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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poached Peerage, by William Magnay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Poached Peerage
+
+Author: William Magnay
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2010 [EBook #34088]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POACHED PEERAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "'I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage,' said
+Lalage, with calm determination." (Page 171.)]
+
+
+
+
+
+A POACHED PEERAGE
+
+
+BY
+
+SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY, BART.
+
+
+  AUTHOR OF
+  "FAUCONBERG," "THE RED CHANCELLOR,"
+  "A PRINCE OF LOVERS," ETC.
+
+
+
+"There is a third party to all our bargains"
+
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+
+LONDON
+
+WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
+
+1909
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+  CHAPTER II
+  CHAPTER III
+  CHAPTER IV
+  CHAPTER V
+  CHAPTER VI
+  CHAPTER VII
+  CHAPTER VIII
+  CHAPTER IX
+  CHAPTER X
+  CHAPTER XI
+  CHAPTER XII
+  CHAPTER XIII
+  CHAPTER XIV
+  CHAPTER XV
+  CHAPTER XVI
+  CHAPTER XVII
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+  CHAPTER XIX
+  CHAPTER XX
+  CHAPTER XXI
+  CHAPTER XXII
+  CHAPTER XXIII
+  CHAPTER XXIV
+  CHAPTER XXV
+  CHAPTER XXVI
+  CHAPTER XXVII
+  CHAPTER XXVIII
+  CHAPTER XXIX
+  CHAPTER XXX
+  CHAPTER XXXI
+  CHAPTER XXXII
+  CHAPTER XXXIII
+  CHAPTER XXXIV
+  CHAPTER XXXV
+  CHAPTER XXXVI
+  CHAPTER XXXVII
+  CHAPTER XXXVIII
+  CHAPTER XXXIX
+  CHAPTER XL
+  CHAPTER XLI
+  CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A pretty girl looked out of the low-silled coffee-room window of the
+_Quorn Arms_ at Great Bunbury, and threw a glance of roguish invitation
+at a watchful young man who was pretending to be busy in the courtyard.
+Then she disappeared.  The young man lost no time in throwing down his
+broom, and, with a manifestly assumed air of indifference, approached
+the window.  He looked in warily, then glanced round behind him, and
+next moment had thrown his leg over the sill and was in the room.  The
+girl, with her back to the window, was polishing a brass candlestick
+with a vigour which suggested that the occupation left no room for less
+material thoughts.  Also that she was, for a smart young woman,
+strangely unobservant of the fact that a man had entered by the window,
+until an arm round her waist brought the fact to her notice.  Even then
+she did not start or cry out, merely disengaging herself from the
+expected caress by a self-possessed and apparently well practised twist.
+
+"I can't stop a moment, Tom," she remarked coolly; "only I saw you
+outside.  Father's in the bar."
+
+"And I've been hanging about a good half-hour to see you, Mercy," her
+swain declared impressively.  "I say, as time's short, don't let's
+waste it.  Give us a kiss."
+
+For answer Miss Mercy Popkiss turned her head aside at a right angle as
+though suddenly attracted by something in the street.  An attitude of
+preoccupation does not, however, necessarily imply refusal; under
+certain circumstances it even stands for an invitation.  As such Mr.
+Thomas Sparrow unhesitatingly regarded it.
+
+"One more," he pleaded coaxingly, as Miss Popkiss bent away from his
+somewhat ravenous embrace.
+
+"Wait a bit," she said.  "I've something to tell you.  I'm going to
+leave here."
+
+"What, leave the _Quorn Arms_?" exclaimed Mr. Sparrow blankly.
+
+"Yes, truly.  I'm going to be still-room maid at the Towers.  You see,"
+she went on to explain cheerfully, "father doesn't like my being here,
+having to wait on the riff-raff as well as the gentry.  He says it is
+not the best training for a young lady; and when father says a thing,
+that thing's settled.  They are all swells at the Towers; lords and
+ladies and toffs from London.  It will be fine."
+
+But Mr. Sparrow was far from sharing her jubilation.  "The Towers!" he
+exclaimed disconsolately.  "Why, they be four mile off, or more.
+You'll forget me, Mercy, among all them fine folk; lords, flunkeys and
+valets and butlers and swells like that, with their dashin' London
+ways."
+
+"Oh, don't you look so silly," the girl remonstrated archly.  "Noblemen
+and butlers and all that sort aren't anything particular to me.  If
+you'd smarten yourself up a bit instead of looking like a ploughman,
+you might get a place there too.  Especially now the new Lord Quorn is
+coming home and Colonel Hemyock will have to turn out."
+
+Mr. Sparrow perked up a little.  "Ah," he observed with an air of
+indifferentism to the warmer subject, "Lord Quorn; he that has been
+found in Australy.  I suppose when her ladyship turns out you'll be off
+to London with her."
+
+"Time enough to think about that when she goes," Miss Popkiss returned
+evasively.  "Lordship or no lordship, he can't turn her out before her
+time's up.  And then it might suit me to stay on with him.  I wonder
+what he'll be like," she added, with a significant touch of feminine
+interest.
+
+Mr. Sparrow's prosaic face grew dark.  "Oh, Mercy," he cried, gloomily
+wrathful, "if I was to see another man, lord or lout, making love to
+you, I'd smash him."
+
+Her words having produced what was precisely the desired effect, Miss
+Popkiss proceeded to tone it down with a provocative smile.  "You can
+think of smashing when you see it, Tom.  And, I say----"
+
+"Yes, dear?" said Tom, inwardly despising himself for being so easily
+mollified.
+
+"I--I hear father in the bar," she suggested significantly.
+
+Mr. Sparrow took the hint and another kiss.  Perhaps his ruffled
+feelings were responsible for its being a louder osculation than
+prudence dictated.  Anyhow an approaching voice croaked--
+
+"Mercy!  Mercy!  What are you after?"
+
+"Quick, Tom," the girl directed in a hurried whisper, "slip out of the
+window."
+
+Mr. Sparrow was already there, with a foot over the sill.  Its passage
+to the ground was, however, prevented by the substantial back of some
+one who was crouching outside the window.  The disconcerted Philander
+swiftly drew his leg back again as though it had been stung, and made a
+slinking rush for the table under which he crept just as Popkiss
+_père_, his rotund face coruscating with suspicion, filled the doorway.
+
+"What are you up to, I ask you?" he demanded of his daughter with what
+seemed unnecessary vehemence as his small eyes roved in puffy cunning
+round the room.
+
+"Polishing the candlesticks, father," she answered coolly.  "Is there
+anything else you would prefer me to do?"
+
+Not being ready with a suggestion, Mr. Popkiss merely fell back upon a
+snort of sagacity, and turned his portly person preparatory to waddling
+back to the bar.  "Come here, I want you," he commanded vaguely by an
+after-thought, in the hope that by the time he had reached his beery
+citadel a task might suggest itself to his sluggish invention.
+
+"All right, father," Miss Popkiss replied cheerily, as with more
+clatter than was absolutely necessary, she replaced the candlestick on
+its shelf.  Then she took a round-about route to the door, preferring
+it possibly on account of the variety its closer view of the courtyard
+afforded.  As she was about to pause at the window the man crouching
+outside suddenly raised himself and looked in with a knowing grin.
+Miss Popkiss, suppressing a start, deftly changed the amorous look she
+had prepared into one of haughty displeasure, and swept in a fine
+carriage of scorn from the room.  Whereupon the man surmounted the sill
+and entered.
+
+He was a curiously nondescript sort of person, with a short, round
+face, a short nose, short hair, short beard, short arms, short fingers
+and short legs.  His manner also was short, even jerky.  He looked
+round the room with a sharpness and vigilance which seemed quite thrown
+away upon its commonplace and unsuspicious contents, and absolutely
+futile in that they failed to detect Mr. Sparrow who lay snug
+underneath the table.  But then self-constituted keenness is usually
+ignorant of what is going on under its nose.
+
+"No stranger about," the man muttered.  Then he took a telegram from
+the side pocket of his light overcoat, where it had lain as though
+ready to his hand for consultation.  "My wire from the Yard is
+explicit.  Yet," he mused, as he methodically folded the telegram and
+dropped it back into his pocket, "if he left the train at Faxfleet he
+ought to be here by this.  It might take him an hour and a half, or two
+hours.  I must find out."  He walked softly towards the door.  "Better
+not let old Popkiss see me," he murmured, "he talks too much.  But," he
+chuckled knowingly, "there's the pretty daughter, if I can catch her
+that's the dodge; I don't know what Sarah would say, but it's all in
+the way of business."  From which observation it is plain that æsthetic
+shortcomings do not necessarily prevent a man from fancying himself
+irresistible.
+
+Peeping cautiously through the doorway he saw Miss Mercy alone in the
+bar, perfunctorily at work upon a task of supererogation which the
+paternal wisdom had set her.
+
+"Hist!" he signalled, and when she looked up in disdain he beckoned
+mysteriously and withdrew.
+
+Miss Popkiss, in no amiable humour, was forced as a matter of business
+to follow him.  "What is your order, sir?" she inquired, with a toss of
+the head.  But the man signed to her to come nearer still with such an
+air of mysterious importance that she was forced to drop something of
+her haughty manner.  "I did not see you come in, sir," she remarked
+casually, as a first step toward affability.
+
+For reply the man gave a knowing jerk of the head and indicated the
+window with his thumb.  "Hope you are well this morning, my dear," he
+observed inconsequentially.  "It is quite a pleasure to see any one
+looking so pretty and blooming."
+
+Ignoring the incongruity between the guest's mysterious prelude and his
+crudely outspoken appreciation of her charms, Miss Popkiss was not
+above accepting the tribute to her good looks.  "Oh, sir," she said
+with a touch of protest just sufficient to maintain her propriety; and
+so waited for the order to which the compliment would have been a
+natural preamble.
+
+The guest pursed his lips and kept his small eyes on her with
+business-like admiration.  "Very busy, eh?" he suggested, absurdly
+enough, since he appeared to be the only customer in the house.  "Any
+one fresh staying here?" he asked with an obvious affectation of
+indifference.
+
+"No, we've had no one fresh to-day, sir," Miss Popkiss answered,
+beginning to lose interest in the colloquy.
+
+"Oh," said the man, blinking his eyes suspiciously.  "Are you quite
+sure?  No one been here to-day?"
+
+His manner was so exaggerated in its significance that Miss Popkiss,
+with Mr. Sparrow's clandestine visit fresh in her mind, grew uneasy
+under it.  "No, sir," she answered, a trifle unconvincingly.  "Who
+should there have been?"
+
+A triumphant gleam shot through her questioner's eyes.  He dropped his
+cross-examiner's manner and said confidentially, "I thought I saw some
+one come in just now."
+
+So it was Tom.  Miss Popkiss flushed a little guiltily.
+
+"By the door?" she suggested evasively.
+
+"Or by the window," he hazarded, with noncommittal sagacity.
+
+Miss Popkiss concluded that further equivocation was futile.
+
+"Well, sir, and if you did, what about it?" she demanded defiantly.
+
+Her cross-examiner saw that he had made a lucky hit.  "Oh," he
+answered, assuming a careless manner "I only looked in to warn you, in
+case he has been making up to you, that he is a bad lot, a wrong 'un
+altogether; so don't you have anything to do with him."
+
+Had the speaker's searching little eyes not been attracted elsewhere
+they must have noticed a peculiar agitation of the table-cloth greater
+than the draught would account for.
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say he makes love to any one else," Miss
+Popkiss asked, between wrath and jealousy.
+
+"Dozens, dozens," the visitor replied cheerfully.  "Every girl he
+meets.  All that sort do."
+
+"Two can play at that game," the lady commented resentfully.
+
+"Yes," he agreed waggishly: "it takes two to play it properly.  Now,
+look here, my dear," he added with an abrupt return to business; "I'll
+talk to him.  You just tell me where he is."
+
+"Oh, no, sir," Miss Popkiss returned resolutely; "you just leave him to
+me.  I'll do the talking."
+
+But her interviewer did not seem content, for reasons of his own, that
+the matter should be taken out of his hands.
+
+"Now just let me see him, there's a dear," he urged coaxingly.  "Do,
+there's a little darling," he pleaded, becoming somewhat unreasonably
+affectionate.  "I'll put some salt on his tail."
+
+"Please, no; I'd rather you didn't, sir," returned Miss Popkiss with
+decision, as though feeling quite competent to perform the condimentary
+operation herself.
+
+"All in the way of business," the visitor persisted, rubbing his stubby
+hands together with anticipatory gusto.  Then, before the young lady
+could realize it, one of the stumpy arms had stolen round her waist.
+"Give me a kiss and tell me where to find him, and I'll knock the
+stuffing out of the rascal," he whispered insinuatingly.
+
+But Miss Popkiss was not so easily got round.  "Don't, sir!  What would
+father say?" she protested with a vigour which was likewise included in
+the action with which she released herself; an action performed with
+such adroitness as to give the impression that this was owed to its
+being frequently called for.
+
+"Where is he, my sweetie?" persisted the curious one, in no wise
+abashed by his repulse.
+
+Next moment the question was answered by a crash, as the table was
+overturned, and there rose, struggling with the hampering folds of its
+cover, the irate form of Mr. Thomas Sparrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+With a vicious kick at the encumbering and undignified table-cover, Mr.
+Sparrow, green with passion, advanced upon his supposed traducer, who
+backed away in a composite attitude of protest, authority, and
+apprehension.
+
+"Oh, Tom!" cried Miss Popkiss ruefully, but Mr. Sparrow had no eyes for
+her just then.
+
+"Scoundrel, am I?  Rascal, am I?" he hissed at the retreating stranger.
+"I'll show you.  I'll give you----"
+
+The other man had backed, by an oversight, into the corner and stood at
+bay, with an ugly look in his eyes and a thick-set hand stretched out
+in front of him.  "Don't you touch me," he exclaimed warningly, "an
+officer of the law in the execution of his duty."
+
+The words had a certain effect on Mr. Sparrow, since his threatening
+fist remained in the air.  "What do you want wi' me?" he demanded, with
+a quiver in his voice which was, perhaps, not altogether the result of
+righteous anger.
+
+"You are Percy Peckover?" the man suggested.
+
+"You are a liar!" was the ready retort.  "I am Thomas Sparrow."
+
+"Yes," corroborated Miss Popkiss, with a remorseful sob; "he is my Tom
+Sparrow."
+
+The other man began to look doubtful; then he pulled the telegram from
+his pocket and unfolded it with legal deliberation.  "Stop a bit," he
+said brusquely.  "Five foot seven," he glanced up uncompromisingly at
+the ruffled Sparrow--"You're five foot nine----"
+
+"And a half," put in the person under review.
+
+The other took no notice of the correction, but proceeded with his
+comparison.  "Pale--you are brick-dust; oval face--yours is round
+enough; dark moustache"; he moved his head quizzingly from side to side
+as though looking for something not easily distinguishable: "yours is
+sandy--what there is of it----"
+
+Miss Popkiss gave an hysterical giggle, and Mr. Sparrow, words
+evidently failing him, merely gurgled and showed his teeth in a
+discomfited grin.
+
+"Flash dress," read on the detective, outwardly ignoring the effect of
+his blunt differentiation, "yours is agricultural and shabby."
+
+"Shabby?" Sparrow cried furiously.  It was early closing day, and he
+had been at pains to smarten himself up in his best; added to which he
+would at any time have deprecated personal criticism in the presence of
+Miss Popkiss.
+
+But all the apology he got from his tormentor was the terse summing up,
+as the telegram was refolded, "Description don't tally.  You can go."
+
+Gathering that it was no half-forgotten peccadillo that had risen
+against him, Mr. Sparrow resumed his boldness and eased the curb upon
+his wrath.  "Go?" he cried witheringly.  "How about the stuffing?  I'll
+go for you!"
+
+He proceeded to do so in such unmistakable fashion that the arm of the
+law (being in this case one that was at a disadvantage in the essential
+of reach) found itself inadequate for its own protection, and was fain
+to invoke lay assistance which forthwith appeared in the portly form of
+Host Popkiss.
+
+"Hullo! hullo!" cried that worthy, his high-pitched croak sounding
+above the scuffle.  "What's the matter?  I won't have no row on my
+licensed premises," he protested in fussy indignation, proceeding to
+separate the combatants with a vigour which made up in authority what
+it lacked in physique.  "Why, Mr. Doutfire!" he exclaimed in horrified
+amazement as he recognised Sparrow's victim.
+
+"Yes, me, Mr. Popkiss," gasped that gentleman, keeping a vicious eye on
+his late assailant.  "Will you deal with this party, or shall I?"  As
+he spoke he produced and exhibited with a significance which was not
+lost upon Mr. Sparrow, a pair of highly-polished handcuffs, of a more
+elegant make than the usual vulgar "darbies" which festoon the
+blankness of a police-station wall; in effect these were of a pattern
+_de luxe_.  None the less had they the immediate effect of calming the
+aggressive Sparrow; to whom, with the severity of the outraged licensee
+of a highly respectable house of entertainment, Mr. Popkiss now
+addressed himself.
+
+"What have you come in here for?  In my coffee-room?"
+
+"I did not come for to be insulted," answered Mr. Sparrow sullenly, as
+preferring a negative handling of an awkward question.
+
+But Mr. Popkiss held on to the positive.  "I ask you what you did come
+for," he insisted, his severe eye suggesting how much more weight his
+tone might have carried had his bones carried less.
+
+"He was under the table."  Mr. Doutfire made the statement without
+heat, as though content to let the bare and damning fact speak for
+itself.
+
+"Most irregular," said Popkiss weakly, at a loss exactly what to do,
+and wishing, but for the slur on his house, that the law's
+representative would take the matter out of his hands.  "Look here," he
+went on, with an ill-timed and coldly received wink at the detective,
+"if you want to play under the table, stop at home and play under your
+own; if I catch you under mine or anywhere on my premises where there
+is no call for you to be, I'll pull your wing feathers out, Mr.
+Sparrow.  Now, hop off."
+
+Under other circumstances Mr. Sparrow might have been ready with a more
+or less pertinent rejoinder to the stout inn-keeper's _brutum fulmen_;
+as it was, with the glittering symbols of durance dangling before his
+fascinated eyes, he was glad enough to find himself in a position to
+depart even with his repartee unspoken.
+
+"Mercy," commanded her father, dropping the jocular element in his
+severity; "go into the bar, I'll talk to you presently."
+
+And Miss Popkiss, with the uneasy conviction that she had made a fool
+of herself, was glad to obey.
+
+"Now, Mr. D., what gives us the pleasure of seeing you here to-day?"
+inquired the host, lapsing without an effort into affability.  "I
+didn't notice you come in."
+
+"No," replied Doutfire, as he dropped the minatory tokens of his office
+into his pocket; "I made free of the window--just in the way of
+business, you understand.  Fact is," he continued in a more
+confidential tone and with a quite unnecessary repetition of his trick
+of glancing round the room in search of impossible eavesdroppers, "I've
+had a wire from town.  You are likely to have a queer customer to-day."
+
+The fat face of Mr. Popkiss showed no tangible sign of the effect the
+news had on him.  "What, coming here, to this house?" he asked
+futilely.  "For Bunbury Races to-morrow, I suppose?"
+
+"Maybe," Mr. Doutfire agreed, in the tone of one who could say more if
+he chose, "young swell-mob, I reckon.  Travelled by nine-thirty train
+from Waterloo, alighted at Faxfleet and inquired the way here.  I was
+ten minutes late at the station and got a lift on here, calculating to
+overtake him.  He must have gone by the fields."
+
+"What has he done, Mr. D.?" Popkiss inquired huskily.
+
+"Serious case; counterfeit coin," Mr. Doutfire answered with
+importance.  "One of a flash gang.  Now look here," he said with a
+touch of authority, "The party I want is sure to turn up soon.  Don't
+you allow yourself to do anything calculated to rouse that party's
+suspicions: serve him with what he calls for, and leave the rest to me."
+
+"I'd better leave the bill to you as he pays in wrong money, eh?"
+suggested Mr. Popkiss, with true trade waggishness, and becoming purple
+with enjoyment of his own joke.
+
+Mr. Doutfire permitted himself no more than a faint smile.  "Treasury
+won't see you out of pocket, Mr. Popkiss," he declared with importance,
+as one fully competent to answer for the liberality of that notoriously
+niggardly office.  Then, as having settled the point, he thrust his
+hand into his trouser pockets and strutted complacently to the window.
+"I hope to make a neat job of it this time," he announced.
+
+"Ah, you're a cute one, you are, Mr. D.," said Popkiss knowingly.
+
+"Well," assented Doutfire, still looking out of the window and rattling
+the money in his pockets, "I flatter myself I have done a few pretty
+things in my time.  Yes," he continued introspectively, "I've got a
+good bit of the fox in me--natural and acquired in the profession"--he
+turned suddenly on his heel, confronting Mr. Popkiss--"only in the way
+of business, mind you."
+
+The sudden _volte face_ so startled the worthy host that all he could
+put forward by way of comment was the trite formula, "You'll have a
+glass of me, Mr. D.?"
+
+Possibly Mr. Doutfire took the offer as a tribute to his professional
+sagacity; all the same, he declined it.  "No, thank you.  Must keep my
+head clear.  Can't drink."
+
+"What, not in the way of business?" chuckled Mr. Popkiss with another
+sub-apoplectic seizure.  "One glass," he urged, perhaps wishing, in the
+ticklish position of proprietor of licensed premises to stand well with
+the representatives of the law.
+
+"Well, just a small one," Mr. Doutfire consented, in a tone which
+suggested that the blandishments of all the publicans in England should
+not persuade him to exceed his modicum or his duty.
+
+As they turned towards the bar, Mercy met them.  "Father," she said
+breathlessly, "the carriage from the Towers has just driven into the
+yard.  Colonel Hemyock is asking for you."
