“Come on, now, out with it!” he suddenly shouted, bringing his hand with a crash on the table as Leonie hesitated, blushing divinely.

“Only—­be-cause I—­I don’t love you, Sir Walter, and it’s—­it’s not right to marry without love!”

“Posh!  There wasn’t so much of this ’ere right to marry last night.  Fallen in love with that young feller-me-lad, I suppose.  Where did you meet him?  What were you doing?  How—­how——­”

Leonie turned the handle of the door, but shrank back as the man, with a bound, flung himself at her and wrenched her hand free; and Susan Hetth clashed her bracelets and bits as she put her hands tightly over her face, in her fright forgetting the mixture of colours she heaped on it daily in the hope of stemming the neap tide of old age.

“Get out, you there!” snarled the man, lashed to fury by the whip of jealousy.  “Get out, go away, wash your face—­you look like a—­a—­like a damned fut’rist, get out!”

And not daring to pass the two near the door, she prepared to get, with a great loss of dignity, through the bow window; in fact, one foot was just over the sill when the man called her back.

“Come back,” he bellowed, “I want you as witness to what I’m goin’ to say to your niece, the young lady what plays fast and loose with honest men.  Fast and loose, I don’t fink!”

Leonie shuddered as the veneer of refinement cracked under the strain of the man’s rage, showing the brutality and grossness immediately underneath.

She pulled her hand free, and backed towards the mantelpiece, against which she leant, staring at him.

“I am not going to marry you!”

The voice was low but positive, and the quiet in the room was intense as Sir Walter bounced up within a foot of her and shook a fat forefinger in her face.

“Aren’t you,” he said, “aren’t you!  And I’ll just tell you three things what’ll make you change your tune, my girl.

“One,” he placed the fat forefinger on the ill-bred thumb, “an’ the least important, you’ll marry me ’cos you’re an ’etth, daughter of Colonel Bob Hetth, V.C., an’ your fut’rist aunt ain’t—­hasn’t half rubbed it in about the Hetths never breaking their word, I give you mine!”

“Please leave my father’s name out of this,” quietly replied Leonie, her face dead white from the sickening thudding of her heart.

“Well, if you don’t keep your word, Miss tiger cat, I’ll run you in for breach of promise, an’ bring your father’s name into court!”

“You couldn’t!”

“Couldn’t!—­couldn’t what?” stormed the man.

“Run,” said Leonie gently, and added sweetly, and with great vulgarity, “you’re too fat!”