osed her radiant self from a free into
a bond woman.

"Oh!" she said, putting one hand unexpectedly on Jan Cuxson's arm and
digging her stick fiercely into the ground, as the man in the garden
half rose from his chair and sank back with a frown.

"Oh!" she repeated.

"Tired, dear?"

Neither of them noticed the little endearing word which had slipped out
so naturally, but Leonie's face was wan and her eyes were dead as she
dragged herself down the last few yards, while her aunt fluttered down
to the gate to meet them, with her mind and skirts in a whirl.

"Jan Cuxson!" she exclaimed, offering a limp hand, and "How _very_
nice," she continued, lying quite successfully. "I should have known
you anywhere. _Do_ come in and have tea!"

And in the same breath, and with that strange cruel cunning of the
shallow mind, which is the abortive twin of decent feminine intuition,
she leapt at the difficulty she saw threatening, and tried to dispel it.

"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