+
+"Eh?  All right," exclaimed Popkiss, turning down his cuffs in a
+flurry.  "Here, Mercy,"--he ran back--"draw Mr. Doutfire a glass of
+anything he fancies."  And so he bustled out, a quivering jelly of
+importance and servility, into the courtyard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Colonel Hemyock, the temporary tenant of Staplewick Towers, was a
+somewhat blatant specimen of a retired military man with an unbounded
+sense of his personal dignity and importance, which sense he derived
+from an aristocratic wife.  Never in this world was there anybody more
+starchily dignified than the gallant Colonel looked as he sat bolt
+upright in his phaeton; a tall, thin, thread-paper of a man, with his
+sharp aquiline nose, and brushed out white whiskers, whiskers of which
+not a hair was ever seen out of line.  But that was all.  For the rest
+he might have been a figure from Madame Tussaud's with a phonograph
+inside.
+
+As behind the horseman is said to be invariably seated Black Care, so
+behind the gallant driver of that phaeton were sitting the Colonel's
+two-fold cares, his two daughters.  People who affected to know
+everything--and such are occasionally met with in the country--asserted
+that it was with a view to getting her daughters off that the scheming
+Lady Agatha Hemyock had insisted on the family's taking up its abode at
+the missing Lord Quorn's somewhat derelict place.  And the policy had
+not been entirely without result.
+
+But now with the discovery of the new peer the tenancy came to an end.
+It was simply left for the Hemyocks to close it pleasantly, and, some
+critics said, designingly, by entertaining the new owner for a few
+days, introducing him to his property, such as it was, and the Misses
+Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, such as they were, and then leaving him to
+his own devices, and the result of theirs.
+
+"Ah--ah, Popkiss," Colonel Hemyock said in his high, thin voice,
+acknowledging the bustling innkeeper's salute with a limited flourish
+of his whip.  "I just looked in to say that--ah--Lord Quorn" (he spoke
+the name with absurd emphasis, shaping his mouth into an O twice as he
+pronounced it) "is expected to arrive here this afternoon."
+
+So impressed was Mr. Popkiss by the stiff and immaculate Colonel's
+pomposity that all he could ejaculate was, "Dear me, Colonel!  Lord
+Quorn?"
+
+"Yes," responded the Colonel freezingly, as he stared straight in front
+of him over his horses' ears; "his lordship has just arrived from
+Australia."
+
+"I have heard something of it, Colonel," said Mr. Popkiss, regaining
+his composure; perhaps because his noble visitor suggested by his
+attitude that he admitted him to no more human fellowship than the
+mounting block in the yard.  "The late peer's cousin, is he not,
+Colonel?  I trust you will not be giving up the Towers?" he added
+hypocritically, since the Hemyock establishment could hardly be said to
+bring two-and-sixpence per annum into the coffers of the _Quorn Arms
+Hotel_.
+
+"I--ah, don't know," the buckram personage answered, still staring
+foolishly over his horses' heads.  "Anyhow, his lordship will stay at
+the Towers for some time as my guest."
+
+"Curious; in his own house, Colonel," fatuously remarked Mr. Popkiss,
+as feeling called to make some comment on the situation.
+
+"It is my place as long as I pay for it," snapped the Colonel loftily.
+
+"Certainly, Colonel; no doubt, Colonel; I beg pardon, Colonel," Popkiss
+protested abjectly.
+
+A few heavy drops suddenly came pattering down on the glass roof of the
+yard.
+
+"It is going to rain," Colonel Hemyock observed in a tone of irritated
+surprise at the outrage.  "We shan't get over to Babbleton this
+afternoon."  This to his daughters, who looked, in anticipation of harm
+to their finery, more discontented, if possible, than before.  "We had
+better put up till Quorn arrives.  You can wait here and I will look in
+at the club."
+
+There was a waiting-room adjoining the archway for the accommodation of
+the county people who put up their carriages at the _Quorn Arms_ while
+they shopped in the town.  Shown in, with much obsequiousness, by Host
+Popkiss, the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock here proposed to spend a
+tedious and highly uninteresting half-hour.  The prospect did not tend
+to lessen the grievance they entertained against the world in general
+and certain unappreciative persons of the male sex in particular.
+
+"I wonder," observed Ethel, taking up and throwing down again the
+current number of the _Bunbury Bulletin_, "if father finds Sharnbrook
+at the club, whether he will have the sense to let him know we are
+here."
+
+"It strikes me ignorance is bliss in Sharnbrook's case," replied Dagmar
+cuttingly, as she stood at the window, peevishly regarding the rain.
+
+"Oh, shut up, Dagmar," her sister returned, with a surprising lack of
+dignity in one so highly born.  "If it clears up we might take him over
+to Babbleton with us."
+
+"If he'll come," said Dagmar sarcastically.
+
+"He must come," Ethel declared emphatically.
+
+"He has fought shy of us since he proposed to you," Dagmar remarked
+maliciously.
+
+"And was accepted," put in Ethel decisively.
+
+"Trust you," sneered her sister.  "He has the bad taste to put down the
+proposal to the champagne.  Mrs. Wyrley-Byrde told mother so."
+
+"All right," snapped Ethel.  "Not even father's champagne ever made any
+man propose to you."
+
+"A man," retorted Dagmar pointedly, "requires to be in his sober senses
+to appreciate me.  And if he proposed under the influence of Heidsieck,
+I should not accept him."
+
+"Oh, wouldn't you?" returned Ethel with somewhat over-emphasized
+incredulity.  "Anyhow, I am not going to let John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook
+slip through my fingers."
+
+"Trust you," Dagmar laughed scornfully.  "You'll hold him as tight as
+he was when he proposed to you."
+
+"As he says he was," Ethel corrected.
+
+"As he must have been," Dagmar maintained unfeelingly.  "After all,"
+the amiable young lady continued, with a yawn, "who is John Arbuthnot
+Sharnbrook that he should be exempt from matrimony?  Better men than he
+have submitted to it.  Julius Caesar was married--and----"
+
+"And Alexander the Great," Ethel supplied as her sister paused for
+another notable victim of the marriage tie.
+
+"Yes, I think he was," pursued Dagmar indifferently.
+
+"If he wasn't, he----" she yawned again.  "And Maryborough, and Edward
+the Black Prince were married men."
+
+"So was Henry the Eighth," observed Ethel sententiously.
+
+"Certainly.  And Napoleon, and pretty well everybody worth mentioning,
+and heaps not worth it.  And who, pray, is John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook
+that he should cry off and plead Mumm?  Nobody!"
+
+"He has four thousand a year," Ethel remarked in mitigation of her
+recalcitrant suitor's total extinction.
+
+"And a pretty taste in fox terriers," supplemented Dagmar, with an air
+of making every possible point in the unhappy Sharnbrook's favour.  "If
+he jilts you----"
+
+"Impossible," Ethel cried heroically.
+
+"Fish have been known to wriggle back into the water after they were
+hooked, played and landed," Dagmar observed sagaciously.  She turned to
+the window.  "Here he comes," she remarked coolly.  "I advise you to
+fling him a little farther from the bank."  She raised her voice to
+greet the half-hearted Philander.  "Here we are, Mr. Sharnbrook.  Come
+in!"
+
+Mr. Sharnbrook thereupon came in, somewhat with an air of looking as
+though he would much rather not.  He was a florid young man, of no
+strikingly apparent intellectual powers: he had straw-coloured hair
+parted in the middle, and a downy moustache to match.  Apart from an
+aggressive riding suit his appearance was diffident to the verge of
+chronic apology.
+
+"Left off raining," he remarked, in a vain desire to meet his enemies
+in the open.
+
+"Has it?" replied Dagmar, indifferently doubtful.  "Fancy your finding
+us here," she added disingenuously.
+
+"Quite a surprise," he observed, with equal dissimulation.
+
+"A pleasant surprise, I should hope.  Aren't you going to speak to
+Ethel?"
+
+Thus prompted, Mr. Sharnbrook was fain to advance and greet the lady
+whom for the last week he had been dodging.  "How do you do?" he said
+with timid cordiality.
+
+"How awfully gushing," laughed the voluble Miss Dagmar.  "Of course,
+I'm in the way," she added significantly.  "All right; I'll look out of
+the window."
+
+"Oh, not at all," protested the miserable Sharnbrook.  "Please don't."
+
+"Oh, but I shall," she insisted.  "I am interested in that delightful
+old market woman who has just driven in.  Tell me when I may turn
+round."
+
+"Now," said Sharnbrook, desperately bold.
+
+"Dagmar, don't be absurd," protested her sister, with a provocative
+glance at her jibbing lover.
+
+"I can't see behind me," Dagmar observed casually.
+
+"None of your tricks, Dagmar," said Ethel, facing the wretched young
+man, and then turning her head as though to look at her sister, which
+manoeuvre had the intended effect of giving John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook a
+magnificent oscillatory opportunity.
+
+But though the way was plain the will was absent.  "No, no," protested
+the gentleman, hanging off; "I'm up to her game.  You won't catch me,
+Miss Dagmar.  She has only got to turn her head," he pointed out
+confidentially to Ethel.
+
+"Oh, she won't--just yet," the lady murmured softly.  "She had better
+not," she added, with a meaning smile.
+
+"We had better not," suggested the harried Sharnbrook at his wits' end,
+desperately determined not to compromise himself before a witness.
+
+"Oh, just as you please," returned Miss Ethel, with a disgusted toss of
+her head.  "If you are so frightened."
+
+"Oh, well," he urged feebly; "I don't want to make a fool of myself."
+
+"Oh, it is not necessary," the disappointed maiden returned with scorn.
+"You may look, Dagmar."
+
+"I didn't see anything," remarked that lady, with a malicious twinkle
+in her sharp eyes.
+
+"No," said Sharnbrook, manifestly relieved; "I don't see how you could.
+So the new Lord Quorn is coming down to the Towers," he added, eager to
+change the subject.
+
+"Yes," replied Dagmar glibly, wickedly rejoicing at Ethel's
+discomfiture.  "We are expecting him now.  Of course we haven't an idea
+what he is like.  Frightfully colonial, no doubt."
+
+"We've heard nothing of Lady Quorn," remarked Ethel, determined not to
+be behindhand in chatter, and so show her indifference to the love
+passage that did not come off.
+
+Sharnbrook gave a smile of superior knowledge.
+
+"There is no Lady Quorn," he said.
+
+The effect of his announcement was startling.  "No Lady Quorn?" the
+eager sisters cried in chorus, their expressions indicating design
+tempered with incredulity.
+
+"Quorn's a bachelor," Sharnbrook maintained, beginning to see light
+behind the dark cloud which for the past fortnight had hung over him.
+
+Miss Ethel turned to her sister with indignant reproach.  "Dagmar!  You
+said he was married."
+
+"I--I understood father to say he was," that disingenuous young lady
+replied unblushingly.
+
+Ethel, well acquainted with her sister's resourcefulness, turned from
+her in evident disgust.  "Are you quite sure, Mr. Sharnbrook?" she
+inquired with purposeful determination to clutch the truth.
+
+"I saw it in the paper," the now brightening youth answered.  "There
+certainly was a report that he was married, or engaged, or something of
+that sort; but it turns out to be a mistake.  He's a young chap, about
+thirty."
+
+"How interesting!" Ethel murmured.
+
+"Is he good-looking?" Dagmar inquired, with a suggestion of
+appropriating the new-found peer if he should be fortunate enough to
+touch her standard of beauty.
+
+"Can't say," Sharnbrook smirked.  "Sure to be if he's a lord," he
+added, with cheap sarcasm.
+
+Dagmar crossed to Ethel and slapped her on the shoulder.  "My chance,
+my dear; you're booked," she said in a determined undertone.
+
+Ethel gave a repudiatory "Pooh!" and pushed her away.  Dagmar walked
+serenely to the window.  "I wonder if that is his lordship coming up
+the street?" she exclaimed suddenly.
+
+Ethel ran to the window.  "Where?  Which?"
+
+There was no one in view at the moment who could be supposed by any
+stretch of imagination to come up to even an unconventional idea of a
+peer of the realm, nevertheless the sanguine Dagmar pushed her sister
+away.  The first sight of the waiting coronet was for her alone.
+"Never you mind, Ethel," she said roughly, "I am quite competent to
+look out for him.  You amuse yourself with Mr. Sharnbrook."
+
+Mr. Sharnbrook meanwhile was experiencing some difficulty in arranging
+a decent veil over his satisfaction.  "By Jove, they've jumped at
+Quorn," he told himself gleefully.  "If only--I say, Ethel," he said
+with sudden affection, to test the new phase of the situation.
+
+Ethel pushed away the arm which had recklessly found its way round her,
+until lately inviting, waist.
+
+"Don't be absurd, Mr. Sharnbrook," she protested snappishly.
+
+"I shouldn't have been absurd just now," he retorted pointedly.
+
+"You didn't take your chance, and you've lost it."  The fact that she
+turned haughtily away prevented her seeing an uncomplimentary look of
+joyful relief in her recalcitrant lover's face.  If only this Lord
+Quorn were a decent fellow and would back him up.
+
+"What a time father is at that stupid club," Dagmar exclaimed
+impatiently.  "And we have got to go to Babbleton.  We've no excuse for
+not going now the rain has so provokingly stopped."
+
+"Let's go and rout father out, and get back soon," Ethel suggested, not
+a whit behind her in eagerness.
+
+"Come along, then, dear," said Dagmar, giving a preparatory look at
+herself in the glass.  "Aren't you going to take your young man with
+us?" she added with a view to her sister's annoyance.
+
+"Oh, you don't want to come, do you, Mr. Sharnbrook?" Ethel said with a
+somewhat obvious lack of cordiality.
+
+"To Babbleton?  Not exactly," replied the wary Sharnbrook with so much
+fervour that Dagmar laughed unpleasantly.  His principal desire now was
+to get into the middle of a ten-acre field and sing a pæan.
+
+"Come on, then, Dagmar," his _soi-disante fiancée_ said with a toss of
+the head.
+
+Dagmar drew back, however.  "Say good-bye to your dear Jack," she
+suggested with ill-timed humour.  "I won't look."
+
+Ethel's face, under the fun, made Sharnbrook rejoice more than ever at
+the chance which, properly worked, might obviate any claim on his part
+to that ungratifying physiognomy.  "Dagmar!  How absurd you are; Mr.
+Sharnbrook does not appreciate the joke."
+
+"Indeed!" her sister retorted in a voice which might, without violating
+the fitness of things, have been pitched somewhat lower.  "I thought he
+was the only person who tried to see a joke in your engagement."
+
+"Ethel!"  He called her back mischievously, secure in his good fortune.
+"I was going to Carter's about a ring."
+
+"Oh," she replied with a not very gracious nod, "that can wait.  Catch
+me," she said to herself as she hurried after Dagmar, "catch me wearing
+an engagement ring while there is a bachelor peer in the house."
+
+"Quorn's the man to save me," Sharnbrook murmured jubilantly as he
+strolled into the yard to see the designing fair ones off.
+
+Mercy ran in to have a sight of her new mistresses from the window.  A
+groom with a gold band round a weather-beaten hat, who looked as though
+he occasionally sought distraction from the monotony of stable-work in
+the more Arcadian occupation of gardening, came by, touching his hat to
+the ladies, then signing more familiarly to the landlord's daughter
+that he had a communication for her.
+
+"Oh, Miss Popkiss," he said, as she opened the window.  "Mrs. Dixon
+will be glad if you will come to the Towers to-morrow, as the other
+young lady is leaving to-night.  One of our chaps will be in town and
+he'll drive you over."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Tootal," she said archly.  "I'll be ready."
+
+Mr. Tootal glanced round and dropped from an official to a confidential
+tone.  "I think you'll like us," he ventured to predict.  "Our people
+are rather frauds, and stiff as boot-tops, but Lord Quorn is coming to
+stay, and we've hopes we shall wake up.  Well, I mustn't keep old
+Wax-work waiting.  O revoire."  With a wink and an amorous flourish
+suggestive of future blandishments, Mr. Tootal ran off, while Miss
+Popkiss turned to the glass and contemplated her charms with much
+satisfaction.  The magnificent possibilities of a life in a novel
+sphere were before her, and she meant to make the most of her chances.
+And, after all, as she told herself with her head held critically on
+one side, there is no knowing what a pretty girl may do if only she
+sets her mind to it.
+
+So engrossed was she in the contemplation of her face and its probable
+effect upon the denizens of Staplewick Towers that she did not hear her
+father's approach.
+
+"Do you hear, Mercy?" he cried in a tone of testy importance.  "We are
+to have a distinguished visitor?"
+
+"A distinguished visitor?" she repeated rather disdainfully.  "Mr.
+Gillions, the big commercial, I suppose.  It is about his time."
+
+So far as an expansively fat face can express anything, that of Host
+Popkiss indicated withering scorn at such a suggestion.  "Gillions!
+Commercial!" he repeated, in croaking contempt of even that potentate
+of the road.  "I tell you the new Lord Quorn is going to stop here on
+his way to the Towers."
+
+Miss Popkiss at once became interested.  "When is he coming?" she asked
+with all the animation her father could desire.
+
+"To-day," he spluttered,--"any minute.  So just get things a bit smart,
+and let's show his lordship our best face," and he bustled off.
+
+"Lord Quorn!  Our best face!"  Miss Popkiss, with the nearest approach
+to a flutter of which her free and easy nature was capable, yet found
+time for another glance in the mirror.  The result was clearly
+encouraging.  "It's the only one I've got," she observed knowingly;
+"but I guess it will do."
+
+Not being, however, quite satisfied in her mind as to the rival effects
+of pink ribbons in her cap, or blue, she ran off to her room to
+institute a comparison, thereby just failing to notice the entrance of
+a strange guest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The man who, avoiding the bar, made his way straight into the
+coffee-room, entered with an air in which jauntiness and limpness were
+curiously combined.  His get-up showed that curious caricature of the
+prevailing fashion which dressy young men of depraved, or at least
+untutored, judgment are prone to affect, and was, from his patent
+leather boots to his aggressive diamond tie-pin, in singular contrast
+to his dusty and rather forlorn appearance.  His clothes, in spite of
+their over-smart cut, had the stale, creased look of garments that have
+been worn for several days continuously.  They were, indeed, in keeping
+with the wearer's hunted look, resembling in character the coat of a
+fox after a stiff run.
+
+With a half yawn, half sigh of exhaustion, the man dropped into a
+wooden armchair, and flicked with his partridge cane a bell on the
+table by him.
+
+"Heigho!  My last fling.  Now for a good one," he muttered.
+
+Miss Popkiss, more than usually on the alert, and postponing for the
+moment the respective claims of blue and pink, lost no time in
+presenting herself.
+
+"Well, my dear, what have you got in the house?" the man inquired,
+pulling himself together and speaking jauntily, partly from policy,
+partly from the natural instinct ever roused by the propinquity of a
+pretty girl.
+
+"Nice cold sirloin, sir," Mercy answered mechanically, regarding the
+new guest with expectant eyes.
+
+"Beef?  Is that the best you can do?" he asked, with a dissatisfied
+laugh.
+
+"Fowl, sir," Miss Popkiss suggested in a preoccupied tone, trying to
+adjust the customer's appearance and manner with her preconceived ideas
+of the peerage.
+
+"Fowl; that's better.  No game?"
+
+"Game's not in season, sir."
+
+He gave a loud mirthless laugh to cover his mistake.  "No, I suppose
+not in the country," he retorted with cockney wit.  "Now, look here, my
+dear," he went on, impressively tapping her arm with the crook of his
+stick; "to cut it short, I want the best dinner you can serve me;
+regardless of expense, several courses--as many as you like--you
+understand?  Tell cook to do her best, and to hurry up with it."
+
+"Yes, sir," responded Miss Popkiss, having now little doubt as to the
+guest's identity.  "Will you take anything to drink, sir?" she asked,
+lingeringly, calculating the social advantage to be derived from being
+the first in the place to see the long-lost and newly-found Lord Quorn.
+
+"Will I take anything to drink?"  He whistled scornfully at the
+suggestion of a doubt in the matter.  "Where's your wine-list?"
+
+Miss Popkiss roused herself from her contemplation, and brought it.
+
+The guest ran his fingers quickly down the column devoted not to the
+brands but to their prices.  "Look here.  A bottle of number eleven and
+a bottle of twenty-four pop."
+
+The oldest port-wine and the most expensive champagne.  The order
+settled any lingering doubt in Miss Popkiss' mind.  "Anything else,
+sir?" she asked with an excess of assiduity as she took back the list.
+
+The half-admiring attention with which she was observing him could not
+fail by this to have its effect upon the visitor.  "Well," he answered,
+with a leer, which was evidently intended to be killing.  "I shouldn't
+mind a sip of something--just to keep me going."
+
+If his words were equivocal, his manner left their meaning
+unmistakable.  Nevertheless Miss Popkiss made a spirited attempt to
+ignore it.  "I suppose you mean a bitters, sir?" she suggested
+disingenuously.
+
+The guest went through an exaggerated pantomime of scrutinizing the
+lady's tempting lips.  "No; they look anything but bitter," he
+returned, waggishly amorous.
+
+"A glass of dry sherry, sir?  What number would you like?"  Miss
+Popkiss hastily ran to where she had replaced the wine-list, and with
+the same movement took the opportunity of looking out of the window.
+Mr. Thomas Sparrow was not in evidence: in fact, the yard seemed empty.
+Satisfied of this she took the list demurely to the still leering guest.
+
+"Number four," he said, with a world of cheap blandishment in his
+winking eyes.
+
+"Number four?"  Miss Popkiss nearly succeeded in a look of
+mystification.  "Number four is a claret, sir."
+
+"That's more like the colour," he replied significantly.  "Here!"  He
+took a step to her, disregarding her feeble attempt to hold the
+wine-list as a barrier between them.  "Don't you know what make four?"
