The Project Gutenberg EBook of Leonie of the Jungle, by Joan Conquest

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Title: Leonie of the Jungle

Author: Joan Conquest

Release Date: May 16, 2005 [EBook #15841]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE ***

Produced by Al Haines

LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE

BY

JOAN CONQUEST

Author of "Desert Love"

NEW YORK

THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1921, by

THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

TO

THE SPLENDID NATIVE OF INDIA,

THE LIVING

MADHU KRISHNAGHAR

[Transcriber's Note: The name "Madhu" appears throughout this book.
The "u" in it can be correctly rendered only in Unicode, as
u-macron--uppercase U+016A, lowercase U+016B.]

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE WEST

BOOK II

THE EAST

"And never the twain shall meet."

BOOK I

THE WEST

LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE

CHAPTER I

"To deliver thee from the strange woman!"--_The Bible_.

"Who found the kitten?"

"Me," quavered the childish voice.

Lady Susan Hetth tchcked with her tongue against her rather prominent
teeth at the lamentable lapse in grammar, and looked crossly at Leonie,
who immediately lifted up the quavering voice and wept.

Sobs too big for such a little girl shook the slender body, whilst
great tears dripped from the long lashes to the tip of the upturned
nose, down the chin and on the knee of the famous specialist, against
which she rested.

"Stand up, Leonie, and push your hair out of your eyes!"

The thin little body tautened like an overstrung violin string, and a
shock of russet hair was pushed hastily back from a pair of indefinable
eyes, in which shone the light of an intense grief strange in one so
young.

"Leave her to me, Lady Hetth!"

The surgeon's voice was exceedingly suave but with the substratum of
steel which had served to bend other wills to his with an even greater
facility than the thumb of the potter moulds clay to his fancy.

"Leonie is going to tell me everything, and then she is going to the
shop to buy a big doll and _forget_ all about it!"

"Please may I ha