"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!"