+
+"What, sir?" she asked with a giggle now; preferring his working out of
+the arithmetical problem as likely to be more racy than her own.
+
+"Why"--taking the obnoxious wine-list with one hand, and slipping the
+other round her waist--"four is two and two together, like this."  And
+he followed up the proposition by oscular demonstration.
+
+"Oh, my lord!  Don't do so, my lord!" Miss Popkiss affected to protest,
+without, however, raising her voice to a pitch that would reach the
+bar, or making more than the most perfunctory efforts to release
+herself from the encircling arm.
+
+"That's a good sample," he grinned amorously.  "I should like a dozen."
+
+There was no doubt about him, Miss Popkiss concluded, the episode
+entirely falling in with her preconception of aristocratic ways.  "Oh,"
+she giggled, "you are a naughty nobleman."  Then, releasing herself,
+this time by a business-like effort, she ran off, doubtless with the
+idea, after the manner of her kind, of doling out her favours and
+spreading the lordly caresses over as long a period as circumstances
+permitted.
+
+Perhaps it was as well; for, scarcely had she turned her back on the
+dusty Philander when the lips which had just been pressed to hers
+opened wide in a very unromantic yawn.  Then their owner threw himself
+wearily back into the chair and laughed languidly.  "Nobleman!" he
+murmured, with a puff of amused scorn at the provincial greenness.
+"And she called me my lord when I kissed her."  The idea seemed to
+tickle him in spite of his weariness.  "She knows their ways," he
+commented languidly as he took out a silver cigarette-case, flashily
+enamelled with a spirited representation of men's three popular vices
+in combination, and lighted up.  "Is it my appearance, or the swagger
+dinner I have ordered, or both?" he murmured, dropping now to a rueful
+tone.  Opposite to him, filling up the space between the windows, was a
+long mirror.  With what was evidently characteristic conceit, the young
+man put himself into a photographic attitude, with the cigarette held
+effectively after the fashion he had noted in certain royal and
+theatrical portraits, and regarded himself with rueful complacency.
+"Percy Peckover, my boy," he murmured, "you are going to deprive the
+world of an ornament.  There is plenty of fun in the world, but not for
+you; so the sooner you are out of it the better.  Ah!" he continued
+with a shudder, "that young woman little thinks that the warm lips just
+pressed to hers will soon be cold."  With a quick, almost despairing
+action, he put the cigarette in his mouth and then drew a small phial
+from his pocket.  "Yes," he said under his breath; "this will do the
+business in a jiffy."  He shivered, and, as though to pull himself
+together, puffed vigorously at the cigarette.  "By George, I should
+hope so," he muttered grimly.  "Ekin would not play me a trick.  Yes,"
+he rambled on reminiscently, "I said--didn't I?--now, mind, no pain,
+Ekin, old man.  None of your strychnines or antimonies.  You've got the
+whole shop to choose from; let me just go off to sleep and wake no
+more.  Yes, there were tears in poor old Tom's eyes; he was so upset he
+could hardly give me the bottle, telling me to rely on his professional
+skill.  Let's see; he said, 'mix it in a glass of anything you like,
+and you'll drop off as comfortable as an Archbishop.'"  He took out the
+stopper and sniffed at the phial.  "It smells like Westminster Abbey,"
+he said with the irrepressible jocularity of his type.  "Well, it's
+better than----" he shuddered at the unspoken alternative.  "It only
+wants a little courage; just five seconds' pluck," he told himself, as
+he slipped the phial back into his waistcoat pocket.  "The champagne
+will give me that.  'Ang the future, let me fair enjoy myself for the
+few moments that are left me."
+
+He lighted a fresh cigarette, got up and stood admiringly before the
+mirror, pulled down his soiled cuffs, settled his necktie, setting the
+diamond pin straight, smoothed his hair with a hand that seemed to
+tremble, then turned away with an exclamation of impatience, and stood
+looking vacantly out of the window.  The feeble humours of the inn-yard
+seemed to amuse him: anyhow, he did not notice Mr. and Miss Popkiss who
+had come to the door and stayed there regarding him with intense
+curiosity and satisfaction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"There he is, father; I'm sure it is Lord Quorn."
+
+Perhaps it was the recollection of the procedure which had led her to
+that conclusion that surprised her into the laugh, not so low but that
+it reached the object of their attention.
+
+He turned quickly, suspiciously, and, seeing the two interested faces,
+in an instant had assumed his air of jaunty swagger.  "Well, landlord;
+is my dinner coming to-day, or are you waiting for the chicken to
+hatch?"
+
+Popkiss advanced, purple and radiant, laughing his best laugh at the
+lordly joke.  Mr. Popkiss, as became an innkeeper who knew his
+business, had a series of nicely graduated tokens of appreciation, from
+the superior half smile with which he discounted the poor wit of the
+yokel who was good but for a pint of small beer and took a whole
+evening to discuss it, through the qualified guffaw with which he
+stamped with his approval the heavy jokes of his regular market-day
+customers, up to the apoplectic and wheezy roar with which he would
+greet the sallies of a really important guest, whose bill bade fair to
+overrun the shilling column.  Twice in one short hour had he, Samuel
+Popkiss, been on speaking terms with different members of the upper
+classes; small wonder was it that all thought of Mr. Doutfire's
+expected "party" had been centrifugally dispersed by the whirl in which
+he found his brain.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he chuckled, rubbing his hands as he advanced with his best
+reception manner.  "No, sir, that is to say, my lord, dinner is just
+ready, and I think we shall please you," he suggested unctuously.  "You
+will want something to keep you up for the last part of your journey
+here."
+
+The words sounded full of ominous significance; Mr. Peckover went a
+shade paler, while his swagger for an instant sagged visibly, as he
+wondered whether his host could have seen him sniffing at the
+euthanasia now lying snug in his waistcoat pocket.
+
+Miss Popkiss was busy laying the cloth in a style most effective both
+as to the decoration of the table and the showing off of certain
+personal graces.  For that young lady's methods of laying a table when
+alone and when being--as she hoped--watched during the operation were
+widely contrasted.
+
+"After so much buffetting about, as I may say," observed Popkiss
+genially, as he panted round the table, laying unnecessary forks in
+places where their usefulness was not obvious, "you will be glad to
+settle down comfortable yonder."
+
+He pointed with a fat hand vaguely and tentatively in the direction of
+Staplewick Towers, being perhaps anxious to put beyond doubt the
+question of his guest's identity.  Peckover, with, doubtless, the idea
+of a somewhat different stronghold in his mind looked quickly towards
+the point indicated.  His glance, however, travelled no farther than
+the church tower; anyhow, it could hardly have reached the other
+landmark which was five miles off.
+
+But the church which shut in his view was enough.  The cigarette
+slipped from the lips that parted convulsively with the dropping jaw.
+The churchyard!  "Glad he has arranged it," he muttered shakily.
+
+"And you may be sure of a warm welcome from the old gentleman," Popkiss
+added, stopping to beam upon his guest in the midst of his superfluous
+bustle.
+
+"The devil!" Peckover exclaimed aghast, scrutinizing the expansive face
+for a sign of "kidding."
+
+"Oh, yes," maintained Popkiss, proud of the office of herald of welcome
+between two august personages; "he has been here already to look for
+you, and very anxious he is to carry you off to the place which,
+begging pardon, is yours by rights."
+
+This was too much for Peckover, who stood staring at his obese
+tormentor utterly bereft of speech.
+
+"Of course," continued Popkiss with a mitigating chuckle, "he can't
+help showing the cloven hoof sometimes, they say; but he's not so black
+as he is painted."
+
+"Come, I'm glad of that," ejaculated Peckover, wide-eyed and staggered.
+
+"But," the landlord observed, as rounding off the subject, "we must, as
+I always say, give the devil his due; and as you are going so soon to
+make his acquaintance, you will be able to judge for yourself."
+
+Peckover turned away from what he could only consider as a corpulent
+and highly objectionable jester, and passed a shaking hand across his
+clammy brow.  "I must stop these funniments," he told himself, "if I
+want any appetite for my last dinner."  With a supreme effort he pulled
+himself together, and faced the fatuously grinning host with a dash of
+his native impudence.  "Don't let me keep you, landlord," he said with
+a wave of condescension.  "Nothing suits me so well as a pretty girl
+waiting on me.  That's the relish for this customer, it beats all your
+Worcesters and Harveys."
+
+Popkiss rubbed his puffy hands appreciatively.  "My daughter, sir, that
+is, my lord; she shall look after your lordship."  Then in a tone of
+deferential confidence, he added, "She will follow later on where you
+are going to."
+
+"The deuce she will!" cried the guest, now fairly bewildered.  "What
+has she been up to?"
+
+The rotund landlord, not quite seeing the appropriateness of the
+inquiry, and perhaps feeling that it was a form of snubbing for undue
+familiarity, abruptly changed the subject.  "I hope you'll like your
+dinner, my lord," he said with unctuous confidence as he waddled
+towards the door.  "I know one thing," he chuckled.
+
+"What's that?" Peckover asked half apprehensively.
+
+"Your lordship won't want any supper."  With which parting and
+equivocal witticism the expansive joker vanished.
+
+"Whew!  There he goes again," gasped Peckover, dropping limply into the
+nearest chair.  "He has made me tremble all over."  He gave a wild
+glance at the grey church tower looming--frowning, it seemed--cold and
+depressing.  "George!  I've a good mind to stop alive and risk it."
+
+The entrance of Miss Popkiss with an array of dishes which might have
+elucidated the landlord's parting remark, and with a new bow in her
+hair, brought the guest up to attention again.  Hungry, tired and
+especially thirsty, he lost no time in falling to, and so intent was he
+upon the good cheer before him that for a time the Hebe became
+aggrieved at the thought that the extra attention to her personal
+appearance had been thrown away, and the aid of curling tongs and smart
+ribbon been invoked to no purpose.  However, with the second glass of
+champagne, the guest manifestly began to take more interest in things
+in general and of the expectant handmaiden in particular.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed with a lengthy expiration of quasi-content, as Miss
+Popkiss deftly and with a flourish of the bangle on the wrist that was
+more in evidence, removed the fish and set the fowl before him.  "I'm
+beginning to feel better."  He tossed off another glass of champagne.
+"I say, my dear, your father is a cheerful person.  His conversation is
+enough to make a boiled cod-fish shiver."
+
+"Yes, sir--my lord," responded Miss Popkiss, abandoning the discussion
+of the parental characteristics in favour of a subject of more
+immediate interest, namely, herself; "it is a bit dullish here.  That's
+why I am leaving."
+
+"Oh, you are leaving?" remarked Peckover, taking as polite an interest
+in the statement as was consistent with having his mouth full.
+
+"Yes," she informed him.  "I am going to the place you are bound for."
+
+The bubbling glass was half-way to his eager lips, but he set it down
+again.  "The devil you are?" he exclaimed.
+
+"It must at least be as lively as this," Miss Popkiss hazarded, with a
+pretty affectation of ennui.
+
+"A good deal more so," the guest declared, pausing in his eating to
+stare blankly in front of him in utter mystification.  The result of
+his hazy cogitation was that if the people of the inn were labouring
+under some absurd delusion it would be as well not to disturb it.
+"Well, there's no accounting for tastes," he remarked, falling back on
+that non-committal, if unoriginal aphorism, and redirecting his
+attention to the roast chicken.
+
+"Some folks," gossiped Miss Popkiss, by way of a running conversational
+accompaniment to the dinner, "who don't fancy the place, would say it
+was out of the frying pan into the fire."
+
+Number twenty-four had steadied the guest's nerves.  "Yes," he agreed
+grimly, "most people would say that.  Now," he muttered, "she's at it.
+What's that?" he inquired, pointing with his knife to a side dish.
+
+"Curry, sir--my lord," the waitress answered, moving the dish towards
+him.  "Curried goose, my lord."
+
+He gave her a suspicious glance, and then pushed the dish away.  There
+seemed too much of the personal and anticipatory element in the pungent
+dainty.
+
+"Oh, it's not very hot," she protested, with the ready word for the
+credit of the cuisine.  "Nothing like what you may find it elsewhere."
+
+These jokes, it seemed to the guest, if jokes they were, grew
+monotonous, while their bad taste was undeniable.  As a cockney
+sybarite in a cheap way, he liked to have a good-looking waitress to
+chatter to while dining, as he liked to chaff a barmaid over a "small
+scotch and polly", or a gin and ginger beer; but this was not the sort
+of thing the occasion seemed to call for.  Accordingly he proceeded to
+eat and drink in silence.  After all, the one solid tangible
+fact--presumably the last--that the world held for him, was the
+first-class dinner he was recklessly enjoying.
+
+Piqued by her failure to maintain the interest she had so auspiciously
+begun to excite in the distinguished guest, Miss Popkiss turned in a
+huff to the window, and affected a melancholy interest in the heavy
+shower which had come on, to be roused suddenly from her air of
+indifference to things in general and the preoccupied gourmandizer in
+particular by catching sight of the adventurous Mr. Thomas Sparrow
+sheltering under a lean-to a few feet from the window.  Evidently on
+the watch, he came quickly to the window, heedless of the downpour.
+Miss Popkiss, with a guilty conscience, received him graciously; put
+her finger to her lip and pointed with an air of importance to the
+still voracious Peckover.  Sparrow looked, and his damp face clouded
+with jealous doubt.  "Lord Quorn," whispered Miss Popkiss behind her
+hand.  Even if Mr. Sparrow had seen that affectionate passage he could
+scarcely expect his sweetheart to withhold an occasional kiss from a
+real, if newly discovered, peer of the realm.
+
+Whatever attraction a noble _bon-vivant_ might have had for Mr. Sparrow
+at any other time, he was just then in too close proximity to a
+gutter-spout and a tempting pair of lips to devote more than a critical
+glance and a nod of surprised comprehension to the person indicated.
+Then, eager to catch the fleeting opportunity, he put forth a moist
+hand, pulled Miss Popkiss a thought nearer to him, and so steadying her
+for the operation and obviating a possible retreat, he kissed her.
+
+Whether caused by the unusual electricity in the air or the eager hurry
+with which it was performed, the osculation created more noise than is
+considered desirable by well-bred lovers.  Peckover, dining steadily,
+silently, jumped round, uncertain for the moment whether the report was
+that of a drawn cork, or some trick of the neglected waitress to
+attract his attention.  He was alert enough and man of the world enough
+to comprehend the situation; indeed, had he been aware that a man was
+so near it would never have been in question.  As it was he turned just
+in time to see Mr. Sparrow's gratified countenance drawing back into
+the unsympathetic rain.  The sight gave him an uneasy thrill.
+
+"Hullo!" he cried sharply.  "Who was that?"
+
+"Only a friend of mine," answered Miss Popkiss, with an air of showing
+herself not dependent for amatory attentions upon casual customers.
+
+Her manner scarcely reassured the visitor.  "It wasn't--I mean--" he
+stammered uneasily, "he looked like a policeman."
+
+"Oh, no, sir; how could you think so, sir!" Miss Popkiss protested with
+a touch of offended dignity.
+
+"I thought I heard a kiss," Peckover suggested, still unsatisfied.
+
+"Other people can kiss besides the police," Miss Popkiss declared, with
+a toss of the head, too exasperated by the banal suggestion to deny the
+act.
+
+Peckover began to think it was all right.  "So they can, my poppet, so
+they can," he exclaimed more cheerfully, regarding the young lady with
+a leer which owed much of its _empressement_ to the champagne.  As it
+occurred to him that a little philandering might form a not unpleasing
+diversion between the courses, he rose with the leer intensified and
+approached Miss Popkiss with the recognizable intent of sharing with
+Mr. Sparrow the charmer's osculatory liberality.
+
+But the young lady was astute enough to realize the unseasonableness of
+what at another time she would have welcomed.  Accordingly she
+retreated before Peckover's advance, taking care to keep to that side
+of the room least visible from the window.  "Oh, sir, no, sir; I'd
+rather you didn't, my lord," she protested, in quite a virtuous fluster.
+
+But Peckover's knowledge of human character did not incline him to
+believe in the coyness that will sometimes try to stiffen the market
+for notoriously cheap kisses.  He manoeuvred Miss Popkiss into a corner
+and then pounced upon her.
+
+Whether it was that Mr. Thomas Sparrow, waiting discontentedly in the
+rain, had had his suspicions aroused as to the real sentiments existing
+at the moment between his lady-love and the noble customer, or whether
+he was merely anxious, now that the intervening attraction was removed,
+to take a more curious and leisurely survey of the interesting addition
+to the peerage, anyhow, he again, in a lull of the storm, sidled to the
+window and looked in.  Not seeing the guest where he expected to find
+him, he boldly put his head in the window and glanced round the room.
+To observe in a corner, Miss Popkiss, coyly--or as it seemed to him,
+invitingly--protestant, at bay before Peckover, who was making a
+playful feint attack upon her with his serviette preparatory to getting
+to close quarters.
+
+Whatever effect the sight had upon Mr. Sparrow, words utterly failed
+him to give adequate expression to it.  All he could emit was a choked
+half-cry, half-growl of rage and warning.  At the sound Peckover gave a
+great jump and for the moment stood scared and paralysed.  Miss
+Popkiss, profiting by the respite, gave a scream just loud enough to
+justify herself and preserve her character for fidelity without
+arousing her father, and fled from the room, possibly to avoid awkward
+explanations.  Peckover stood, staring blankly at the wrathful Sparrow,
+who, emboldened by his rival's limp attitude, shook his fist at him
+viciously.
+
+"All right, my lord!  Wait till I get at you, my lord!" he foamed.
+
+His air was so menacing that when Peckover found his voice the first
+use he put it to was to call, "Landlord!"
+
+Throughout the vocabulary he could not have chosen a word which would
+have had a more immediate and electric effect on the qualified
+aggressiveness of Mr. Sparrow.  That love-sick functionary seemed
+instantly to collapse and recede from the window which had been the
+frame round a picture of rustic fury.  Only with his retreat, certain
+words, like Parthian arrows, floated in from the storm to Peckover's
+hypersensitized ears.
+
+"Wait till you come outside, my noble lord.  I'll teach you to dance."
+
+"You'll be very clever if you do," their object commented grimly as
+with a sigh of relief he turned to the smilingly inquisitive face of
+the landlord who had now appeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"Did you call, my lord?" was, considering the tone of the summons, Host
+Popkiss' unnecessary enquiry.
+
+"My lord!" repeated Peckover irritably.  "How you country fellows do a
+joke to death.  Yes; I did call.  Who was that absurd person intruding
+through the window?"
+
+Mr. Popkiss went to the window with what promptness his bulk would
+allow and looked blankly out into the rain-swept courtyard.  "I don't
+see any one," he said.
+
+"I can't eat my dinner with a Jack-in-the-box fooling behind me,"
+Peckover complained suspiciously.
+
+"No, certainly not," the host agreed with professional severity.  "It
+must have been Doutfire."  Satisfied with the conjecture he went up
+confidentially to his guest.  "I'll tell you, my lord.  It might have
+been Mr. Doutfire, our detective from Long Rixon."
+
+Peckover with an effort arrested his jaw in the act of falling, and
+snapped it to with a rattle of the teeth.
+
+"De--detective?"
+
+"Yes," Popkiss explained, with a touch of importance, as one who, in
+his responsible calling, is permitted to share the Treasury secrets;
+"he is expecting a chap down here that is wanted by the London police.
+He missed him at Faxfleet railway station, and has now gone back to
+Rixon, but if he don't hear of him there he is coming back here again.
+He is a clever man, is our Mr. Doutfire," he proceeded, warming with
+local pride and at the same time justifying any eccentric methods to
+which the eminent officer of the law might have thought proper to
+descend; "cleverest man in these parts by a long chalk, and we are a
+bit proud of him."
+
+So full of admiration and pride was Host Popkiss that he failed to take
+notice of his guest's ghastly face.
+
+"Thank you, that will do," said Peckover hurriedly, with an effort to
+appear loftily satisfied.  "If it is only the detective, I don't mind."
+His one and feverish desire now was to be left alone.  The crisis was
+at hand, and it must be faced without witnesses.
+
+As Popkiss with corpulent strut left the room, somewhat disgusted at
+having failed to excite interest in the artful Doutfire, Peckover went
+hastily to the door and shut it upon the retreating mass of licensed
+importance.  Then he turned, almost in a state of collapse.  The
+champagne bottle caught his eye; he staggered to the table, poured out
+a glass blindly, and swallowed it.  "It's all up," he muttered in a
+hoarse whisper.  "It has come to amen.  That was not the detective, but
+he's not far off.  Clever man: back directly."  He laughed miserably,
+then subsided limply into the chair, and sat with his head resting on
+his clammy hands.  He was caught.  If the local police, headed by the
+nailing Mr. Doutfire, had got wind of his presence in the neighbourhood
+there was clearly no escape but one.  "Ugh!"  He shuddered as in
+imagination he heard handcuffs click and felt the cold embrace of the
+steel round his wrists.  He sat there with head erect now, his hands
+pressed against his cheeks, his eyes staring fascinated by the scenes
+which his imagination, coloured by the study of police reports,
+pictured before him: he saw the magistrate committing him; then himself
+in the dock at the Old Bailey; the Treasury counsel unfolding a black
+case against him, his flash pals, the real culprits, grinning at his
+misery from the gallery; the jury shaking their uncompromising heads in
+all a small tradesman's Pharisaical virtuousness; he heard the verdict,
+guilty; he saw the judge, unrelenting and terrible in scarlet and
+ermine, mouthing at him before coming to the point--five years, ten,
+fifteen!  He started up trembling, with beads standing on his forehead
+and with despairing eyes.  "I couldn't stand it!" he moaned.  "I'll
+never go through it.  They shan't take me alive."
