“Ha!” he had snorted as he almost ran up the path, leaving Leonie to stand still and stare in amazement at the little scene.  “And I’ll have some tea, too, Lady Susan Hetth, and how d’you do.  Long time since we met, eh?”

Diamonds sparkled in the sun as the man stretched out an effusive hand, and a flame of anger sparkled in the small eyes as Lady Susan drew back frigidly.

Not being of them herself she set all the greater store on knowing those she considered exactly the right people.

“I don’t think I have——­” she commenced in her most primpsy voice, when she was interrupted with a perfectly odious familiarity.

“Now you’re not going to say that you don’t remember our little meetings in Earls Court and Fleet Street and”—­the man spoke with an extreme slowness as though keeping guard over each letter of each word—­“and our little correspondence, come now.”

Leonie frowned and moved a step forward protectingly as her aunt caught suddenly at the door handle, and then jerked herself forward with outstretched hand.

“Auntie, dear——­”

But her aunt was speaking in the falsetto of forced levity, and Leonie held her peace and waited for an opportunity to slip past and into the house.

“Why, I do believe,” said Susan Hetth, suddenly metamorphosed by a certain tone in the man’s voice into the terrified woman of years ago, “Yes!  I do believe it is Mr. Walter Hickle——­”

“Sir Walter, if you please.”

“Indeed, in-deed—­how very delightful, and after all these years!  Leonie, this is—­is—­er——­”

“I’m one of your aunt’s friends, Miss Leonie, bobbed up out of the past.  Glad to meet you, hope we shall be friends, too.”

Leonie, who had gained the door, looked back over her aunt’s shoulder and spoke with a gentle courtesy very much her own.

“I always like to meet Auntie’s friends!”

Not knowing the man from Adam she spoke no untruth, but in spite of reiterated calls to come down to tea she remained in her bedroom until the loud-voiced guest had taken his departure.

While the two women were having yet another cup of tea Sir Walter Hickle, millionaire, tradesman, and knight, sat down gingerly upon a rock and made his plans.

He had made his plans as a bull-necked, offensive youth the first day he had pulled out from Covent Garden with a barrow piled with walnuts bought out of two rustlers, value of ten pun each.

“I’ll get there!” he had informed the nuts as he tweaked his cap over one eye, and his red neckerchief into place; and had sworn a mighty and quite unprintable oath as he struck a huge fist into a horny palm at the corner of Ludgate Circus and New Bridge Street.

“I’ll get there!” he informed the seaweed as he lifted the soft grey hat from his bald head and adjusted the enormous pearl pin in the pale pink satin tie; and he sighed stertorously as he complacently patted his knee with a podgy hand, upon the manicured plebeian fingers of which shone two magnificent diamond rings.