d.

How was she to make her aunt, this shallow, unbalanced being,
understand the joyous expectancy with which she had awaited the moment
when she should meet the man born for her?

How was she to take the exquisite longings, the veiled desires, the
beautiful virgin thoughts, from her heart and lay them before this
woman who had taught her nothing but the twenty-third Psalm without its
real interpretation, plus the correct Sunday collect and daily prayers.

How explain that to her the little golden ring would not represent a
key opening the door to the so-called freedom from which fifty per cent
of women descend, via the shallow flight of steps marked a good time,
to the plain of discontent; or that to her the word love was
sufficient, in that for her it included those of honour and obey,
without any separate declaration in public.

When she spoke she spoke hurriedly, flushing from chin to brow.

"Auntie--I correspond with no man--but my--my mate is waiting for me
somewhere--calling me all the time ever since--oh! ever since I can
remember--and--and I should have married him when I had met him
if--if----"

In anger at this fresh complication, piled upon her appalling want of
tact of a few moments ago, Susan Hetth struck her hands on the arms of
her chair.

"I think you absolutely _indecent_, Leonie, to go on like this about
someone you have never even seen. Now listen to me, and don't be so
theatrical. I have had an offer of marriage for you by someone who
knows all about you, and who, after my assurance that there is nothing
hereditary in your family on either side to account for the strangeness
of your actions at times, is perfectly willing, even anxious, to marry
you."

"To take the risk, you mean," broke in Leonie. "Oh!--well, go on."

Aunt Susan, somewhat out of breath from the rapidity and unaccustomed
lucidity of her words, inhaled deeply and continued.

"He will make you an astounding marriage settlement, give you
everything you want, and swears to make you per-fect-ly happy!"

"And his name?"

"Oh! don't be stupid, Leonie, of course you know whom I mean!"

Leonie leant forward, stretching out her hands, her face dead white in
the light of the lamp.

"Tell me _his name_ and don't drive me beyond breaking point, Aunt
Susan!"

"Tosh!" contemptuously remarked her aunt. "Don't be so childish--I
mean Sir Walter Hickle, of course!"

Expecting some violent words of protest the elder woman half r