+
+Feverishly he felt for his pocket, in his agitation missing the opening
+more than once.  He took out the phial, gave an apprehensive glance
+round at the window, emptied the contents into the glass and filled it
+up with champagne.  Then, with the means of escape ready to his hand,
+he seemed to steady himself.  "Now," he said, with a grim smile; "five
+seconds' courage, and I can snap my fingers at 'em all.  It's only like
+a sleeping draught."  He raised the glass to his lips, held it there
+for two or three seconds, and then set it down.  Perhaps there was no
+hurry for five minutes.
+
+"Now, I'm going off," he soliloquized dreamily.  "I wish I'd had a
+fairer fling while I was at it.  It has been a poor, middle-class
+rollick after all," he continued ruefully.  "It's too late now.  But I
+should like to have done the real swell, if only for a week; gone in
+for thousands instead of a few paltry pounds; Belgravia instead of
+Camden Town; Monte Carlo instead of Herne Bay and Yarmouth;
+high-steppers; Hurlingham; Henley; a real lady or two mashed on me
+instead of--ah, well, she wasn't so bad; it wasn't her fault she wasn't
+class: she'll be the only one to be sorry.  Champagne," he took up the
+glass, "I might have had this sort all along if I'd had the nerve."
+
+Suddenly recollecting, he set down the glass hastily.  "I forgot."
+Curiously he seemed to shudder at his narrow escape.  Then, as though
+impatient with his temporizing, "Bah! let me get it over," he muttered,
+and lifted the glass again, only to set it down once more.  "I wonder,"
+he said, as making an excuse for delay, "what the bill for this little
+dinner comes to.  Poor Fatty will have to apply to my executors.
+Wonder if he will see a joke there."  He laughed at his touch of
+Cockneyfied humour.  Then relapsed into the morbid state.  "Will the
+pretty little daughter be sorry?  Perhaps.  Not she; no one will.  The
+sooner I'm off the hooks the better.  Here goes for the last time."  He
+took up the glass.  "I'll count three, and then toss it off."  He shut
+his eyes, hesitated a moment, then began.  "One, two, thr----"
+
+The glass was but waiting for the last word to leave his lips when the
+door opened with an impatient, unceremonious burst, and a man came in,
+flinging it to behind him.  Another dusty, worn-out man, who stared for
+a moment at Peckover, and then, turning a chair from the table, just
+let himself fall into it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Peckover, arrested in his intent, had opened his eyes, and now stood
+staring half dazed at the new-comer.
+
+"Hullo!" yawned that person genially.
+
+"Eh?" ejaculated Peckover hazily, eyeing him with suspicion, and not
+quite able to realize the situation.
+
+"Excuse me if I disturb you," said the man, with another tremendous
+yawn.  "If I don't sit down somewhere I shall drop on the floor."
+
+Peckover told himself that this was scarcely the detective, and even if
+he were his condition gave colour to a wild hope of escape.
+
+"Tired?"  The superfluous question was put tentatively.
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Dry?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"Have a glass of fizz?"  In Peckover's situation even that unusual
+hospitality was a matter of indifference.
+
+"Thanks," answered the man, smothering a third yawn in recognition of
+his fellow-guest's civility.  "You are a brick.  Got more than you care
+to drink there?" he added to qualify his somewhat grabbing acceptance
+of the offer.
+
+"Yes," answered Peckover with grim significance.  Then checking himself
+as he was about to offer the drugged glass to the stranger, he
+exclaimed hastily, "Oh, that won't do."
+
+"Short of glasses?" said the other accommodatingly.  "I don't mind a
+tumbler to save time."  He spun one across to Peckover who emptied the
+remains of the bottle into it.  The stranger poured the wine down his
+throat without the action of swallowing.  "Ah, that's better!" he
+declared with a great sigh of enjoyment.
+
+"Walked too far?" Peckover suggested listlessly.  "Not used to it,
+p'raps?"
+
+"Got out of the way of it," the man explained.  "Three months aboard
+ship."
+
+"Australia?" Peckover suggested.
+
+The stranger nodded.  "That's it.  Come from London this morning.  Got
+out at Faxfleet to walk over here.  Lost my way in the woods."
+
+"Didn't come straight, then?"  Peckover had an indistinct recollection
+of having seen this fellow at the station, but had been too much
+flurried to take more than passing notice of him.  Were they companions
+in bad luck, he wondered.  "Have a glass of port," he said, warming
+towards his fellow-guest.
+
+"Your wine?  Thanks.  Good chap.  Crime to refuse old crusted, eh?"  He
+emptied the glass which Peckover promptly refilled.  Then put on a
+mysteriously significant look.  "No, I didn't come straight here, and
+for a good reason."  He sank his voice.  "Fact is, I'm dodging a
+bush-ranger."
+
+"What?" exclaimed Peckover, disinclined to take the statement seriously.
+
+The stranger pulled his chair close up to his companion, and tapped him
+with his forefinger on the knee.  "Look here," he said confidently.
+"You don't belong to these parts?  Nothing of the chawbacon about you.
+Town man?"
+
+"Slightly," answered Peckover, with a chastened pride in the
+undisputable claim.
+
+The other grasped his hand.  "I can trust you?"  Peckover, recovering
+from the cold thrill which the somewhat demonstrative clasp occasioned,
+nodded impressively.  "You are a smart Londoner," the stranger
+continued, "I'll tell you my situation, and get your advice.  Mind,
+though, it's a dead secret."
+
+"It soon will be with me," thought Peckover miserably, as he assured
+his companion on the point.
+
+Host Popkiss, glancing in at the door, saw the two in close confidence,
+and with the cocksureness usual with men of limited sagacity concluded
+that the "party" wanted by Mr. Doutfire had arrived and was trying the
+confidence trick on the new-fledged member of the peerage.  And having
+so settled it, he strolled out to keep a watchful eye for the detective.
+
+"It's downright romantic," the thirsty stranger was saying with an
+apologetic smile.  "Now, you wouldn't think it to look at me, but I'm a
+peer of the realm."
+
+"Jehoshaphat!" commented Peckover, more frank than polite.
+
+"Just the remark I made when I heard I was Lord Quorn," said the other
+pleasantly.  "Been sheep-farming in New South Wales for the last twelve
+years.  Not much luck of any sort, though, till the other day.  Got a
+letter to say distant cousin dead, and I had succeeded to the title.
+Not much trimming with it, they tell me.  Bit of tumble-down family
+property near here, Staplewick Towers, let to some grand lady."  He
+pulled out a letter and looked at the signature.  "Lady Agatha Hemyock,
+that's it," he said, exhibiting the letter as documentary evidence of
+his veracity.  "So I have just trotted down to take stock."
+
+"And where does the bush-ranger come in?" was Peckover's not unnatural
+inquiry.
+
+Lord Quorn wagged his head knowingly, and drank off another glass of
+port-wine without apology, as though the privilege of being made the
+recipient of a peer's confidences was in itself ample payment for the
+refreshment in question.  "Out there," the vague wave of his hand was
+understood to be towards New South Wales, "I used up my spare time
+flirting with a fine woman who had a figure and a will of her own.  She
+would not have me, though; refused me more than once: but hearing one
+fine day that she had said no to a real live lord she felt pretty sick.
+However, I wasn't going to give her another chance; not likely, seeing
+that, besides being somewhat off her, I knew I could have my pick over
+here.  Thereupon she accuses me of playing the giddy deceiver, and
+threatens to bring me to book for breach of promise.  Well, I smiled at
+that, but it rather sent me up a tree when she trotted out her brother,
+the bush-ranger."
+
+"My eye!" observed Peckover, interested in spite of himself.  "Fighting
+man, eh?"
+
+Lord Quorn nodded seriously.  "I saw him for the first time over here
+with her last night.  A desperate chap, I tell you," he went on
+anxiously, "who will stick at nothing--except your favourite vital part
+with a bowie knife."
+
+His auditor made a wry face to evince his sympathetic attention.
+
+"He keeps on show," Quorn continued, growing more and more dismally in
+earnest, "fire-irons he has snapped, gun-barrels he has tied in knots,
+crown pieces he has bitten through, eyes he has gouged out, preserved
+in spirits of wine, and pickled ears he has wrung off just for fun.
+I'm not exactly a coward, but what can you do against a man whose
+favourite pastime is twisting bullocks' heads off, and squeezing
+cannonballs out of shape."
+
+Peckover drew down the corners of his mouth and shook his head, finding
+himself fully in accord with the other's policy of non-resistance.
+"Awkward customer to tackle," was all the encouragement he could
+suggest.
+
+"Awkward!" repeated Lord Quorn in impatient contempt for the inadequate
+adjective, "You'd be the one to feel awkward with your nose divided in
+two, and your left ear in a piccalilli bottle on an amateur
+bush-ranger's mantelpiece.  Oh, I know," he continued in an exasperated
+tone, anticipating a trite and obvious piece of advice, "I could have
+the law of him, but there is precious small satisfaction in seeing a
+man go to prison out of your one remaining eye, and to know that when
+he comes out it will come out too.  Got any more liquor?"
+
+His apprehensive indignation left no room for the common courtesies of
+even coffee-room life, he was seething with the angry sense of
+impotence before this critical and grievous position.
+
+Peckover emptied the bottle into his glass.  "The last," he said, in a
+tone of sympathetic gloom; "and you're quite welcome."
+
+"Good Samaritan!" was Lord Quorn's casual acknowledgment as he tossed
+it off.  "Fact is," he proceeded to explain by way of tardy apology,
+"though I'm a swell and all that I am cleared out just now.  Drew a
+tidy sum for my travelling exes, but spent a few days in London, and a
+few pounds--you know what that means?"
+
+Peckover nodded a rakish appreciation.
+
+"Well," Quorn resumed darkly, "who should I clap eyes on last night at
+the play but my Australian girl and her infernal brother.  Followed me
+over, and on my track like an insurance agent.  Luckily she didn't see
+me, and he doesn't know me by sight.  Thinks I, best thing to do is to
+make a bolt down here and lie low till that bush-whacking nuisance eats
+his head off in London and has to go back to his happy hunting grounds.
+So, first thing to-day, sent a wire to Lady What's-her-name, and then
+found only just enough cash left in my pocket for third class to
+Faxfleet.  So I've tramped over.  That's the chronicle."
+
+"You've given your friends the slip?" Peckover suggested encouragingly.
+
+"Hope so," replied Quorn, doubtfully.  "But they'll track me like
+kangaroo hunters.  A woman has a fine scent for a title; a coronet is
+like a red herring.  But I say," he broke off, as though a trifle
+ashamed of having monopolized the interest of the colloquy; "what does
+a smart chap like you want in this dead-alive hole?  You are not in a
+mess?"
+
+Peckover's expression swiftly changed from altruistic interest to
+lugubrious self-pity.  "I am, though," he replied.  "Got Scotland Yard
+after me.  Don't be afraid," he protested hastily, as Lord Quorn's eyes
+opened wide with suspicion and he gave himself a slight, but
+significant, set-back in his chair; "I'm only half a criminal: the
+victim of circumstances.  Look here, confidence for confidence.  I'll
+tell you all about it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"You may rely on my keeping my mouth shut," said Lord Quorn, giving a
+tremendous yawn which for the moment seemed to cast a doubt upon his
+ability in that direction.
+
+"It doesn't much matter," Peckover responded mournfully.  "Well," he
+proceeded, with a touch of chastened self-glorification, "you must know
+I've been flinging myself about in London."
+
+"Painting the town red, eh?"
+
+"Painting myself black, more like it," he retorted.  "Very pleasant,
+though, while it lasted.  You see," he explained conceitedly, "I always
+had ideas above my position, and some time back I thought I'd emerge
+from the grub state and do a bit of butterflying."
+
+Quorn nodded; so far in sympathy.
+
+"But," continued Peckover, "to be a butterfly in town you want a lot of
+dust on your wings; and when it comes to dressing a bit toffish,
+treating your friends, especially the ladies--and they've been my
+ruin"--he interjected with complacent self-reproach--"doing the Halls
+regular, and tooling your best girl out to Richmond or the Welsh Harp
+of a Sunday, why, five-and-thirty bob a week don't go far."
+
+Lord Quorn shook his head sleepily, as being in complete, if drowsy,
+accord with the estimate.
+
+"That figure," Peckover declared impressively, "was my blessed screw
+at--well, at an eminent firm of auctioneers.  Things were looking a bit
+bluish, a writ or two out against me, my tailor showed me no mercy, but
+his patience got shorter even than his thirteen bob trousers, in which,
+though too tight, as usual, I was ready to skip, when Jimmy Cutbush, a
+friend of mine in the racing world, put me on to a good thing which
+came off.  Jimmy drew my winnings and paid them over to me, promising
+plenty more tips of the same sort, till I began to understand how
+Rothschild feels; but, what do you think?"
+
+Lord Quorn was obviously not thinking anything worth mentioning just
+then, but, roused by the intensity with which the question was put, he
+rattled his ideas together and replied, "Ah, what?"
+
+"Cutbush drew good money," said Peckover, knitting his brows, and
+throwing into the statement all the impressiveness which a
+five-and-thirty shilling clerk and voluptuary has at command, "and paid
+me in bad; and there was I, swaggering about and paying my way, with a
+lot of wrong 'uns in my pocket.  That was pretty steep, eh?"
+
+Words failed Lord Quorn, in his present condition, adequately to
+characterize the situation; he contented himself by receiving it with
+an absurd grimace which was intended as an effective substitute for
+verbal comment.
+
+"Well," pursued his companion, accepting the distortion of feature in
+the spirit in which it was produced, "day before yesterday I drove down
+to Kempton to round proper on my pal, having likewise backed Cockalorum
+for the Great Comet Stakes."
+
+"Did that come off?" Quorn inquired with an effort.
+
+"No, but his jockey did, and landed me in a nice hole.  Then when I
+tackled Cutbush, all he had to say was to call me a Juggins, and ask me
+what I took him for.  'Well,' I says naturally, 'I've won this oof, and
+can't spend it'; 'well,' he says,'buy a moneybox and save it.'  Then,
+as if that wasn't enough, as I was driving home, rather down in my
+luck, I had the misfortune to run over a noble duke in Piccadilly.  His
+Grace was in the middle of the road, looking for his balance, but of
+course the police took his side--a duke is never drunk, only deaf.
+Having left them my name and address, as well as my blessing, I drove
+on, when suddenly my beast of a horse took it into his head to say his
+prayers; result, both knees damaged.  When I left the stables, after a
+little friction with the proprietor, my landlady meets me and says I
+had better not go home, as the police have been waiting for me all day.
+Now you know why I am here."
+
+Inspirited by realizing that his companion's personal narrative had
+come to an end, Lord Quorn was able to rouse himself.  "Hanged if you
+aren't worse off than I am," he declared with a yawn.  "Don't think I'd
+change place with you.  Rather run the risk of being chawed up by that
+bush-devil.  Well, what are you going to do?" he asked, with lethargic
+sympathy.  "Slip across the water?"
+
+For a moment Peckover debated with himself whether he should declare
+his expedient.  To conclude that it would serve no practical end.  "Oh,
+I've got a proper way out of my troubles," he answered enigmatically.
+
+"Glad to hear it," Quorn replied indifferently.  "They are rather
+unkind to people who enter into competition with the Mint, aren't they?
+Well," he concluded, taken with a fresh access of yawning, "I hope
+you'll give 'em the slip.  Wish I could help you, but," he added
+waggishly, as giving a cheerful wind-up to the somewhat depressing
+mutual confidences; "you see it is more than I can do at present to
+help myself."
+
+To drive home his double meaning he reversed the empty bottle, and then
+began sleepily to fill his pipe, humming a comic song the while.
+
+"He's cut out for a lord," was Peckover's mental comment as he sat
+watching his companion with some contempt.  He was perhaps a little
+disgusted and disappointed that the story of his chapter of ill-luck
+and present critical position should have had no deeper or more lasting
+effect upon the man who had been so glad of his hospitality.  Peer or
+no peer, he might know better than to sing "Peculiar Julia" by way of
+dirge for one whose minutes of life, or at any rate, liberty, was
+numbered.  So he sat in disgust, watching the drowsy nobleman strike a
+match, and being too sleepy to apply it to his pipe, hold it, nodding,
+till the flame touched his fingers and brought him to with a start and
+a smothered word of objurgation.  "A pretty addition to the peerage,"
+he muttered with a sneer.  "Lord Quorn, indeed!  A fellow who hadn't
+the sense to keep awake when he had a lighted match in his hand.  And
+here was Percy Peckover--"  Suddenly a circumstance which the
+companionship had driven out of his mind recurred to him.  Both the
+landlord and his daughter had called him my lord.  It had seemed a
+feeble provincial joke, but it was now in a flash made intelligible.
+"Of course," he exclaimed under his breath as he started up at the
+thought, "I understand now.  They have been taking me for him.  That's
+what they meant by their silly my-lording.  And if that's the case, why
+shouldn't they go on taking him for me!  If they only would till I can
+get clear out of this, I might give that precious detective the slip
+and get clean away."
+
+With eyes full of the hopeful project he stood looking at the noble
+slumberer, then suddenly turned and tip-toed to the door.
+
+Quiet as it was, the movement half roused Quorn.  "Jul-i-ah, Jul-i-ah!
+Why are you so very pecu-li-ah?" he sang sleepily.
+
+Peckover stopped and looked back.  "I'll try it," he muttered.  "It's a
+bold stroke, but--where's that mug of a landlord?"  He opened the door
+softly, and stole out.
+
+A sudden gust caught the window, and the rattle woke Quorn with a
+start.  He sat up, staring round stupidly, and found himself alone and
+thirsty with a full glass of champagne on the table before him.  He
+stared at it, then round the room again.
+
+"Gone?" he exclaimed.  "Flash little coiner chap gone?  Sin to waste
+good liquor."  With the word he took up the wine and tossed it off;
+then set down the glass with a wry face.  "Queer brand!" he ejaculated.
+"Faugh!  Filthy stuff--or else----"  He got up with a shiver of
+disgust, and faced the doorway just in time to see his late companion
+peep in.  "I say, Mr. Ooff-merchant!" he called out, pointing to the
+empty glass, "What's the matter with this stuff?"
+
+Occupied with the strange chance of escape, Peckover had for the moment
+forgotten all about his drugged wine.  As his eye followed Quorn's
+unsteady finger, he went cold, and his knees knocked together.  In a
+flash he saw his effective way of escape cut off and--what was
+worse--his own predicament intensified a thousand-fold.  "You've never
+drunk that?" he gasped, when his dry tongue could articulate.
+
+"I have though," Quorn replied, regarding him with fearful suspicion.
+
+Peckover clasped his head and staggered forward.  "You're a dead man,"
+he exclaimed hoarsely.
+
+"Scott!  What do you mean?" cried Quorn, going pale.
+
+"It was--doctored," stammered the other, hardly knowing what he said.
+
+"Poison?" demanded Quorn in a horrified tone, clutching fiercely at
+Peckover who dodged, as frightened as he.
+
+Then he gave a laugh of desperation.  "Well, yes, if you like to call
+it so.  It's as good as murder," he assured himself in a woeful
+whisper.  "What am I to do?"  He ran to the window, but was arrested by
+a cry from his companion, and turned to see him collapse in a chair.
+"Here, wake up!  Stand up!  You'll be all right," he cried, desperately
+shaking him.
+
+"Oh, I do feel queer," muttered Quorn.  The irises of his eyes seemed
+to turn up into his head, and he fell forward on the table insensible,
+with his too liberal entertainer standing over him aghast.
+
+What was he to do?  If he called for help, everything would come out,
+and he would be taken red-handed.
+
+"He's done for, poor fellow," he told himself in a terrified whisper,
+trembling in every joint.  "He's a dead man.  I'd better follow him."
+He caught up the fatal glass, but it was empty.  "Not a drop left.  Ah,
+there will be another sort of drop for me," he whispered through his
+chattering teeth.  "What shall I do?"  Then his face sensibly
+brightened as the idea of his desperate expedient, which had been
+frightened away, came back to him.  "Ah, that's it!" he muttered.
+"That's my only chance.  They think I'm Lord Quorn.  Now is my real tip
+to be Lord Quorn.  No one here knows him, and he's not so very unlike
+Percy Peckover.  Quick!"  He ran to the window and pulled the curtains
+across; then hurried back and began feverishly searching the lifeless
+man's pockets.
+
+"Any papers to identify him?  Ah!"  He pulled out a packet of letters,
+and transferred them to his own pocket, replacing them by some bills
+and a writ.
+
+[Illustration: "He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them
+to his own pocket."]
+
+"That's it," he muttered.  "They're of no use to him now, and may save
+an innocent man from the gallows."  He set the empty phial into Quorn's
+limp hand.  "There!" he exclaimed, as with a long drawn sigh of
+desperate relief he surveyed the position.  "Percy Peckover is dead.
+Long live Lord Quorn!  It's a fair desperate shift; but I can't be
+worse off than I was, and I may be better."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The shuffling of feet sounded outside the door, and Peckover had just
+time to throw himself into a chair at some distance from Lord Quorn and
+snatch up a newspaper when the landlord came in accompanied by Mr.
+Doutfire.
+
+With a well simulated yawn, Peckover threw down the paper wearily and
+nodded at Popkiss.  "Any one from the Towers yet, landlord?" he asked
+in his best off-hand style.
+
+"Not yet, my lord," the host answered, ceremoniously important, to
+impress Mr. Doutfire and to show that official that he was not the only
+eminent personage of his acquaintance.
+
+Peckover yawned again, and affected to consult his Waterbury with as
+much flourish as was consistent with the necessity for concealing the
+fact that it was not a hundred guinea repeater.
+
+"Beg pardon, my lord," observed Popkiss, indicating the renowned
+representative of the law who already had a severe and suspicious eye
+upon the collapsed form at the farther end of the room; "this is the
+gentleman I spoke to you about."
+
+"Oh, ah, good evening," Peckover said, acknowledging the interesting
+introduction as airily as the critical nature of the situation
+permitted.
