"Damn standoffish, what!"

Such had been the verdict passed by someone married who hailed from
London town, when Leonie had refused to sit out a dance in a secluded
shady nook.

"Just a bit of heaven!" had said the tramp as he turned the corner in
the lane, leaving Leonie sitting on the milestone pondering upon the
man whose ragged clothes were out of keeping with the shape of his
nails, and the timbre of his voice with his unkempt hair.

But leaving all that aside, and in all conscience it was bad enough,
the biggest worry hung as heavy and as threatening upon the horizon as
does at times the monsoon over the Indian Ocean.

Once upon a time Susan Hetth had committed an indiscretion, nothing
_really_ wrong--she hadn't the nerve. But the nuisance of it was,
that, in addition to the indiscretion, she had broken the eleventh
commandment and had very nearly got hanged for her lamb.

In the second year of her widowhood in the month of November, whilst
her hair was still golden and her colouring unpurchased, she had dined
_à deux_ in one of those delectable, ghost-ridden, low-ceilinged sets
of chambers which are tucked away in a certain Inn within the Fleet
Street boundary.

Which is a silly thing to do if you do not own a car and a
long-suffering discreet chauffeur.

The _diner à deux_ and a bit of a play had been the honest programme;