“Let me introduce you to Sir Walter Hickle, my niece’s fiance.”

Sir Walter ambled forward with outstretched hand as Cuxson, nodding curtly, bent to pick up Leonie’s stick, which had clattered to the floor.

A malicious gleam shone in the elder man’s little eyes as he looked at the splendid young fellow who had seemed, physically anyway, so fit a match for Leonie as they tramped down the hill together; and though there was no sign of his inward perplexity and repulsion in Jan Cuxson’s face as his eyes swept the obese figure of the notorious old knight, his jaw took a sudden, almost ugly, outward thrust with the birth of a mighty resolution.

Leonie walked to the gate with him when he took his departure, having refused tea from a certain undefined feeling that he could not even sit in the same room as the man whom he intended to do out of the odd trick.

He crushed Leonie’s hand as he looked straight into her eyes, so desperate and ashamed, and spoke very gently and deliberately as he slipped his hand to her wrist and pulled her a little closer.

“I shall be in the last cove to-morrow at eleven, waiting for you.”

And naturally Leonie had responded to the mastery in the voice, as all women do respond when the voice is the right one; and a soft wave of colour swept from chin to brow as she turned from the gate, and walked through the doorway straight to her bedroom; while her future lord pranced furiously among the bric-a-brac, and her aunt’s beads and bracelets clashed against the china as she wrung her hands over the tea things, and portending disaster.

Leonie sat down on her bed with her eyes shining like stars.

The lid of her life’s casket had opened wide, and from under a hideous heap of fear, disgust, lost illusions, and despair, hope had sprung, spreading her iridescent wings in the warmth of love.

She sat until the shadows crept about her, then got up from her bed with a little laugh, and descended to give battle for her life and freedom.

Think of every synonym connected with the word tumult and you will get a vague idea of the storm which crashed about the girl’s defenceless head as she stood with her back to the door of the tiny sitting-room, with a perfectly gorgeous diamond ring sparkling and flashing in front of her upon a table.

“I cannot marry you, Sir Walter, I simply cannot do it,” she was saying, slowly and distinctly.  “You must let me go.  So please give the ring to somebody else, there are heaps of girls ever—­oh, ever so much nicer than me!”

She smiled sweetly as she picked up the ring and held it out to the man, who snatched it from her as he sprang to his feet, and hurled it through the window.

Then he moved to the other side of the table and leant both clenched fists upon it as he looked Leonie up and down.

“You needn’t wear the ring, my girl,” he said slowly, “but no one picks Walter Hickle up one day and throws him down the next.  You’re going to marry me this day month, you take that straight from me.  Let’s hear why you’ve changed your mind so sudden; willing to marry last night, unwilling to marry to-day.