+
+Having dealt with the social side of the detective's presence, Mr.
+Popkiss' fat face became stern as he proceeded to justify it from a
+business point of view.
+
+"Is that your man?" he observed, somewhat superfluously, indicating
+Quorn.
+
+The alert Doutfire already within pouncing distance of his quarry was
+unfolding the telegram.  "Five foot seven."  Quorn's doubled-up
+attitude made an accurate estimate of his inches somewhat difficult and
+untrustworthy.  Mr. Doutfire, glanced under the table, taking in his
+legs, allowed for turnings and swiftly added the measurement to the
+body and head, mentally straightened out for the purpose.  The total
+was evidently not inconsistent with the official dimension, since he
+passed on.  "Dark hair," he nodded, availing himself of a certain
+latitude which the somewhat vague adjective allowed.  "Slight
+moustache," Quorn's was clipped like to a toothbrush, and the
+description held.  "Flash dress."  For a moment Mr. Doutfire looked
+doubtful.  With all a true police official's desire to make description
+tally, it was plain that a very considerable point would have to be
+stretched before that Colonial get-up could be classed as flashy.  In
+search of some hidden evidence of the toff in apparel, Mr. Doutfire
+drew aside the lappel of Quorn's coat.  Some papers sticking half-way
+out of the breast pocket were thus disclosed.  Deftly Mr. Doutfire
+whipped them out, glanced at them, and a gleam of satisfaction shot
+across his face.  "My man," he announced, with a touch of pardonable
+triumph which thrillingly communicated itself to Peckover, whose
+principal employment during the process of identification had been to
+keep his teeth from chattering.  "Here!  Wake up, my man!" the
+detective cried, roughly shaking the irresponsive form.  "Wake up,
+Peckover, you're wanted."  Then suddenly as he turned the limp body
+over, his face fell from complacency to blank disappointment.  "Why,
+burn me, Popkiss," he exclaimed savagely, "if I don't think he has
+given me the slip."
+
+"What?" cried that worthy, as resenting his implied complicity in the
+fiasco.  "Not dead?" he added, with as much awe as a quadruple chin can
+express.
+
+"Or next door," replied Doutfire, clinging to the shadow of a hope
+which experience belied.
+
+"Next door," echoed Popkiss, losing the man in the innkeeper.  "I wish
+he was.  I don't want no suicide in my respectable house."
+
+"Well, you've got it, Popkiss," retorted Doutfire, as he picked up and
+sniffed at the phial which had fallen from the lifeless hand.  "Poison,
+if I know anything.  Send for a doctor."
+
+The exigency of the situation roused Mr. Popkiss' sluggish faculties
+into prompt action.  "Here, Mercy!" he bawled.  "Mercy!  Quick!  Run
+for Dr. Barton directly.  Gentleman taken bad."
+
+"Now Mr. D.," he proceeded, puffing with excitement, when Miss Mercy,
+in a state of disgust at the contingencies to which licensed premises
+are liable, had gone off through the rain with such haste as was
+compatible with due care for her personal appearance, "if you don't
+want to ruin me, for heaven's sake keep this unfortunate business as
+quiet as you can."
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Popkiss," the detective replied, assuming at once the
+mastery of the situation, "certainly, so far, that is, as is compatible
+with the due requirements of the law."
+
+"Can't you take him out of here?" Peckover suggested, as he began to
+feel the strain on his nerves.
+
+"Ah, we might do that, Mr. D., with your permission," the landlord
+begged submissively.  All his importance was gone now; the last five
+minutes had turned him into a fat, abject slave, ready to grovel at any
+man's feet.
+
+"Don't care to move him till the doctor arrives," objected Doutfire,
+less by way of conforming with legal procedure than of asserting his
+authority.  Mr. Popkiss had thrown open an inner door.  "Only just
+through here, Mr. D.," he whined spasmodically.  "Nice snug little
+room; better for the doctor and--and all parties," he urged.
+"Gentleman, I mean nobleman there," he sank his wheezy voice and jerked
+his head towards Peckover; "Lord Quorn, on his way to the Towers.  Very
+distressing for his lordship as it is for me.  You'll oblige an old
+friend, Mr. D.!"
+
+The appeal was so abject that Mr. Doutfire felt he was losing nothing
+of his importance by yielding.  "Lend a hand, then," he said, having
+first judicially inspected the room in question.  Between them, with
+much puffing and wheezy mutterings, they carried out the limp form, and
+as the door closed upon them Peckover's air of lofty indifference fell
+from him as a garment, and resting his elbows on his knees and bowing
+his head on his hands he collapsed into a state of utter fear and
+misery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+From this flaccid condition he was roused by a somewhat obstreperous
+knocking and whistling in the passage dividing the coffee-room from the
+bar.  In a moment he had sprung up and run to the window, which he
+threw open, and stood there ready to bolt through it if necessary.
+
+"What ho!  Anybody alive here?" a voice called out.  "Hi, yi!  Where do
+I come in?"
+
+As the invocation and inquiry seemed reassuring.  Peckover turned back
+into the room as the door opened and a man in a dripping mackintosh
+appeared looking in.
+
+"Hullo!" he exclaimed.  "I can't find anybody worth mentioning.  Bar
+empty as a mortuary chapel.  Young lady in the cellar hiding from the
+thunderstorm, eh?  You don't happen to be the proprietor of the
+establishment?"
+
+"Not exactly," Peckover answered, wondering what kind of customer he
+had come across now.
+
+"That's near enough," said the man in the mackintosh.  "You're alive at
+any rate.  Well, somebody has looked after you all right," he remarked,
+eyeing the remains of Peckover's last dinner.
+
+"Oh, yes, I've dined," Peckover replied loftily.
+
+"You bet.  Like a lord," assented the stranger cheerfully.  "By the
+way"--he scrutinized him curiously, much to that gentleman's
+uneasiness--"by the way, you don't by any chance happen to be a lord?"
+
+Something in the man's manner suggested a reason for the inquiry other
+than mere chaff.  "Suppose I am?" returned Peckover, with his best
+attempt at an enigmatical smile.  The newcomer stared at him as though
+unable to make up his mind to risk a question, and as he hesitated, the
+dripping mackintosh made a circle of water round him.  "Well, if you
+are----" he stopped, and abruptly changed the subject.  "Staying here?"
+he asked; "or just waiting till the rain stops?"
+
+"That's it," Peckover answered, scarcely knowing how to take the fellow.
+
+"Far to go?"
+
+"Few miles, I'm waiting for the carriage," said Peckover casually,
+remembering what Quorn had told him.
+
+"H'm!"  The man looked at him as though stoked to blowing-off point
+with curiosity.  "Not going Staplewick Towers way?"
+
+The problem as to whether it were better to say yes or no was too
+complex for Peckover's present state of mind.
+
+"That's my way," he declared, and chanced it.
+
+The stranger's face brightened with anticipation.  "Going to the
+Towers, perhaps?" he asked with hopeful persistence.  Peckover nodded
+in as non-committal a fashion as he could command.  "Why," cried the
+other, "I do believe I'm in luck after all.  You hinted just now you
+might be a lord.  You don't tell me you are Lord Quorn?"
+
+"You've guessed it."
+
+With another word the stranger turned and walked energetically to some
+pegs at the end of the room, unbuttoned the humid mackintosh and hung
+it up; also his hat.  Then, with business-like action, he came back and
+favoured the astonished Peckover with a long stare of gratified
+curiosity.  "Excuse me," he said, "but it's more than curious that the
+man I have been hunting all the week should run across me like this."
+
+Instantly Peckover remembered Quorn's amateur bush-ranger.
+
+"You're from New South Wales?" he faltered.
+
+"Wrong," the other declared cheerfully.  "You're not quite as good at
+guessing as yours truly.  I'm from Tasmania, I'm proud and happy to
+say."
+
+It struck Peckover that the dapper, well-knit man with the keen
+hustler's face set in straight black hair could hardly be Quorn's
+bully.  He could not quite imagine the man before him spending even his
+leisure time in trying feats of strength on his long-suffering
+neighbours who chanced to displease him, to say nothing of cattle and
+fire-irons.
+
+Just then Mr. Popkiss appeared, and approached Peckover with a mien of
+deferential apology.  "Beg pardon, my lord," he said confidentially,
+"but I'm glad to say that Dr. Barton has had that unfortunate mishap
+removed to his surgery, which is a great relief to me, and I must
+apologize to your lordship for the unpleasantness occurring on my
+respectable premises.  We've never had anything of the kind occur
+before."
+
+"Oh, you couldn't help it," Peckover replied graciously, his wits more
+keenly about him.  "He ought to have known better, but people, I
+believe, are very careless about these matters.  I didn't see what the
+poor fellow was up to."
+
+"No, my lord; naturally, my lord."
+
+"Now, landlord, since you've seen fit to come to light, bring us a
+bottle of your best champagne," directed the stranger.
+
+Mr. Popkiss, who had been inclined to disregard the new customer, at
+once became exceedingly attentive and bustled off on his errand, since
+a hungry guest is worth twenty full ones.
+
+No sooner was he gone than the man drew his chair up to Peckover's and
+said quietly: "Now that I know I'm really right and you are Lord Quorn,
+I've got a proposal, a genuine business proposition to make to you."
+
+"Have you?" replied Peckover, wondering what in the world was coming,
+and cursing Popkiss who came in just then with the wine and so delayed
+the explanation of the mystery.
+
+The stranger's quick eye had caught the similarity of the labels on the
+bottles.  "Why you've been having one of the best too," he remarked.
+Then added in an undertone as the fussy Popkiss left them, "I thought
+in your case the title didn't carry exactly a million with it."
+
+"No, not exactly," Peckover replied equivocally.  "But I don't see what
+business that is of yours," he added by an afterthought, to maintain
+his dignity.
+
+"You will directly, though," the other retorted.  "Till then I beg to
+apologize.  Now look here," he touched glasses with his companion,
+"luck; and may we both get what we want, which is assured if we come to
+terms."  They emptied their glasses, and the stranger, refilling them,
+leant forward to whispering distance.
+
+"No time to lose, if this matter is to go through," he said in a
+business-like undertone.  "So I won't beat about the bush.  This fat
+publican"--he jerked his head backwards towards the bar--"knows you are
+Lord Quorn.  Does any one else know it in these parts?"
+
+The question was put so purposefully that Peckover had no hesitation in
+answering it frankly.  "No one but the barmaid.  I've not been here
+more than two hours."
+
+"That's all right.  Now for my proposition."  He drew up yet an inch or
+two closer to Peckover.  "First of all it is necessary for me to state
+I am a rich man; well, practically a millionaire."
+
+Peckover pushed back his own chair.  "I say; no room for the confidence
+trick here, old man," he exclaimed suspiciously.  "Try next door."
+
+"Pouf!" the stranger contemptuously blew away the suggestion.
+"'Confidence trick?'  It's the other way on.  It is I who am going to
+place the confidence in your lordship.  Now, look.  Here is my proposal
+in a word.  You're a poor man, or at least a poor peer; I'm a rich man.
+We are both of us practically unknown over here.  I want you to sell me
+your title."
+
+"What?" cried Peckover in amazement.
+
+"Don't make a noise," said the other quietly.  "If this transaction is
+to go through, as, if you are not a fool, it will, the less attention
+we call to ourselves for the moment the better.  Just hear what I've
+got to say.  My name is Gage.  Come into property down under from my
+father.  Now I'm, as I say, a millionaire.  But the devil of being a
+millionaire is, when you are nobody in particular but a millionaire,
+that you don't and can't get value for your money."
+
+"Ah!"  Peckover nodded sagaciously as he began to comprehend.
+
+"Now," pursued Mr. Gage, "an ordinary person would imagine that a man
+with an income nearer forty than thirty thousand could have for the
+asking--and the paying for--the best of everything this world has to
+offer.  All rot.  An outsider like myself with the income I have
+mentioned doesn't have nearly such a good time as a smart young sprig
+of good family, who's been born and bred in the swim, can get with a
+beggarly fifteen hundred a year."
+
+"That's right enough," Peckover assented with an air of endorsing from
+experience that profound truth.
+
+Mr. Gage took out a coin and laid it on the table.  "There's a
+sovereign," he said, tapping it impressively, while his companion eyed
+it covetously.  "There it is.  Coin of the realm.  Value fixed and
+accepted all the world over, you'd say.  Yet it's a strange thing, as
+society is constituted, that, according to the value to be got out of
+it, to one man it will be worth, say, five and thirty shillings, and to
+another about six and sixpence.  You follow me?"
+
+Mr. Peckover intimated by a knowing nod that not only did he follow the
+argument, but that, as a member of the aristocracy, he was prepared to
+back it by getting the enhanced value from the coin in question.
+
+"The reason is," continued Mr. Gage, "that when you are what what's
+called an outsider you have to pay, and pay double and treble for
+everything.  And when you've paid, and paid till you're sick of
+shelling out, you find you haven't got half what, if you'd only been
+'class,' you'd have got gratis for nothing."
+
+"That's so," Peckover assented dogmatically.
+
+"The millionaire business has been overdone," Gage proceeded, warming
+feelingly as he got into the swing of his grievance.  "Men like myself
+have been in too much of a hurry to buy up all the cake in the
+universe, consequently the price has gone up for it, and now, instead
+of a good substantial slice for a reasonable sum, we get only a few
+crumbs at famine prices."
+
+"No doubt," Peckover agreed, getting impatient of the preamble and
+anxious to come to the gist of the offer.
+
+"The fact is," Gage went on, hammering one fist on the other
+emphatically, "money by itself is a delusion and a daily eye-opener.
+Money with a title like yours is quite another pair of shoes.  If you
+reckon its purchasing power, and that's what justifies its existence,
+the golden sovereign in a millionaire's pocket dwindles to the size of
+a threepenny bit, and in a peer's it expands to the size of this."  He
+held up a dinner plate.
+
+"Inconveniently bulky," observed Peckover with a grin.
+
+"That's merely my illustration of the fact," said Gage severely, as
+deprecating cheap witticism in business discussions.  "Anyhow, I am
+content to put up with the inconvenience.  I want to have a good time.
+Fate has given me money with one hand and with the other prevents my
+getting value for it.  I don't want to waste time in building up a
+social position for myself; I want one ready-made, now; when I can
+enjoy it.  You want to have a good time, a better time than you'll get
+living on an empty title which means starving at Staplewick Towers.
+You're just the man I have been looking out for.  When I heard of your
+being found in Australia, I determined to do business with you if I
+could catch you soon enough, before you got known."
+
+"Well, what do you propose?" Peckover asked, a vista of escape and the
+enjoyment of a snatched opulence opening before him.
+
+"I propose," Gage replied impressively, "that you should allow me to
+assume the title, the identity and privileges of Lord Quorn.  After
+all, you did not expect to come into it; you are a backblocksman, like
+myself; only my father made it pay, and you hadn't begun to when you
+were sent for to join the House of Lords.  So far as any one outside
+our two skins is concerned it doesn't matter a rush whether you are
+Lord Quorn, or I.  So far as the British constitution goes there's no
+divine right about you, visible at least to the naked eye, that I don't
+possess.  You don't feel anything like it inside, do you?"
+
+"Can't say I do," answered Peckover, with more instant conviction than
+the other could possibly give him credit for.
+
+"No," resumed Gage; "we are of the same make, I guess; and if it suits
+us to make a fair exchange, why nobody's hurt."
+
+"Just so," assented Peckover.  "Well, what's your offer?"
+
+"Four thousand a year, paid monthly, as long as you let me hold the
+title undisputed."
+
+Four thousand a year!  It was as much as the
+thirty-five-shillings-a-week clerk could do to refrain from an
+astounded whistle at his luck.  But he did repress it, and, shrewdly
+grappling with the overwhelming proposition, replied, after what seemed
+a calculating pause, "Make it five thou., and it's a bargain."
+
+Five thousand had been the figure of Mr. Gage's willingness; only, in
+accordance with a well-established business method, he had offered less
+than he was ready to give.
+
+"All right," he replied.  "Five thousand while I'm Lord Quorn.  We
+shan't need a written contract.  It will be as much to your interest to
+keep quiet as it will be mine to write you a cheque on the--let's
+see--the ninth of every month.  So that's settled, eh?"  He refilled
+the glasses.
+
+"Yes, my lord, that's settled," responded Peckover with a grin, and
+feeling happier than at any time during the past twenty-four hours.
+"Here's health and the best of luck to your lordship."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"I don't quite see ourselves bluffing all and sundry that you are Lord
+Quorn," Peckover said doubtfully, as they finished the bottle.
+
+"My good sir," replied Gage, "I don't see how we can help taking them
+in if we make up our minds to do it.  Just think; what man is there
+alive who could really, logically prove his own identity if he were put
+to it.  Not one of us.  We are just accepted by the world as William
+White and Henry Black, John Thompson or Thomas Johnson; and in most
+cases correctly so.  In one case in ten thousand the world makes a big
+mistake, but it doesn't count for much."
+
+"Suppose not," observed Peckover, wondering whether he would not have
+plenty of enforced leisure for counting if the world should find out
+its mistake about him.
+
+"Very few people know us over here," argued Gage; "and the few who do
+can be easily bluffed, if it comes to that.  If we both swear to the
+same thing, who can stand against us?"
+
+"No, that's right enough," Peckover agreed.
+
+"Now I've been thinking," continued Gage, "that it won't do for us to
+part company till this little arrangement of ours can run along without
+pushing.  You must come over to these Towers with me and see how the
+land lies.  We shall want to spend some money, at least I shall, so you
+had better be a rich friend I picked up on the voyage, and we can
+pretend the ready comes out of your pocket."
+
+"But only Lord Quorn is asked," Peckover objected.
+
+"Oh," replied Gage, "a rich man is always sure of a welcome.  He may be
+expected to pay for it, but there it is, all ready for him, if he asks
+for it cheque-book in hand."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Perhaps it may not be a very genuine article; a sort of rolled-gold
+welcome for which you are expected to pay as though it were twenty-two
+carat all through.  But it will wear long enough for our purposes, and
+the adulteration won't be all on their side."
+
+Host Popkiss looked in.  "Rain clearing off, my lord," he announced.
+"I expect Colonel Hemyock will be here directly to welcome your
+lordship."
+
+"All right, landlord," replied Gage.  "In the meantime my friend and I
+are quite comfortable here."
+
+Popkiss stared at him, in mind to resent what he considered an
+irreverent liberty.
+
+"Still, I shan't be sorry to find myself at the Towers," Gage observed
+casually.
+
+This was rather more than Popkiss could stand.  He did not approve of
+casual customers (even if they ordered champagne) playing unseemly
+jokes with noble guests in his coffee-room.  "Beg pardon, sir," he said
+with puffing severity, "I was addressing myself to Lord Quorn."
+
+"Then," returned Gage, "you were addressing yourself to me."
+
+In consequence of the superincumbent fat which circumvallated them Mr.
+Popkiss could not open his eyes very wide, but, as far as the muffling
+flesh permitted, his spacious face was understood to express an
+electrifying astonishment amounting almost to incredulity.  "Lord
+Quorn?  You, sir?" he gasped.
+
+"Look here, my venerable joker."  Peckover beckoned the bewildered
+Popkiss to him by a backward jerk of the head. "You've been tying
+yourself up in the wrong bag all the afternoon.  I've let you go on
+because I never spoil a good joke, but now my friend and
+fellow-traveller, Lord Quorn, has appeared, it is about time your folly
+was pointed out to you."
+
+"I'm sure I'm very sorry, my lord," the discomfited Popkiss apologized.
+"But as this gentleman did not deny it when I addressed him as my lord,
+and as we were expecting your lordship to honour my poor house, why,
+the mistake was only natural."
+
+"That's all right," replied Gage.
+
+"You're forgiven," grinned Peckover.
+
+Wheels sounded under the archway of the courtyard, and Popkiss was glad
+to bustle out.  "I had my doubts about him all the time," he told
+himself in extenuation of his error.  "If I'd seen them both together
+at first I should ha' known at once that 'tother was the lord."
+
+Meanwhile the two confederates were laughing at each other over the
+success of the first step on the path that promised to be so pleasant
+for both.
+
+They composed their faces as the door was thrown open and Colonel
+Hemyock and the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, accompanied by John
+Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, were ushered in with breathless ceremony by the
+egregious Popkiss.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" the Colonel inquired in a tone of pompous cordiality.
+
+Popkiss unctuously indicated Gage, who came forward with plausible
+aplomb.
+
+Then the ladies were presented, and Sharnbrook noticed gleefully the
+dead-set that lurked in their eyes.  His escape, he told himself, was
+now assured.
+
+"May I present my friend, Mr. Percival Gage?" the supposititious Lord
+Quorn said, as, taking the permission for granted, he brought up
+Peckover, whom, however, the Hemyock trio regarded a trifle doubtfully.
+"Made a fine position for himself out in our part of the world," Gage
+continued half confidentially, "and has come over to the old country to
+enjoy the fruits of his good fortune."
+
+The ladies instantly thawed.  The golden sun easily gets through
+snobbery's thin coating of ice.  They looked at his aggressive diamond,
+excused his vulgar flashiness on the ground of Colonial ignorance, and
+received his advances with as much gush as was left over from the
+lavish expenditure on the _soi-disant_ Lord Quorn.
+
+"A millionaire," Gage observed to the colonel, sinking his confidential
+tone yet a little.  The highly starched Colonel became almost limp
+under such a shower of good fortune.
+
+"I--ah--hope Mr. Gage will do us the honour of staying at Staplewick,"
+he said, and there was no doubt that he meant it.  "Lady Agatha will be
+charmed.  Any friend of Lord Quorn's will be more than welcome."
+
+So after a few more flourishes, it was settled.  Mr. Gage's luggage had
+unfortunately gone astray, but his costume would be excused that
+evening by Lady Agatha, and next day a complete outfit, the visitor
+declared, would be a mere question of the resources of Great Bunbury.
