Leonie hesitated.

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.