Netta lost flesh and appetite. She was a discontented and ailing woman,
and the Dixons could not but notice her fragile state. Mrs. Dixon thought
her "nobbut a silly sort of body," but would sometimes try to cook what
pleased her, or let Anastasia use the kitchen fire for "gnocchi" or
"risotto" or other queer messes; which, however, when they appeared, were
generally more relished by the master than the mistress.

Dixon, perceiving no signs of any desire on Netta's part to attend the
"papish" chapel ten miles away, began to plot for her soul. His own life
was in the little Methodist chapel to which he walked four miles every
Sunday, wet or fine. In the summer he had accompanied the minister and
one or two class leaders in a drive through the hayfields, shouting to
the haymakers--"We're going to heaven!--won't you come with us!"--and he
had been known to spend five hours at a stretch on his knees wrestling
for the salvation of a drunken friend, in the village of Threlkeld. But
Netta baffled him. Sometimes he would come home from chapel, radiant,
and would take her a bunch of holly for the table by way of getting
into conversation with her. "It was _fine_ to-day, Missis! There was
three found peace. And the congregation was grand! There was four
attorneys--two of 'em from as far as Pengarth." And he would lend her
tracts--and even offer, good man, to borrow a "shandrey" from a
neighbour, and drive her himself to the chapel service. But Netta only
smiled or yawned at him; and as for the tracts, she hid them under the
few sofa cushions the house possessed.

Mr. Tyson, the agent, came to the house as seldom as he could, that he
might not quarrel with his employer before it was to his own interest to
do so. Netta discovered that he pitied her; and once or twice, drawing on
the arts of flirtation, with which the Florentine woman is always well