Her aunt fretted with a teaspoon, and spoke in the absurd peevish way which had been so attractive at seventeen.

“For the last time, Leonie, I want you to listen to me!”

“Other way round, Auntie,” said Leonie, who had chosen the club, of all places, for a last tete-a-tete with her relation, in the hope that the presence of others would serve as a dam to the flood of tears which had streamed almost unceasingly during the last month.

“But it’s absurd, idiotic——­”

“Auntie, dear, we’ve been through all that a hundred times, and a hundred million times more won’t make me change.  I will not touch a penny of Sir Walter’s money——­”

“Oh!  Leonie, your husband!”

“Not my husband in any sense at all, except for the awful name.  Why”—­and she spoke with sweet intense enthusiasm—­“do you know they are going to build a house in Devon for blind babies out of my marriage settlement, and endow it, and have resident teachers—­think of it——­”

Leonie broke off to manipulate the tea-things to the rhythm of a one-step.

“And all the rest of the money, Leonie, oh! it’s scandalous!”

“Oh, that!” said Leonie, manoeuvring the milk out of a broken milk-jug.  “Except for Sir Walter’s special bequests, it all goes back to the family.  They’ve almost all come to see me at the hotel, such honest, nice people; and oh! so grateful.  Mrs. Sam Hickle is moving to Balham from the Waterloo Road to open a fruit shop, she brought me a huge basket of vegetables, carried it into my room herself; and a young Bert Hickle, who has a whelk-barrow in the Borough, brought me a whole turbot which had soaked through its newspaper wrapping.  He gave it to the page-boy to carry, and I do wish you had seen their faces when the tail suddenly burst through, just as the page-boy was gingerly laying it down on a most appropriate resting-place, a marble consol.”

Leonie laughed just as the music stopped, a ringing, happy laugh which caused people to stare and then nudge, or kick each other surreptitiously as they recognised her.

“It’s all settled about you, Auntiekins.  I’m paying your debts, which aren’t so terrific, only foolish, and giving you five hundred pounds to go on with.  That, with your own income, will be all right if only you will live in the country instead of hanging on to the edge of a society which doesn’t want you.  Still, you do exactly as you like, dear, only remember that I shall only have just enough to live on when I’ve got through the thousand pounds, and don’t run up any more debts.”

“Why not invest the thousand, Leonie, sensibly.”  Susan Hetth’s voice was dull, choked doubtlessly by the dust of her castle ruins.

“I’ve got to go to India!”

“Why, for goodness sake?”

“I don’t know, Auntie, I’ve simply got to go!”

“How silly,” said Auntie, as she forced a cigarette inartistically into a holder, adding abruptly, as her commonplace mind jumped at a commonplace loop-hole, “Where is Jan Cuxson?  I should think——­”