+
+Presently the neglected but chuckling John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook was
+noticed, and casually, as a matter of grace, introduced.  He lost no
+time in getting on easy terms with his prospective deliverer.
+
+"I'm the tenant of your shooting, Lord Quorn."
+
+"Hope you get good sport?" Gage replied politely.
+
+"Birds thick as cabbages," Sharnbrook assured him.  "I hope you will
+come out with me and see for yourself.  Of course you and your friend
+shoot?"
+
+"I should just think we did," Peckover chipped in with an eagerness due
+to the near realization of one of the dreams of his life.  Hitherto his
+shooting had taken place under cover at the rate of seven shoots for
+six-pence, and the presentation of a cocoa-nut if by luck or
+markmanship he rang the bell.
+
+That so bucolic and provoking a person as Sharnbrook at present clothed
+in the contempt woven of familiarity should be allowed to monopolize
+the distinguished guests by his stupid sporting chatter was
+intolerable.  Accordingly he was promptly snubbed and thrust aside.
+Then, amid much smirking and exhibition of the best side of everybody's
+face, a move was made for the phaeton.  Gage surreptitiously slipped a
+bank note into Peckover's hand, with which, and with a grand flourish,
+that unexpected plutocrat settled the somewhat exorbitant demands of
+Mr. Popkiss, and bestowed a liberal guerdon, accompanied by a wink, on
+Miss Mercy.  Then with what excitement and the nearest approach to
+cheers a country town on a wet evening can furnish the distinguished
+party drove off to Staplewick Towers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"It is too bad of you, Ethel.  I do wish you would mind your own
+business and confine your attentions to either old Sharnbrook or Lord
+Quorn.  The way you try to flirt with Mr. Gage is disgraceful.  Even
+you ought to be ashamed of it."
+
+"My dear Dagmar," her sister replied blandly, "Sharnbrook is, as you
+always said, after finding he preferred me to you, an idiot.  Only fit
+to be a keeper at the Zoo, or curator of a Natural History museum.
+Four thousand a year is utterly wasted on him."
+
+"No reason why it should, or should not, be wasted on his wife,"
+returned Dagmar shrewdly.
+
+"Lord Quorn," pursued Ethel, "falls to you by right.  A coronet, when
+he can afford one, will no doubt suit your style of beauty."
+
+"Thank you," retorted Dagmar, "I happen to prefer reality to mere show.
+Quorn hasn't a penny to speak of, Mr. Gage is as rich as anybody need
+be."
+
+"He is hopelessly vulgar, and has an unhappy knack of making himself
+ridiculous," Ethel argued.
+
+"All millionaires are vulgar and absurd," her sister rejoined.  "It is
+expected of them.  People wouldn't believe in their money if they
+didn't bound and make fools of themselves.  Mother says Mr. Gage's
+vulgarity is as good as an auditor's certificate--whatever that may be.
+And if he has taken a tremendous fancy to me----"
+
+Dagmar flared up.  "What conceited impudence!  You want everybody.  You
+are the elder and Lord Quorn properly falls to you.  Failing him,
+Sharnbrook."
+
+"John Arbuthnot," said Ethel dreamily, "has the bad taste not to be
+very keen, and Gage is."
+
+"Quorn's all right," Dagmar suggested.
+
+"Then you have him, dear," her sister retorted.  "Plain Percy Gage is
+good enough for me."
+
+As Ethel was clearly holding to her point, and that not a point of
+honour, Dagmar saw that a mere appeal to her better feelings was
+futile.  "Tell you what it is, my dear," she said, changing her
+tactics.  "If you go on like this we shall lose Quorn and the
+millionaire bounder and old Sharnbrook into the bargain.  We must have
+the coronet and the million in the family."
+
+"All right," Ethel agreed, after a few moments' calculation.  "Let's
+compromise and give each other a fair chance with Gage.  Suppose we
+take it in turns to bring him to the scratch."  She took a pack of
+cards from a box.  "Cut for first innings.  First knave; two out of
+three."
+
+"Why knave?" Dagmar objected, "Gage is more of a f--the other thing."
+
+"Perhaps," Ethel agreed.  "Anyhow, the knave is the nearest approach to
+him in a pack of cards' catalogue of humanity."
+
+They began to cut with business-like eagerness.  Presently Ethel held
+up the desired card.  "Hurrah!  Knave!" she cried exultingly.
+
+From the amiable Miss Dagmar's protracted lips came the sound of an
+exclamation not unlike that which profane men are said to utter when
+the last match is puffed out with the pipe still unlighted.  "Two out
+of three," she insisted, and with the next turn cut a knave also.  But
+fate favoured Ethel, who cut the third.
+
+"My first try," she cried.
+
+"Wish you joy of Gage," said Dagmar spitefully.
+
+"Now, Dagmar," her sister protested, "it's a bargain.  Half an hour of
+uninterrupted running."
+
+"All right," replied Dagmar hopefully.  "Then I relieve guard, and you
+turn out.  I take up the running and so on alternately, till one of us
+lands him."  "Which shall not be so very long first," she promised
+herself.
+
+"Let's find out where he is."  Ethel, with business-like promptitude,
+sprang to the bell and rang it.  "Of course," she observed
+complacently, "whichever of us does not bag Gage will have the
+reversion of Quorn or old Sharnbrook."
+
+"Of course," Dagmar agreed with a suggested determination that the
+privilege in question should not be hers.  "Fancy Sharnbrook!  Ferrets
+in one's bedroom."
+
+"Rats where you least expect them," Ethel chimed in, hilarious at what
+she was resolved should be her sister's fate.
+
+"That idiotic one-legged partridge," cried Dagmar.
+
+"Pet mice asleep in your boots," responded Ethel.
+
+"Pattern of the carpet undecipherable for fox-terriers."
+
+"Wouldn't I put my foot down on them," declared Ethel grimly.  "Is Mr.
+Gage visible yet, Bisgood?" she inquired of the butler who now appeared.
+
+A very faint film of suppressed amusement seemed to spread over the
+well regulated face of Mr. Bisgood.  "Mr. Gage went out riding this
+morning," he answered woodenly.  "His lordship accompanied him."
+
+"Have they returned?"
+
+Again the haze of enjoyment seemed to blur the suave features.  "No,
+miss," Bisgood answered, and there might have been detected a slight,
+ever so slight, catch in the unctuous voice; "Mr. Gage did not get far.
+Harlequin was rather fresh."
+
+"Did--did anything go wrong?"  It was Dagmar who asked the question.
+
+This time there was no doubt about the abnormal expression on the
+butler's sleek face.  "Well, miss," he replied, with an apologetic
+grin, "I believe Mr. Gage came off."
+
+Without trusting his dignity to carry him through any elaboration of
+the bare and pointed statement, Bisgood, turned abruptly from the room.
+
+Miss Ethel tried to laugh off a certain sense of annoyance.  Till she
+had tried and failed Gage was more or less her property.  "Poor Gage,"
+she exclaimed.  "Fancy his taking a toss.  I hope he has not damaged
+himself.  That brute Harlequin!"
+
+"Now, Dagmar, dear, honour between--knaves.  You will take Quorn and
+Sharnbrook off while I have my innings, won't you?  I'll do as much for
+you."
+
+"All right," she answered, still rather sulky.  "But mind, no unfair
+advantage.  No running me down, or falling into his arms."
+
+"No, no," Ethel assured her; "that's a last resort.  We may have to
+toss for that later on."
+
+"There's mother coming across the lawn," Dagmar remarked with a yawn of
+indifference.  "You had better be off and console the noble sportsman."
+
+And as the fair Ethel vanished through the door, Lady Agatha Hemyock
+came in by the French window.  She was a woman of somewhat stately
+presence, acquired by long practice of standing on ceremony and on her
+dignity.  Her face was well set off by white hair dressed straight up
+from her forehead, pompadour fashion, which had the effect of bringing
+into rather aggressive prominence her sharp physiognomy which she could
+make, when she chose, the vehicle of a gamut of remarkable expressions.
+In French phrase, her face jumped at you; nevertheless, had not the
+nose been rather too long and too sharp she would have been as
+good-looking as she was wily.  Among her ladyship's more prominent
+accomplishments was an interesting trick of carrying on a conversation
+with one person while she listened to everything else that was being
+said in the room; a feat difficult of successful execution, and one
+which has a tendency to depreciate the performer's popularity.
+
+"Where's Ethel?" Lady Agatha inquired sharply, after a preliminary
+glance round the room to make sure they were alone.
+
+"Gone after Mr. Gage," Dagmar informed her, still sore from the
+consciousness of a lost chance.
+
+"How provoking of her," exclaimed her mother, "when I particularly want
+her to look after Quorn."
+
+"Just what I tell her," said Dagmar resentfully.
+
+"Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha declared, "will keep.  He is a fool, and is to
+be secured whenever we choose to bring him to the point.  Quorn
+is--er--not such a fool, and if the coronet is to come into the family
+it is essential that he should be looked after.  He ought to have the
+choice of you."
+
+"No money, mother."
+
+"Perhaps not.  But a nice old place and an aristocratic position."
+
+"You've got most of that, mother," Dagmar observed shrewdly, "and you
+are discontented enough."
+
+"Well, you can't both marry Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha argued, ignoring the
+personal citation.  "And if you don't take care, the one he does not
+choose will lose Quorn as well."
+
+"Well, for a peer and a millionaire," Dagmar observed decidedly, "they
+are the most hopeless specimens.  Neither being in the least like what
+he ought to be, I should prefer the money.  It is the only thing here
+that looks like what it is."
+
+"I am thinking of your position, my dear," her mother replied
+insinuatingly.  "Millionaires are getting so common and unpopular."
+
+"Peers are common enough," Dagmar retorted.  "They made a dozen--and
+such a dozen--the other day."
+
+"Not old ones," rejoined Lady Agatha.  "Quorn's peerage is centuries
+old, and improves with time."
+
+"But I don't," returned her daughter pointedly.  "And the idea of my
+descendants swaggering about with a coronet wherever they can put it,
+in the year 2147 doesn't amuse or comfort me at all, or reconcile me to
+the fact that nobody, without being told, would take Quorn for a peer,
+even if he dressed every day in robes and coronet, always supposing he
+could afford that somewhat expensive get-up."
+
+"After all, a peerage is above money, my dear," Lady Agatha urged.
+
+"Yes," was the quick reply, "it ought to be above it, and have the
+money underneath to support it.  No, I prefer to take my chance of
+cutting out Ethel, and buying a peerage with some of Gage's money."
+
+Lady Agatha shrugged.  She could not bring herself to let Quorn slip
+through their fingers when they had him in hand.  "There is as much
+difference between an old title and a new one as between new wine and
+old," she asserted dogmatically.
+
+"Granted, mother," Dagmar assented cheerfully.  "But when some idiot
+has pulled the cork out, causing the strength and the flavour to
+evaporate, and the dust has got in, the old is worse than the new."
+
+"You are most provoking and disappointing, Dagmar," Lady Agatha
+exclaimed, losing patience.  "To think that the Quorn coronet should go
+begging."
+
+"That's exactly what the owner will have to do, it strikes me," the
+undutiful one retorted.  "And it is what I don't intend to do while
+Messrs. Gage and Sharnbrook are handy and bachelors.  Here's Ethel.
+Hurrah!  She doesn't look all over a winner.  My turn," she said with a
+snap, as that discomfited-looking young lady came in.
+
+"That it isn't," Ethel flung back in a reciprocally pleasant tone.  "I
+haven't seen the man yet."
+
+Dagmar's look would hardly have been accepted as a testimonial to her
+sister's veracity.  The statement, nevertheless, was true.  Ethel had
+raced all over the grounds in pursuit of her quarry, but had just
+missed striking the trail; the object of her hunt having contrarily
+appeared in the drive as the fair huntress, after drawing it blank,
+moved off hungrily to the park on the other side of the house, whence
+having prowled herself tired, she had at length come in, spent and out
+of breath and patience.
+
+Noting her amiable state of mind, Lady Agatha, prompted by experience,
+prepared to withdraw, with a Parthian shot which took the form of the
+sarcastic expression of a thoughtful hope that, in case of possible
+accidents, the pair of charmers were not entirely losing sight of the
+existence and eligibility of a certain John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, nor
+were permitting him to ignore theirs.
+
+
+"You haven't hurt the horse?" Gage inquired, as he and his confederate
+walked towards the house together.  "Sorry now I didn't think of
+stopping to see what happened."
+
+"Hurt him?" Peckover exclaimed, resenting the question as making light
+of his own peril.  "Never had a chance.  It took all my time to see he
+didn't hurt me.  Hurt the brute?  I should like to," he continued
+wrathfully reminiscent.  "I'd teach him the difference between a
+quadruped and a gentleman."
+
+"How did you come to take him on?" asked Gage.
+
+"Take him on?  He took me on," returned the discomfited equestrian.
+"All right, I'll remember that groom, Wilkins, or rather, I won't
+remember him.  'Just throw your leg over Harlequin, sir,' he says, 'and
+take him over the turf!'  Now, old man, I should describe that animal,
+from a safe distance, as an inferior plater; but when I got up my
+feeling of contempt changed to one of respect--it usually does.  On
+foot I'm pretty familiar with horses; once on their back I feel as
+though I had not been properly introduced.  Well, I mounted in best
+jockey style; I haven't shelled out for the saddling paddock for
+nothing.  'Me up,' says I, just waking him up with the whip.  Next
+moment it was me--down, and instead of putting him over the turf, he
+very nearly put me under it.  I don't think you could have passed a
+five-pound note between his hind hoof and my front teeth.  His near
+plate was so near that my jaw was almost off."
+
+"Good job it wasn't," observed Gage, wondering how much such a
+catastrophe would have affected his enjoyment of the pleasures of the
+peerage.
+
+"You're right.  Well, the fellows were grinning; so, thinks I, if the
+horse won't be beaten, no more will I.  So I ups into the pigskin
+again, and tries the soothing system."
+
+"Did that do better?"
+
+"Slightly.  The animal began to feel quite comfortable, and after a bit
+sat down."
+
+"Sat down?" laughed Gage.  "What became of you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," answered Peckover, with rueful humour, "whether
+it has ever struck you, in Tasmania or elsewhere, that it is a
+difficult thing for a horse and its rider both to sit down at the same
+time.  You see, there is no back to the saddle, so I just slid down
+over the tail, with as much side as I could put on, and then footed it
+off.  It's all very well for you to laugh, my lord," he remonstrated,
+as the other man's guffaws grew exasperating, "but it would take you
+all your time to keep your back stiff when the horse under you is
+sitting up like a cat, and the back of his head trying to play the
+castanets with your front teeth.  Harlequin?  He's a regular pantomime
+rally."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," suggested Gage, "if he was called Harlequin,
+because he'll jump through anything."
+
+"Dare say!" replied Peckover dryly.  "No doubt he'd have tried jumping
+through a brick wall if I'd stayed there long enough.  No, thank you.
+I prefer seeing these little funniments from the top of the Grand
+Stand, not from the top of the performer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"Can't say I notice much family likeness, old man."  Peckover had been
+enjoying the novelty of a contemplative cigarette in the ancestral
+picture gallery of the Quorns, and was there surprised by Gage who had
+stood for a while silently comparing the portraits of dead and gone
+Quorns, in all stages of costume and self-consciousness, with the
+cheap, up-to-date cockney swell who sprawled in a great chair of state
+before them.  "I guess they didn't pick you out in Australia by the
+family mug."
+
+Peckover gave a short awkward laugh.  "I should hope not," he replied,
+recovering his mental balance.  "If I thought I was anything like that
+tuppence-coloured Johnnie I'd go and hang myself."  He pointed to a
+depressing portrait labelled, "Everard, fourth Baron Quorn."  "Good old
+Everard," he went on.  "I've no use for a nose like that, nor for the
+dial of that old juggins in the Dutch oven--what's his name?
+Marmaduke.  He'd only have to take the top off the pepper-castor to
+give the enemy a shock.  Useful face that to fall back on, and it looks
+as though some one had been falling back on it."  And he flicked the
+ash off his cigarette scornfully at the doughty warrior.
+
+"We don't run to beauty, do we?" Gage remarked.  "At least we didn't
+till quite recently," he corrected politely.
+
+"Fact is," said Peckover, "the old crowd were an over-rated lot.
+Making allowances for bad workmanship on the painters' side, we should
+have no use for them except on the Fifth of November.  They are fair
+frauds.  What do you think of a man who wears a steel lounge suit like
+that?"  He flung the end of his cigarette, having lighted a fresh one,
+at the nearest suit of armour.
+
+"Well, it covered up his deficiencies," observed Gage.
+
+"Yes," said Peckover, "it's about as clever as wrapping a twopenny
+smoke in silver-foil."
+
+Gage gave a look round the gallery as though to see that they were
+alone, and then sat down beside his friend.  "Tell you what it is, old
+man," he said seriously; "to change the subject, we must do something
+to make things hum a bit more for me.  I became my lord to get some fun
+out of it, but as things are, it strikes me that I've got the empty
+title, and you're having all the fun."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Why," Gage proceeded, "what's my position here?  I'm Lord Quorn with a
+million of money; but because Lord Q. is known to have next to nothing
+a year, nobody looks at me.  You're supposed to be the millionaire and
+every one runs after you."
+
+"Is that my fault?" Peckover asked pertinently.
+
+"I don't say it is," Gage returned.  "It suited our purpose to fix it
+so.  But it don't work.  There must be a change.  I don't pay five
+thousand a year to stand out in the cold on the bleak eminence of an
+impoverished peerage, looking on and seeing every girl in the place
+tumbling into your arms."
+
+"One can have too much of that sort of tumbling," Peckover remarked
+sententiously.  "And----"
+
+"Well, I'd like a little of it," snapped Gage, "and I'm going to have
+it."
+
+"That's reasonable," Peckover agreed.  "What do you propose?"
+
+"Well," answered Gage, "I've thought it out, and it's simple enough.
+I've got to find an excuse for spending my money, or, rather for having
+money to spend.  I've a plan.  I'm going to save your life."
+
+"What?"  Peckover jumped a foot away and turned a suspicious and
+alarmed face on his companion.  "What--what do you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say," the other replied quietly.  "I've got to save your
+life----"
+
+"What from?" Peckover inquired apprehensively.
+
+"Drowning, for choice," was the cool answer.  "Then in common gratitude
+you will make over to me a sum sufficient to give me a handsome income.
+See?"
+
+Peckover looked immeasurably relieved.  "I see that much," he replied.
+"But how are you going to save me from drowning?"
+
+"Well, that presents no difficulty.  We are going fishing on the lake,
+and you are going to over-balance yourself in your excitement and slip
+overboard."
+
+"Oh, am I?"  Peckover looked uneasily doubtful.  "I don't see where the
+excitement about fishing comes in."
+
+"That's a detail."
+
+"Then I can't swim," Peckover objected.
+
+"All the more reason for my jumping in to save you."
+
+"But supposing you don't save me?"
+
+"I'm bound to save you.  If I'm not going to rescue you, there is no
+point in your getting wet."
+
+"If you are not going to rescue me there's no point in my getting
+drowned," Peckover returned, with misgiving.
+
+"I shall work it all right," Gage assured him.  "Never let go of you.
+You're too precious."
+
+"I don't know.  It would be worth five thousand a year to you to let me
+dive to the bottom and stay there."
+
+"I'm neither a fool nor a murderer," Gage declared.
+
+"Not much catch in taking a cold bath with your clothes on," Peckover
+remarked, with an uneasy shiver.  "However, I suppose I must do it."
+
+"Yes," said Gage, "after all it's the most feasible form of
+life-saving, combining as it does the minimum of risk with the maximum
+of effectiveness."
+
+So it was arranged, and the next afternoon the confederates, dressed
+for the occasion in their oldest clothes, went fishing on the lake.
+Peckover, whilst ostensibly instituting inquiries as to the best pools
+for sport, had cunningly obtained information as to the depth of the
+water at various spots, and it was at one of the shallowest that he
+insisted on having the punt moored.
+
+"What's the good of my pretending to save your precious life in four
+foot six of water," Gage expostulated in a disgusted tone, as he
+pointed to the watermark on the punt pole.  "We shall be taken for
+blithering idiots."
+
+"That won't matter," returned Peckover stolidly.  "It's better than
+being blithering idiots, and dead ones at that."
+
+"We shall give the show away."
+
+"Better than giving a peerage and a million away," Peckover retorted.
+"Life's too comfortable just now for us to run any risks.  Besides
+who's going to remember how shallow the water is; and it stands to
+reason that if we could keep our breathing apparatus above water by
+just standing up, we shouldn't be such fools as to want any swimming
+and life-saving."
+
+So Gage had to submit, which he did with a better grace when he
+reflected that there might, after all, be some risk in saving a
+panic-stricken lover of life in really deep water.
+
+The two fishermen made a great fuss over their sport, angling as
+probably no one in this world had ever angled before, and in a manner
+calculated not to take in the most unsophisticated fish that ever swam.
+What their proceedings, however, lacked in method, they made up in
+exuberance; never before had two such showy fishermen sat in a punt.
+Naturally their intention was to emphasize, generally, their existence,
+more particularly their presence in the punt on the lake, and
+incidentally their designs upon the fish.  To their satisfaction they
+saw that they were not without observers.  The farmer, to whom the
+grazing of the park was let, had luckily put in an appearance to
+inspect his sheep, accompanied by a semi-sporting person who might,
+however, have been, and indeed was, a butcher from Bunbury in quest of
+raw material.  Presently two women came in sight, crossing the park by
+a right of way which skirted the lake.
+
+The moment was propitious.
+
+"Old man," said Gage, "this is grand.  We're in luck for an audience.
+Now, over you topple; only, do it artistically, or you will have your
+dip for nothing."
