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 rose from her chair, but appalled by the deathly silence and the look on the girl's face, sank back, cowering in her seat, and stared in the direction her niece's hand was pointing.

"Look, Auntie, look!"

Leonie stood with one hand pointing at the mantelpiece and the other pressed against her throat as she tried to speak coherently.

The pupils of her eyes were pin-points as she gazed at a wooden frame which, adorned with edelweiss and the Lucerne Lion, held the snapshot of a complaisant individual leaning over the harbour wall, attired in a well-fitting but ill-placed yachting suit.

"Old Pickled Walnuts! You want me to marry him--when--when--oh! when I thought _he_ wanted to marry _you_!"

She laughed, a laugh which sounded like the jangling of broken gla.s.s, and died almost before it was born; and her aunt, terrified at the sound and the expression on the girl's face, seized the outstretched arm and shook it violently.

"What _are_ you talking about, Leonie!"

Leonie freed her arm with a shudder.

"Please don't touch me!" Then making a desperate effort she continued quietly, so quietly indeed that Susan Hetth looked anxiously over her shoulder towards the door.

"Don't you know that's his nickname? Oh! of _course_ you do! You _know_ he made his fortune by pickling walnuts too rotten to sell. Sir Walter Hickle--twist the name a bit and it's all in a nutsh.e.l.l--a--a pickled walnut sh.e.l.l"--the little unnatural laugh broke across the words--"and you want _me_ to marry him--Auntie! Auntie! he's awful enough, heaven knows, but not bad enough, n.o.body could be, to have a--a mad wife foisted on him--no! never--I'll go out and work!"

There was something very decisive in the last words, but Susan Hetth, like most weak people, found her strength suddenly in a mulish obstinacy, which is a quite good equivalent for, and often more efficacious than mere strength of will.

This obstinacy, backed by the knowledge that people were beginning to gossip about the girl's aloofness and love of solitude; that the cashing of another cheque would see her overdrawn at the bank; and that until the girl was settled and off her hands she would not be able to solve her own matrimonial problem, drove her to a show of mental energy of which she would not have been capable in an everyday argument.

"Work!" she cried, "work! What can you do? _Nothing_--except go out as a companion or nursery governess!--and who would take you without a reference--and who would give _you_ one? Tell me!"

Leonie remained silent--stunned.

"As I have told you, we simply cannot afford to live even like _this_!

I'm overdrawn as it is, and----"

"But," broke in Leonie with a gleam of hope, "but I have father's money coming to me. I'm not quite sure how much it is, but you can have it--_all_!"

"It's two thousand pounds down for yourself, and two hundred and fifty a year in trust for your children--to be given you on your _wedding_ day."

"Oh!"

It was just a little pitiful exclamation as the girl realised the net which was closing about her feet, but from the meshes of which she made a last desperate effort to extricate herself.

"I think I--see--a way," she said slowly. "Yes--listen--this terrible mystery that surrounds me, this--this curse which seems to bring disaster or pain to everyone I love, simply makes life not worth living--so if--if I make a will in your favour, Auntie, dear, and go for a swim at Morte Point where the cross currents are--it will----"

But Susan Hetth interrupted violently, horror-stricken at the suggestion made indifferently by the girl she loved as far as she was capable of loving.

"How is suicide going to help?" she demanded shrilly. "There would be an inquest, every bit of gossip, everything you had ever done would be brought to light; the verdict would be insanity----"

"Oh, _Auntie_!"

Driven to desperation and without finesse Susan Hetth flung down her trump card.

"But--I--I haven't told you the--the _worst_," she stammered, dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief, and peering from behind it at Leonie who, wearily pushing the hair off her forehead, stood apathetically waiting.

"That--that man"--she jerked her head at the mantelpiece--"has--has a hold on me!"

"What---do you mean Sir Walter--do you owe him _money_?" Leonie stared in amazement as she spoke.

"Oh, no--it's worse!" came the reply, followed by a curtailed but sufficiently dramatic recital of the past indiscretion, to which Leonie listened spellbound.

"And you _do_ believe that it was just a bit of bad luck, and that there was nothing _really_ wrong in it all, don't you, dear," insisted the woman who, like ninety-nine per cent of humans, forgot the real tragedy of the moment in the recital of her own pettifogging escapade.

"Absolutely," replied Leonie flatly.

"And you _do_ see the necessity of giving in, now that he has threatened me with exposure if you refuse him when he proposes, _don't_ you, dear?"

"Absolutely," replied Leonie for the second time.

There followed long minutes of silence which the swirl of the waters alone dared to break, and then the girl spoke.

"My life," she said very softly to herself; "my lovely, beautiful free life done. The wind, and the birds, and the sea--Auntie--oh, Auntie--_Auntie_!"

And she turned and flung herself against the wall with her face crushed into her upstretched arms. "Think of it," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "think of it, my youth, my spirit, my body given into that old man's keeping. I who have kept my thoughts, my lips, my eyes for my mate that was to be; I who have longed for his love, for the hours and the days, and the months, and the years, even unto death, with him. How could----"

There was a click of the gate, and she flung round from the wall, dry-eyed, dry-lipped, desperate, as her aunt hurriedly rose.

"It's him--Sir Walter, Leonie--are you going to accept him?"

"Of course," came the steady reply, and Leonie looked the elder woman straight in the eyes, which darted this, that, and every way. "Will you go upstairs, please."

Just before dawn Leonie slid in through the window, and the water, trickling from the bathing dress which clung to the wonderful figure, formed little pools on the faded carpet.

"Nothing will ever make me clean," she whispered, "nothing--nothing--nothing. There is no ocean big or wide or deep enough for that, oh! G.o.d--my G.o.d!"

For five long minutes she stood absolutely still, looking straight and unseeingly at the mantelpiece.

Then as a rooster somewhere shrilly heralded the coming day she awoke to her surroundings and moved.