'Well, what _do_ you want of me ?' he seemed to demand of her, under all his grace.

Lady Pickering did not want anything except to keep him, and to show Althea that she kept him.

And she was willing to go to great lengths if this might be effected.
Gerald and Althea, walking one afternoon in the little wood that lay at the foot of the lawn, came upon Lady Pickering seated romantically upon a stone, her head in her hands.

She said, looking up at them, with pathetic eyes of suffering, that she had wrenched her ankle and was in agony.

'I think it is sprained, perhaps broken,' she said.
Now both Althea and Gerald felt convinced that she was not in agony, and had perhaps not hurt her ankle at all.