+
+Peckover threw a distasteful glance at the weed-grown water, and then
+his eye roved from the haggling fanner and butcher to the chattering
+pair of villagers.  "Almost too much of an audience," he objected, with
+a view to postponing his immersion as long as possible.
+
+"Rats!  Can't be too many for our purpose," Gage returned impatiently.
+"We've got to make a business of it, if it's to do any good.  Over you
+go.  The water won't be any damper for you than it will be for me."
+
+"You can swim," observed Peckover with something suspiciously like a
+chattering of the teeth.
+
+"What odds does that make in four foot six of water?"
+
+"Beastly weedy hole," remarked the unwilling adventurer.
+
+"All the better.  Makes it look more dangerous, and keeps people from
+seeing how shallow it is."
+
+"I believe," said Peckover, with an admirable air of conviction, "there
+is an out-sized pike under those weeds.  I just saw his scales glisten."
+
+"Then you'll astonish him, that's all," was the unsympathetic reply.
+"Any one would think it was a crocodile or a shark by the funk you're
+in.  Now, are you going over?  Not knowing the treat that's in store
+for them these people aren't likely to wait all day.  They'll be past
+directly.  Stand up and swing your line out."  Nerving himself to the
+disagreeable task, Peckover stood up, and began swinging the rod round
+his head.
+
+"That'll do," said Gage, with a show of directing his attention
+elsewhere.  "Now, over!  That'll do with the rod.  They'll think you
+mad.  Over, you fool!"
+
+Thus adjured, Peckover took the plunge, if plunge it can be called.
+Dropping the whirling rod on the placid surface of the lake, he
+suddenly stooped, nervously clutched the gunwale of the punt and,
+assisted surreptitiously in the manoeuvre by Gage's left foot, tamely
+rolled over the side.  His despairing shout, which had been agreed
+upon, was smothered by the shock of the cold water and the utterer's
+general preoccupation.  It therefore remained for Gage to do the
+shouting, which duty he performed with a vigour out of proportion to
+the apparent exigences of the case.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+For the dripping Peckover was still holding tenaciously on to the side
+of the punt, with a fixity of purpose which no mere considerations of
+stage effect seemed likely to dispose him to relax.  Added to this,
+there was more of his body above the surface of the water than appeared
+quite consistent with the idea of imminent and deadly peril; this was
+accounted for by the fact that he was standing, miserably enough, on
+the bottom of the lake.
+
+"Get down!  Let go of the punt!  D'ye hear?" commanded Gage, in an
+exasperated undertone.  "What's the good of hanging on there like a
+fool?  Get down, will you?  Duck that idiotic mug of yours under water,
+or how am I to go after you?"
+
+"I--d--d--daren't," chattered Peckover: "my feet are slipping or
+sinking or something; it's dashed deep mud at the bottom."
+
+"I wish your head was in it instead of your feet," retorted his
+prospective heroic rescuer, all the while making a fine show of bustle,
+for which, however, as viewed from the shore there was no obvious need.
+"Will you get down, before I knock you under?"
+
+As he spoke Gage was surreptitiously jabbing at Peckover's fingers,
+and, incidentally, at his face with the butt-end of his rod.  This
+somewhat drastic method of enforcing his orders and ensuring the
+vraisemblance of the performance was perhaps justified by the manifest
+absurdity and uselessness of his taking a showy and heroic dive in
+order to rescue a man who was, to the spectator's eye, holding
+comfortably on to a substantial punt with his breathing organs high out
+of the water.  As matters--that is to say, Peckover--stood, danger was
+the last thing that would suggest itself to the casual onlooker.  The
+note at the moment was farcical; it was urgently necessary to change it
+to the tragic, even at the expense of loosening a few of Peckover's
+front teeth.
+
+That unhappy dissembler, finding the episode of having a brass-capped
+butt in forcible contact with the more sensitive and damageable parts
+of his physiognomy more than he had bargained for, spluttered forth an
+objurgatory remonstrance, and, to cut short the objectionable
+attentions, let go, disappearing forthwith under the side of the punt.
+Whereupon Gage, uttering a wild and wholly unnecessary shout, poised
+himself for a few moments with one foot on the gunwale, and then,
+having attracted the attention he desired, took a tremendous dive into
+the water.  With such vigour did he go down that he forced his head and
+arms into a thick bed of weeds, which demanded for a time his
+breathless attention.  On extricating himself from the difficulty, and
+coming to the surface, he was much concerned to find that Peckover was
+nowhere to be seen.  Instantly he took another superfluous dive, and as
+he came up, knocked his head against the bottom of the punt.  Half
+dizzy with the blow, he now saw Peckover watching his efforts from the
+other side of the craft whither he had worked his way round while the
+diving was in progress.
+
+"What are you doing round there, you idiot?" he gasped.  "Get right
+down into the water at once and shout for help till I come along and
+catch hold of you."
+
+With the word, he struck out manfully and swam round to the other side
+of the punt, only to find on arriving there that Peckover had
+disappeared.  Whereupon he dived again, only to come up empty-handed
+once more, and to see the anxious face watching him, alertly
+apprehensive, over the farther gunwale.
+
+"What fool's game is this?" he hissed.
+
+"None of your larks," returned Peckover in a tone of resolute desire
+for self-preservation.  The cold water, the weeds and the mud were
+beginning to tell upon him; all sense of a practical joke had
+evaporated.
+
+Gage looked round.  On the right the farmer and the butcher, on the
+left the two women had come down to the margin of the lake and were
+watching the proceedings in a silence which betokened some doubt in
+their minds as to how they ought to take it.
+
+"Will you get under water and let me come to the rescue?" Gage demanded
+with exasperation.
+
+"Not good enough," Peckover replied, and thereupon he began a spirited
+effort to climb back into the punt.
+
+"Fool!"  Gage shut his mouth with a snap, and took a vicious dive under
+the punt as the shortest cut to his objective.
+
+As he rose, Peckover was half on board.  Without further expostulation
+Gage seized the leg which still hung in the water and furiously tried
+to drag it down.  Peckover resisted, kicking, and a very pretty
+struggle ensued, which taking place, as might be supposed, between a
+millionaire and a peer of the Realm, must have given rise to singular
+reflections and conjectures in the minds of the onlookers.
+
+Eventually the turn of the position favoured Gage.  The conditions
+under which Peckover fought rendered the struggle additionally painful;
+by degrees he lost ground and finally was dragged back exhausted into
+the water.
+
+"You stupid ass, I've a good mind to shove you under and keep you
+there," Gage growled.
+
+His victim could only gasp and shiver.
+
+"What must we look like from the shore?" Gage demanded savagely.
+
+Peckover made no reply, but from his manner it might have been gathered
+that his mental attitude on the subject was one of complete
+indifference.
+
+"Haven't we had enough of this tommy-rot?" at last he ventured to
+suggest.
+
+Gage was maintaining a fine show of keeping afloat in the
+four-foot-six.  "I think we have," he returned.  "I'm getting chilly,
+so we had better come to business.  Now, will you keep down in the
+water when you've quite done advertising the fact that it isn't up to
+our shoulders?"
+
+All the response Peckover made was--"Look at the punt!"
+
+Keeping the corner of an eye warily on his companion, Gage turned and
+looked.  The distance between them and the punt instead of a few feet
+was now some twenty yards.  The cause of this alteration was obvious.
+Their struggles had caused the cord which made fast the craft to one of
+the poles to become untied and the other pole to work loose.  There was
+some wind, under which the punt was now moving at a fair pace over the
+lake, dragging one pole with it.
+
+"All right," said Gage, "I'll soon catch it and bring it back."
+
+But Peckover clutched him with the tenacity of despair.  "No, you
+don't," he exclaimed, anxiously resolute.  "You don't leave me here.
+How am I to get ashore if you don't come back?"
+
+"Walk," answered Gage, trying to free himself.
+
+"Yes, I dare say," Peckover retorted.  "You don't catch me trying it.
+It's not the same depth all over.  We're on a bit of a bank here."
+
+"Look at the blamed thing going off," Gage cried.  "Let go!  She'll be
+a quarter of a mile away directly."
+
+But Peckover was not to be shaken off.  "You don't go and leave me
+here," he insisted wildly, "for any old punt."
+
+The situation was an interesting one, and as such, no doubt the four
+spectators acknowledged it.  Their comments, however, had not so far
+been directed to the performers.
+
+"What are you going to do?" Peckover asked, still gripping the plunging
+Gage.
+
+"Going for a swim," he answered unfeelingly, at the same time making
+spirited but futile efforts to dive.
+
+"No, you don't," Peckover returned, restraining his companion's
+attempts with all the energy that the chill and unusual element allowed
+him.
+
+Gage, kicking and struggling, was at length obliged to desist, after
+having furnished a several minutes' novel and exhilarating exhibition
+to the puzzled spectators.  Short of actual murderous violence, it was
+not possible for him to free himself from the tenacious Peckover.  It
+was difficult, he had to own, to do much in the way of natation with a
+desperate person hanging like grim death on to his legs, moreover,
+Peckover's embrace had a tendency to send Gage's head under water and
+to keep it there.  So, exasperated and vindictive as he felt, he had to
+compromise.
+
+"Well," he said, veiling his displeasure and sense of defeat with a
+cheerless grin, "am I going to save your life or not--before we catch
+our death of cold?"
+
+"You've got to," was the dogged reply.  "Five thousand a year is too
+good to say good-bye to in the middle of a pond."
+
+"It is all your silly rot that has stuck us here," Gage returned.  "If
+you hadn't played the drivelling idiot, the life-saving performance
+would have been comfortably over half an hour ago."
+
+"Well, get it over now," retorted Peckover, "as quick as you like, and
+no tricks."
+
+"All right; come on," said Gage ill-humouredly.  "Let's hope those
+fools won't see through the fake."
+
+"This way," said Peckover, starting off breast-high in the water,
+towards the nearest shore, and still holding tightly to his companion.
+
+"You are not going to walk?" Gage exclaimed aghast.
+
+"I'm going to do what I can do best, and I can't swim," Peckover
+replied, with a determination which was apparent even through his
+shivering.  "We'll have to try this life-saving joke in some other
+form.  It's getting a bit stale this way."
+
+Slowly their progress towards the shore, impeded by mud and thick
+weeds, began.  They had not noticed that the farmer, actuated by
+humanitarian motives or with an eye to reduction of rent, had run off
+to an old boat-house, and was now hurrying back with an oar and a coil
+of rope.
+
+"All right, my lord!" shouted the butcher, as taking credit for his
+friend's action.  The two men, shivering and struggling unromantically
+through the jungle of weeds, smiled unpleasantly at the cry.
+
+Suddenly Peckover became aware that the water was up to his chin.
+"It's getting deeper," he gasped, trying to hold his companion back.
+
+"Let it," Gage retorted sulkily.  "We've got to get to shore, dead or
+alive."
+
+With an energy which suggested his preference for the latter mode of
+arrival Peckover threw his arms around Gage and tried to draw him back.
+"Try another way," he panted.
+
+"You can.  I'm going straight on.  You should learn to swim," was the
+unkind response.  "If you don't let go, not another penny of my money
+shall you see," Gage added, beginning to have doubts about his own
+ultimate safety in those dreadful weeds.
+
+"You're not going to leave me here to drown?" Peckover remonstrated,
+shaking with terror.
+
+"You can go back."
+
+"What's the good of that?"
+
+"I'll fetch a boat."
+
+Water had become so utterly distasteful to Peckover that even the
+comparative shallows had no longer the slightest attraction for him.
+"What am I to do?" he shrieked.  "Gage, you must save me!"
+
+"Don't feel up to it now; too cold," was the unfeeling reply.
+
+Peckover now found that the extra six inches in the depth of the water
+made all the difference when it came to a struggle.  The margin below
+the breathing point was too small to permit of a sustained effort.
+Gage struck out, and Peckover, choosing what a momentary consideration
+suggested as the lesser of the two evils, let go his hold and stayed
+behind where at least his mouth was above water.
+
+What the four people on the bank now saw was this.  The supposed Lord
+Quorn leaving his companion, and energetically striking out for the
+shore, while the head which was all that was visible of the pretended
+millionaire remained a weird and ghastly object on the green expanse of
+water.  To add to the interest of the scene, Peckover, finding the mud
+on which he stood, had a tendency to give way beneath him, was forced,
+as he gradually sank, to keep jumping, with the object of maintaining
+his head well above water.  That the situation had grown critical was
+now fairly apparent, and it became borne in upon the farmer and his
+friend that heroic measures were indicated.
+
+Directed by the butcher, who assumed an important (and dry)
+superintendence of the operations, the farmer now waded to the tops of
+his gaiters into the lake, and flung out the oar with the rope attached
+towards the wildly struggling Gage.
+
+"There you are, my lord.  Lay 'old!" shouted the butcher.  "Then you
+can go back for the gentleman.  You'll 'ave to get a little farther
+out, Mr. Purvis; the rope's a bit short."
+
+"Wish you'd come and lend a hand yourself, Mr. Fanning, instead o'
+telling me what any fool can see," Mr. Purvis called back testily, as
+the water lapped over the rim of his gaiters.
+
+"You're all right, Mr. Purvis," Mr. Fanning cried encouragingly,
+ignoring the invitation.  "Pull the oar in and throw it out again to
+his lordship."
+
+"Thought you could swim, Fanning," observed Mr. Purvis, wrestling
+uncomfortably with the difficulties of the situation.
+
+"Never," Mr. Fanning protested promptly and mendaciously.  "Wish I
+could.  Now, out with it!  Take care of his lordship's 'ead."
+
+Once more the oar hurtled through the air, and fell this time within a
+yard of Gage's blanched face.  Making a desperate and supreme effort,
+he seized it, and, once sure of the timely support, clung to it panting
+and exhausted.  As he rested there, his feet naturally sank till they
+met with an obstruction.  Moving them about to clear himself, Gage
+found that they had touched the bottom; he forthwith stood up and
+disclosed the fact that he had been swimming for his life in three feet
+of water.
+
+"Look to the other gentleman, Mr. Purvis," directed Mr. Fanning from
+his post of high and dry observation.
+
+Mr. Purvis and Gage accordingly directed dubious glances at the bobbing
+head of the unhappy Peckover.
+
+"If your lordship would swim out with the oar to the gentleman," Purvis
+suggested, "I can pull you both in."
+
+"I dare say," returned Gage with chattering teeth.  "I'm not going
+back, the fun doesn't pay for the trouble.  You wade out as far as you
+can and throw the oar to him, and let your friend hold the rope.  Hi!"
+he called, to the complacent Mr. Fanning, "come here and catch hold.
+Hurry up or there'll be an inquest."
+
+The dictatorial Mr. Fanning's expansive face, together with his
+self-centred spirits, fell at the invitation.  "Sorry I can't swim, my
+lord," he objected, advancing along the margin with dry and lagging
+steps.
+
+"No one wants you to," retorted Gage as he heavily emerged, dripping
+and pitiful from the water.  "Go in, and hold the rope," he commanded,
+"or my friend will be drowned."
+
+And indeed Peckover's sharp cries, uttered so as to fill the
+opportunities when his mouth was above water, gave colour to the
+statement.
+
+Mr. Fanning, perhaps by the nature of his trade, rendered somewhat
+indifferent to the question of life and death where he was not
+personally concerned, had been congratulating himself on being well out
+of the affair; and now the order coming as it did from so important a
+personage and customer as Lord Quorn, was neither pleasant nor to be
+disregarded.  Personal discomfort was a thing to be endured by him only
+in other people, and now as he waded reluctantly into the water he
+resolved to avenge his outraged feelings and damp extremities by an
+extra penny a pound all round on his future deliveries at Staplewick
+Towers.
+
+"Now throw me the end of the rope, Mr. Purvis," he commanded when the
+water reached half-way up his calves.
+
+"You must come right out, Mr. Fanning," was the peremptory reply, "or
+we shall never reach the gentleman."
+
+Accordingly Mr. Fanning, standing between a cross fire of admonishment
+and objurgation, was fain to advance till waist-deep.
+
+Encouraged by the recently indicated shallowness of the water, Mr.
+Purvis now went boldly forward, as much with the idea of exhibiting
+superior prowess compared with Mr. Fanning, as of ingratiating himself
+with the lord of Staplewick.  The resoluteness of the proceeding,
+however, had the effect of demonstrating its own superfluity, for as
+Mr. Purvis pushed forward he sank no deeper in the water and was able
+to approach waist-deep within the oar's length of Peckover who, it
+appeared, had unfortunately come upon a hole and, in his fright, stayed
+there.  Clutching the end of the oar he was pulled out into safety,
+not, however, without a great show of superfluous energy on the part of
+Mr. Purvis, who wished to make the most of his effort and have the
+greatest possible return for his ruined breeches and gaiters; and so
+the three, rescuers and rescued, stumbled with mixed feelings to the
+shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The most tangible result of the aquatic performance was that Gage,
+through his long immersion, caught a bad chill, and had to take to his
+bed.  Peckover, who was none the worse for the trying twenty minutes
+(having probably been too frightened to think of catching cold), was
+summoned to his lordship's bedroom, and there passed a particularly
+uncomfortable quarter of an hour.
+
+"It is all your idiotic fault that I'm stuck away here," the patient
+declared wrathfully.  "That ass of a doctor says he won't let me get up
+for a week.  A fine lot of fun I'm getting out of the title up to now.
+And I'm paying you a hundred pounds for a week in bed.  As though it
+matters when I'm between the blankets whether I'm a lord or a
+solicitor's clerk.  A peerage only counts when you've got your boots
+on."
+
+"I'm very sorry, old man," said Peckover contritely.  "But I don't see
+that you can blame me."
+
+"I do blame you," Gage burst out.  "Why couldn't you do as I told you,
+instead of dodging about like a fool and nearly bringing us both to our
+death!"
+
+"You might make allowances," urged Peckover, "for a chap's feelings,
+when he finds himself for the first time in cold water with his clothes
+on."
+
+"Bah!" Gage returned scornfully.  "You've no pluck.  And you spoilt the
+whole show.  Well, it will have to stand, anyhow; I'm not going to let
+you make a fool of me again, whatever you may do with yourself.  Now
+perhaps you will put your mind to carrying through the dry land part of
+the trick.  If you don't I'll chuck you back your beggarly title, and
+get on without it.  It hasn't done much for me yet."
+
+"What do you want me to do?"
+
+"While I'm lying here," Gage answered in an aggrieved tone, "you've got
+to make the most of the rescue.  I reckon neither of us wants to play
+the joke over again."
+
+"Not me," Peckover agreed heartily.
+
+"Well, then, the least you can do is to make out what a splendid rescue
+it was, and that I'm a first-class hero, and that you're going to
+recognize the fact by making over to me a big slice of your fortune.
+D'you see?  If I'm not a hero there can be no point in your solid
+admiration and gratitude.  So rub it well in."
+
+"All right," Peckover promised.
+
+"You may as well," Gage proceeded, "send for the lawyer chap from
+Bunbury and have a deed drawn up, settling, say, a couple of hundred
+thousand on me, it won't mean much as between you and me, but it will
+impress the local public; and I tell you I mean to have a good bit of
+glory to pay for this beastly cold.  Now, do it at once and do it with
+a snap, or I shall find a better use for five thousand a year than a
+cold-catching title."
+
+Thus admonished, Peckover carried out his instructions with a will, and
+in a very few hours the _soi-disant_ Lord Quorn's heroic act promised
+fair to be an undying tradition for the country-side.  In fact,
+Peckover, in his anxiety to retain his desirable income, rather overdid
+the business, and so much so that one or two cynical spirits were
+goaded into making question whether the life so saved was really, apart
+from the income it might have left behind, quite worth the value its
+owner evidently set upon it.  Still, that mattered nothing to Peckover,
+who was not thin-skinned, at least on dry land.
+
+The _Bunbury Bulletin_ devoted a column and three quarters to the
+"Romantic and Heroic Incident at Staplewick Park," and told its
+breathless readers in unusually and adjectively gorgeous language how a
+distinguished young Colonial of immense wealth was the guest with the
+newly succeeded Lord Quorn at Staplewick Towers, temporarily in the
+occupation of Colonel and Lady Agatha Hemyock; how he had, while
+fishing in the justly celebrated and admired lake in the beautiful
+park, overbalanced himself in making a cast, had fallen into deep
+water, and he being in imminent risk of drowning, how the gallant young
+nobleman, worthy descendant of a line of heroes and otherwise
+distinguished ancestors, had plunged in and with great difficulty and
+after unheard-of exertions rescued his friend.  The writer having fully
+described the occurrence, with a minuteness of detail only possible
+from the pen of one who was not there, proceeded to give the respective
+lineage and achievements of rescued and rescuer, while the interstices
+in the thrilling narrative were filled up with topographical,
+historical and picturesque notes by way of local colour; items which
+were kept ready for use in the event of anything worthy of description
+happening at Staplewick, from a chimney on fire to a royal visit.
+
+Great as was the sensation which the highly coloured account created,
+it may be safely asserted that by none was it read with more consuming
+interest than by Mr. Purvis, the farmer, and Mr. Fanning, the butcher.
+Their traditional and rooted belief in the infallibility of the
+newspaper press received a shock from which it never recovered.  But
+when their astonished perusal reached the last and most sensational
+paragraph, in which it was stated "on the best authority" that the
+grateful millionaire had, as a mark of his esteem, admiration and
+gratitude, settled a considerable fortune, "a sum which, it was an open
+secret, might be represented by a two and five noughts," on his
+deliverer, their sensations became of a complicated character that
+defied analysis.  Anyhow, the result was that they met to discuss the
+matter, and the outcome of the meeting was that next morning they
+proceeded to the Towers and sought an interview with the supposititious
+millionaire.
+
+Peckover felt somewhat uncomfortable when the visitors were announced.
+In his exuberance in making the most of a sham rescue he had overlooked
+the spectators, or at least had regarded them as negligible factors in
+the episode.
