Like all shy people he had fits of amazing audacity--and his recklessness usually took the form of making himself agreeable to women whom he encountered in travel (he was much less shy with women than with men).

But to propose marriage to a weather-beaten haunter of hotels like Lady Sophia Entwistle, and to reveal his identity to her, and to allow her to accept his proposal--the thing had been unimaginably inept! And now he was free, for he was dead.
He was conscious of a chill in the spine as he dwelt on the awful fate which he had escaped.

He, a man of fifty, a man of set habits, a man habituated to the liberty of the wild stag, to bow his proud neck under the solid footwear of Lady Sophia Entwistle! Yes, there was most decidedly a silver lining to the dark cloud of Leek's translation to another sphere of activity.
In replacing the pocket-book his hand encountered the letter which had arrived for Leek in the morning.

Arguing with himself whether he ought to open it, he opened it.

It ran: "Dear Mr.Leek, I am so glad to have your letter, and I think the photograph is most gentlemanly.