years
older since his marriage, and there was a dissatisfied expression on his
countenance very different from the old suavity.

Freda was not long in discovering that if he had improved his fortune by
marriage he had not improved his temper, or increased his happiness.
Fortunately for his wife, her imperturbable placidity and want of acute
feeling prevented her from appropriating many hard hits from her husband
that would have made Freda wretched.

Again, she admired the tact of the mother. By it she managed her husband
admirably, and retained her power over him in precisely the same way as
she did before she married him; while Wilhelmina wholly lost what little
she had gained over hers prior to her marriage. Her silliness annoyed
him continually, and her beauty, for want of expression, palled upon his
fastidious taste.

Freda's contempt very soon turned to pity. The handsome, fascinating,
deceitful colonel was amply indemnified for all the hearts he had
broken, and those broken hearts fully avenged by the tedium of his home
life.

Of course, Freda did not discover all this during that one Christmas
Day, but it developed itself during her subsequent stay at Glanyravon.

'We did not ask any one else to dinner to-day, Gwynne,' said Mr Gwynne,
'because we thought Freda would like to have us alone, you know, and see
the children, and--and all that sort of thing.'

'I hope Freda enjoys a family-party better than I do,' said the colonel,
looking at her as he spoke. 'Of all things on earth, it is the slowest.'

'Complimentary,' said Lady Mary.

'Oh! Gwynne ith alwayth tho fond of thaying what he dothn't mean. He
often doth to me, don't you, my dear? But I don't mind, becauth I
underthtand him now.'

Freda looked at Mrs Vaughan to see if she spoke ironically. Not at all.
She fully believed what she said. Colonel Vaughan saw the glance, and
smiling, said,--

'All in good faith, I assure you.'

Freda blushed, and to turn the conversation, began to talk to him of his
children, and to praise their beauty. He smiled again, as perfectly
understanding her ruse.

'People call them loves and angels!' he said, 'and even go into ra