She had wandered up the side of the hill, unmindful of the birds and buds almost bursting with the intoxication of spring; had pitched the catalogues anywhere on the grass, as is the wont of the untidy who have no bond with nature, and had tried to solve the problem as she scraped the mud, with the aid of a twig, from her Louis-Quinze heels.

But she was harassed, poor, hapless creature, for more than one reason.

The words of alarm from the nurse, the innuendoes from departing maid-servants, and the direct warning from the old specialist which had long since faded from her mind, had been forcibly revived by the happenings at the school; and being one of those who invariably plump for the worst, and without giving the slightest thought to the criminality of the proceeding, she had definitely decided, if she could coerce the girl into falling in with her plans, to marry her to the highest bidder before worse could happen.

But she was downright afraid of her niece.  Afraid of her moral strength which dominated everything and everybody; ill at ease with the straightforward way she had of speaking her mind on occasions, and following up her speech with action.  Never an untruth had she known to pass the girl’s lips, not once had she heard her say one belittling thing about a living soul, and only twice had she seen the sweetness and gentleness swept with anger.

Cruelty to anything small or weak could transform the girl into a flame of wrath, and her weakest spot was her overpowering sympathy with anyone in distress, without any inquiries into the direct cause of the adversity, which spot caused her to be considerably taken in by many of those who had discerned it.

An almost abnormal moral strength, allied to great gentleness and pity, combined to make a character extraordinary in one so young, and which her aunt summed up and summarily dismissed from her mind in the trite sentence that “she certainly did not take after her parents.”

She was considered slow by the youths, and perplexing and therefore to be avoided by the girls of her own age, and dull or frightfully conceited by the men who had fluttered round her almost exotic beauty until they had come up against the icy barrier of her supreme indifference.

To those who knew her intimately, such as the fisherfolk and the farmers, and the tramps with whom she would sit and converse by the wayside and share her lunch, she was the most lovable, cheery soul in the world, which, of course, meant the county of Devon.

“Damn standoffish, what!”

Such had been the verdict passed by someone married who hailed from London town, when Leonie had refused to sit out a dance in a secluded shady nook.

“Just a bit of heaven!” had said the tramp as he turned the corner in the lane, leaving Leonie sitting on the milestone pondering upon the man whose ragged clothes were out of keeping with the shape of his nails, and the timbre of his voice with his unkempt hair.