+
+After a few words of disingenuous congratulation, Mr. Fanning came to
+the point.  He and Mr. Purvis had seen it stated, doubtless correctly,
+in the local paper that Mr. Gage had in his gratitude, etc., rewarded
+his purported rescuer in more than princely fashion.  And Mr. Fanning
+and Mr. Purvis, whilst not withholding their meed of admiration from
+his lordship, whose illness they deplored, and who had, they generously
+admitted, done the best he could, were anxious to know where they came
+in, and could only say that it was hard for them to express in words
+their joint and several disappointment at being mentioned in connexion
+with the affair only in the roles of casual spectators.  Whereas, Mr.
+Fanning urged with a suggestion of latent heat, it was they who brought
+the accident to its comparatively happy termination; but for them and
+the parts they played, he, Mr. Fanning, did not think they would that
+day be having the pleasure of addressing Mr. Gage, or at any rate he,
+Mr. Gage, the advantage of being in a position to listen to them; the
+depressing inference being obvious.
+
+As Peckover had by this time come to take a more comfortable and even
+jocular view of the affair, he was not inclined to give more notice to
+the claim than seeing in it evidence that the bogus rescue had deceived
+its witnesses.  Moreover, as a Cockney, he had not much opinion of or
+consideration for the feelings of a farmer and a country butcher.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you did much," he replied off-handedly.
+
+"Begging your pardon, sir," Mr. Fanning maintained, "we did everything,
+if the lives of yourself and his lordship count for anything."
+
+"You didn't risk your lives," Peckover argued.
+
+"We did, begging your pardon, sir."
+
+"What, in three feet six inches of water?"
+
+"How," urged Mr. Fanning, "were we to know the depth?  We were prepared
+to go much deeper."
+
+"I dare say," returned Peckover incredulously.  "But as you didn't that
+doesn't come into the account.  You did a lot of shouting, I admit, and
+nearly knocked my head off by flinging that infernal oar at me as
+though you thought you were harpooning a whale.  Well, what do you
+want?"
+
+Mr. Fanning's face was lowering, and that of Mr. Purvis was overspread
+by a foolish grin of disappointment.  Certainly matters were not
+turning out as they had anticipated on their walk to the Towers.  They
+were being rudely awakened from their dreams of returning to their
+respective homes rich men.
+
+Mr. Fanning paused for a moment, as collecting, so to say, his routed
+forces for a final charge.  "Well, sir," he said, bluntly now and with
+a note of repressed indignation; "putting myself aside for the moment,
+I should like to ask, seeing what you are doing for his lordship,
+whether my friend Mr. Purvis' efforts on your behalf are not to meet
+with suitable recognition.  It was Mr. Purvis who, with me, kept our
+presence of mind when matters looked black; it was Mr. Purvis who,
+under my direction, ran with splendid promptitude to the boathouse; it
+was Mr. Purvis who fetched out all there was to fetch, the oar and the
+rope, and, under my directions, lashed the one to the other; it was Mr.
+Purvis who, at my suggestion, and at imminent risk to himself, first
+made sure of his lordship when his lordship was totally exhausted.
+Yes."
+
+Mr. Fanning paused, and drew a murrey-coloured handkerchief lightly
+across his heated brow.  Mr. Purvis, with the reticence of conscious
+desert, stood eyeing Peckover with an expression which suggested, that
+if that unsympathetic person was not duly impressed by the catalogue of
+his achievements, he ought to be, and that if he, Purvis, failed to
+obtain due reward for the same he would be content to leave his claim
+to the judgment of posterity, but at the same time would much prefer an
+immediate and more material recognition.
+
+"It was Mr. Purvis," resumed the butcher, "accompanied and assisted by
+your humble servant, who at considerable risk, I may say, great risk,
+since I am no swimmer----"
+
+"Nor ain't I," interjaculated Purvis, thankfully, as looking to his
+ignorance to increase the figure of his recompense.
+
+"Anyhow," continued Fanning, rather put off his eloquence by the
+interruption, "we risked it.  We risked it.  And we are husbands of
+wives and fathers of families."
+
+Mr. Fanning, who was said to be in the habit of knocking his wife about
+after an evening at the _Pigeons_, became, for a butcher, almost
+touching, and Mr. Purvis, whose wife ruled him with a copper-stick on
+the rare occasions when her tongue failed, experienced no difficulty in
+looking intensely married.
+
+"It was Mr. Purvis, guided and sustained by me, who pushed out for you,
+sir, and----"
+
+"It was Mr. Purvis, directed by you, who nearly sliced the top of my
+head off," Peckover interposed flippantly.
+
+"Your rescue," pursued Fanning, ignoring the interruption, "was no
+light matter.  It was the stiffest job I've ever been concerned in,
+though I must say I never expected to have to bring the fact home to
+the gentleman most interested in it."
+
+"Well," said Peckover curtly, "what did you expect?"
+
+"Leave it to you, sir," Purvis replied promptly, shrewdly fearing the
+effect his friend's verbosity might have upon the ultimate figure.
+
+But Mr. Fanning would have his say.  "Putting aside, sir, the risk of
+life we ran, to say nothing of the most valuable existence which it has
+been our privilege to prolong, I may mention that I was wearing on the
+occasion a bran new pair of boots which are now good for nothing, quite
+ruined, sir; I had on likewise my best market-day gaiters and breeches
+ditto; added to which the tails of my coat and the sleeves were so
+saturated that my missus can do nothing with 'em.  And I believe I am
+correct in stating that Mr. Purvis' wearing apparel was greatly
+deteriorated."
+
+He turned towards Purvis for corroboration.  That worthy man gave an
+assenting nod.  "Ain't been able to get into my breeches since, nor my
+boots, nor my gaiters," he asserted painfully.
+
+Peckover made a rapid calculation based on the price-tickets he had
+studied during the luncheon hour in the windows of various
+establishments in Cheapside.  "All right," he said graciously, "I shall
+be happy to present you with five pounds apiece; that is one pound
+seventeen for the damage and three guineas each for your trouble."
+
+For a few moments a sepulchral silence reigned in the room.  Then Mr.
+Fanning's mouth slowly opened, as though the machinery, brought to a
+sudden stop, was just set going again.  But all he could say was:
+
+"Five pounds apiece?"
+
+So profound was his emotion that for the moment Peckover was at a loss
+as to the real effect of his offer.
+
+"As a mark of my high appreciation of your services, and taking into
+consideration that we did not know the depth of water was only three
+foot six, I shall be pleased to make it guineas," Peckover announced,
+in as grand a manner as he knew how to assume.
+
+Mr. Fanning threw up his hands and turned to Mr. Purvis, an incarnation
+of despair.  "Five guineas!  Five!" he gasped.
+
+"The gentleman's joking," was all Purvis could say.
+
+"No, I really mean it," said Peckover with princely condescension.  "I
+absolutely refuse to reward your services at any lower figure, however
+much less your modesty may feel them to be really worth.  I said five
+guineas and I mean five guineas, and not a shilling less than five
+guineas apiece shall you have."
+
+Mr. Fanning was now reduced to a state of abject helplessness.  "Five
+guineas! five guineas!" was his cry.  "While the man who had to be
+rescued himself--by us, by us--gets a sum running into six figures.
+It's something to be a lord."
+
+"A poor look-out for respectable farmers and tradesmen," put in Purvis.
+
+"What," demanded Peckover, in well-feigned surprise, "aren't you
+satisfied?"
+
+"Not exactly," Fanning answered feelingly.
+
+"Well," returned Peckover, "I consider five guineas very good pay for
+ten minutes' work in preventing two gentlemen from drowning in three
+foot six of water."
+
+"It's an insult," Fanning maintained.
+
+"Oh, well," retorted Peckover, "I won't insult you.  Good-day."
+
+But neither Mr. Fanning nor Mr. Purvis had any intention of leaving
+heroism to be its own reward.  They made a simultaneous movement to
+intercept their insulter as he moved towards the door.
+
+"Don't misunderstand us, sir," said Fanning, tempering with a nice
+sense of dignity his demand for justice.  "We are poor men, and if five
+guineas apiece is really all you are disposed to offer us, why, our
+duty to our families is to accept it."
+
+"Ah, I thought you'd come to your senses," observed Peckover with a
+grin.  "Five guineas isn't to be sneezed at."
+
+"I've done a lot of sneezing for it," replied Fanning, "and so has Mr.
+Purvis.  We both got bad colds from the wetting."
+
+"Well, you can't expect me to pay you for having a cold in the head,"
+returned Peckover, with more flippancy than justice.  "Here's your
+bonus."
+
+He took out the money and paid them, with the full intention of
+recovering the same from his friend and patron upstairs.  Messrs.
+Fanning and Purvis received the inadequate solatium in a due spirit of
+protest.  The crackle of the notes in their bucolic fingers woke them
+from their dreams of affluence, and as they gazed with sorrow on the
+legend thereon the fact was established that five, not five thousand,
+was the figure at which their heroism was assessed, and that if justice
+was to be found in the world her habitat was not Staplewick Towers.
+
+With the departure of the dissatisfied pair Peckover threw himself into
+a chair and laughed for some minutes as he recalled, one after another,
+the salient points of the serio-comic interview.  He had his
+limitations and deficiencies, but a certain sense of humour was not
+among them, and the logical consequence of that magnificently absurd
+rescue and reward appealed to it strongly.
+
+"Oh, I'm in for a fine time at last," he chuckled, in unrestrained
+enjoyment of his new state of existence.  "What a bit of luck!  I'm
+going to be in clover for the rest of my days.  Tal ra, ra!  It's
+immense!"  He jumped up and began, in pure joyousness, to dance a
+double shuffle.  In the midst of his saltatory abandon he suddenly
+stopped.  The light in the room had become sensibly diminished.
+Pirouetting round to the window to ascertain the cause, he saw bulking
+therein the huge figure of a man who was watching his caperings with a
+threatening eye.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The man who, with his burly form filling up the window, stood looking
+in with grim amusement at Peckover's performance, was a great
+round-faced, bullet-headed fellow of six feet two, whose massive
+proportions, coupled with his juvenile countenance and somewhat vacuous
+expression, gave him the appearance of a fat schoolboy seen through a
+magnifying-glass.  He was dressed in a Norfolk suit of leather, which
+by its amplitude of cut made the wearer look even a bigger man than
+Nature had intended him to be.
+
+For some seconds the two stood staring at each other in a sort of
+stupefied silence.  Then Peckover, somewhat nervously, remarked,
+"Hullo!"
+
+"Keeping warm?" the substantial apparition enquired, drawing back the
+corners of his wide mouth in a sarcastic grin.
+
+"Foot asleep," was the ready explanation, given with a certain
+apprehensive quaver.
+
+"I see."  The stranger accepted the statement for what it was worth.
+"This is Staplewick Towers?" The question was put in a tone of settled
+conviction that only an answer in the affirmative would be deemed
+worthy of credence.
+
+"Yes.  Front door round to the left," said Peckover perking up.
+
+"Thanks," returned the intruder significantly.  "I'll try that way when
+I leave."  He took a step in to the room and stared round him curiously.
+
+"Awkward member!" was Peckover's muttered comment, duly impressed by
+the other's size, which made the furniture look small.  "You wish to
+see Colonel Hemyock?"
+
+"Not particularly," returned the stranger gruffly, "I want Lord Quorn."
+
+"Lord Quorn!"  Peckover caught up his face in the act of falling.
+"Pressing business?" he inquired politely.
+
+"Very."
+
+"Any message?"
+
+"No."  The man's voice was unnecessarily, objectionably loud, Peckover
+thought.  "You would not care to take what I've come all the way from
+Australia to give him," he added with unpleasant significance, as he
+twirled a thick crop, just missing a statuette by half an inch.
+
+So the complication which Peckover had feared but of which his good
+fortune and the zest of his new life had made him forgetful, had
+arrived.  In a moment the particularly awkward truth flashed upon him,
+that this was the dreaded bully from Australia, the brother of the
+would-be Lady Quorn.
+
+The idea put his thoughts in such a whirl that he was not ready with
+any reply.  His hesitation seemed to have the effect of exasperating
+the quick-tempered visitor.
+
+"Where is this nobleman?" he roared, with sneering emphasis on the
+substantive.
+
+Peckover, with the income of a Cabinet Minister at stake, was rapidly
+running over expedients for meeting the monstrous emergency.  To put
+him off for the moment and send for the police seemed the most feasible
+way.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" he replied.  "Oh, he's about."
+
+"He won't be about much after I have done with him," was the grim
+retort.  Suddenly stooping forward and looking viciously round the
+room, the unpleasant visitor carelessly threw his crop away over his
+shoulder and caught up the poker.  "Look here!" he bellowed.  "His
+lordship's right leg."  With the word he made a furious effort and
+snapped the poker in halves.  "See?" he panted, throwing the pieces
+down so near Peckover's feet that the impressed observer sprang
+eighteen inches into the air.  "How will his lordship like that?" he
+asked loudly.
+
+It occurred to Peckover that, considering the poor fellow's situation,
+the tampering with his noble limbs would not be likely to affect him
+much, and he said so.
+
+The strong man stared at him in incredulous exasperation that the
+performance had missed its intended effect.  "What?  He's not a big
+chap, is he?" he demanded.
+
+"No," Peckover answered, "I--I mean he is so devoid of feeling."
+
+The visitor caught up his crop and flourished it.  "My poor sister is
+not, though," he roared, with a violence which even his possibly just
+resentment scarcely seemed to justify.  "He promised to marry her, and
+then ran off.  But we are on his track.  Yes, I've got my
+broken-hearted sister waiting outside in the garden."
+
+Peckover felt that he must have a few minutes' solitude in which to
+think out the solution of the awkward problem.  "Hadn't you better go
+and fetch her in, while I tell Lord Quorn?" he suggested.
+
+"I will," was the answer, given with a violent suddenness which made
+Peckover start.  "And when I catch sight of his lordship," added the
+amiable zealot, "I'll astonish him.  I'll--I'll make him jump."
+
+"You'll astonish a good many people besides if you do," murmured
+Peckover dryly, as the bully flung off through the window.  Here was a
+pretty situation.  Was the good time he was enjoying and promising
+himself to turn into ash like a pipe of tobacco?  Already the
+_soi-disant_ Lord Quorn was complaining--and with some justice--that he
+was not having much fun for his money.  Would he be likely to continue
+paying five thousand a year for the privilege of marrying an
+undesirable colonial maiden with the alternative of having his arms and
+legs snapped, possibly his nose slit and his eyes gouged out, if he
+refused?  Not likely.  Nor that he would care to wear the title when he
+found it carried so little fun and so many inconveniences with it.  But
+what was he, Percy Peckover, to do?  The situation baffled him.
+Temporize was all he could think of; temporize till he could hit on
+some expedient for ridding the position of this awkward element which
+threatened to spoil it.  It was certainly exasperating just when he had
+settled down into a good thing to have to return to the hard world of
+work which he hated, poverty which he loathed, and his own identity of
+which he stood in terror.  But this great noisy bully--ugh! how he
+would like to----
+
+His bitter meditations were interrupted by footsteps on the path and
+next moment the _bête noire_ reappeared, this time with the lady.  The
+first anxious glance at her did nothing to dissipate Peckover's
+apprehensions.  A fine woman she was certainly, according to the
+popular acceptation of the term--tall and massive, but coarse and
+off-hand almost to vulgarity.  She had challenging black eyes, a nose
+which the most casual glance could never overlook, and a determined
+mouth and jaw.  Her hair was cut short like a man's, and in her hand
+she swung a substantial ash stick which she seemed quite capable of
+using to enforce any argument which verbal persuasion had failed to
+drive home.  As to her dress, it was of masculine cut, the skirt being
+deeply edged with leather.  Altogether she was a formidable and
+workmanlike young woman.
+
+Peckover had taken the precaution to latch the French window.  Finding
+it did not yield to his heavy hand, the gentleman from Australia
+applied his boot to it and burst it open.
+
+"This rotten window sticks," he remarked by way of apology.  "Come in,
+Lalage.  Mind the glass.  This," he said aggressively to Peckover, "is
+my poor deceived sister, Miss Lalage Leo.  My name is Carnaby Leo.
+Now, where's Lord Quorn?"
+
+"In bed," answered Peckover manfully.
+
+"What?" roared Mr. Leo.
+
+"You need not shout," Peckover suggested, fearful that the noise might
+reach other ears and occasion complications.  "We had an accident on
+the lake the other day, and he has been in bed ever since."
+
+"We've heard of it," said Miss Leo, speaking for the first time.  Her
+tone was as downright and masculine as her appearance.  "And are you
+the rich young man who was rescued from drowning?"
+
+"I am."
+
+Brother and sister exchanged glances, and the glances, Peckover told
+himself, foretold a further complication.
+
+"Lord Quorn is very seriously ill," he said impressively.  "Took a bad
+chill, and is suffering from congestion and--and fever.  It is quite
+impossible that you should see him for at least a fortnight, if he
+isn't dead by that date."
+
+"I'll see him, dead or alive," shouted Mr. Leo, who was making a tour
+of inspection round the apartment.
+
+"Be calm, Carnaby," said his sister casually.
+
+"It would kill him," observed Peckover, with conviction.
+
+"Killing's too good for him," returned Carnaby, loudly.
+
+"Hush, Carnaby!" the lady commanded.
+
+"He is delirious," said Peckover, warming to his work.
+
+"I'll bring him to his senses," growled Leo.
+
+"Better leave him to me for the present," suggested Miss Leo.
+
+"He wouldn't recognize you, or you him," said Peckover, for once
+touching upon the truth.
+
+"I'll soon let him know who we are," bellowed Mr. Leo, "and what we
+are--and what he is."
+
+"Impossible, while he's in this state," Peckover maintained.  "If you
+kill him----"
+
+"Good job too!" Mr. Leo interpolated.
+
+"He won't be much good for matrimonial purposes."
+
+"True," Miss Leo admitted.
+
+Peckover had noticed with some discomfort that of late her eyes had
+rested on him with increasing interest.  He was always typically alive
+to the slightest sign of female attraction to himself, but this
+particular attention did not produce in him the usual sportive
+complacency.  The situation was becoming tense.  The very complexity of
+his position took from Peckover his usual volubility.  Then he
+bethought himself of certain alcoholic sustenance which he and Gage
+kept in a closed cabinet in order to be able to indulge in it at
+uncanonical hours without the fuss of ringing and ordering drinks.
+_Noblesse oblige_, the new-fangled peer had observed in reference to
+his obligation to hide the evidence of irregular refreshment.
+
+"Have a drink?" he suggested, as he whipped out a decanter of derelict
+sherry which a foraging tour of the cellars had discovered.
+
+Mr. Carnaby Leo's interest in his surroundings seemed to deepen at the
+suggestion.  "I will," he promptly responded, as he swooped down upon
+the wine.  "Sherry!"  He pronounced the word with a contortion of his
+fat face which might be construed into an indication of preference for
+some other beverage not immediately forthcoming; but he drank it,
+gulping down a glass at a swallow, nevertheless.
+
+Suddenly Miss Leo turned to Peckover.  "You are not married?" she
+demanded with startling significance.
+
+"Not yet," he answered, blanching.
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+She stood over him breathing a fell design, her black eyes transfixing
+him, and seeming to wither his flippant courage to the very root.
+Still he made a feebly desperate effort to stave it off.  "Not quite.
+Almost.  Practically," he stammered.
+
+"That's a trifle," the lady returned with masterful decisiveness.
+"Easily got over."  Then to his relief she turned her blighting gaze
+from him and directed it meditatively to the expanse of park beyond the
+window.  "I think," she said musingly, "that in any event I see my way
+out."
+
+"Yes, that is the best way out," murmured Peckover as loudly as he
+dared, following her gaze.
+
+But she ignored the rash speech, and for some moments the silence was
+broken only by the smacking of Mr. Leo's lips as he endeavoured to
+impart gusto into his occupation.
+
+Peckover, dreading the next words, was about to call attention to the
+beauty of the landscape when Miss Leo suddenly turned upon him, and, as
+though struck by an exceptionally brilliant idea, said--"In the event
+of my not being Lady Quorn, why should I not marry you?"
+
+"Oh, bother!"  Peckover was startled into the expression of
+disagreement.  "Why should you?" he objected manfully.
+
+"If I set my mind upon it," she said, with a dangerous look in her eye.
+
+"Please take it off," he protested.  "Lord Quorn is my friend; he saved
+my life, I could not be so base as to rob him of you."
+
+"No," the lady replied dryly, "you wouldn't if I wanted him.  But I'm
+not so sure about it.  Anyhow, in case the poor fellow doesn't get
+better, why, he couldn't complain."
+
+"No, that would be my work," Peckover reflected anxiously.
+
+"Weak stuff, this," exclaimed Mr. Leo.  "Brandy neat is my sauce.
+Can't taste sherry."
+
+"It's not for want of trying," Peckover thought, as he noticed the
+almost empty decanter, but he did not say so.
+
+"Isn't he a fine fellow?" murmured Miss Leo, with an unwelcome approach
+to affectionate confidence.  "Be nice to him and he'll soon take to
+you."
+
+"He has soon taken to the sherry," was Peckover's mental commentary.
+
+"Strong as a lion," said Lalage, waxing enthusiastic.
+
+"And thirsty as a dozen," Peckover told himself.
+
+"Carnaby, dear," his sister called sweetly, "I want you and Mr. Gage to
+be great friends.  We are so already," she added caressingly to the
+unhappy Peckover; "more than friends, eh?"
+
+"Don't seem to have lost much time," was her brother's not unnatural
+comment as he leered at their victim.
+
+Peckover felt that if he did not take a firm stand at once he was lost.
+"I quite agree with you," he replied boldly, addressing himself to the
+still thirsty Mr. Leo and ignoring the lady's blandishments.  "There is
+no need to be in such a deuce of a hurry.  You see"--he took courage to
+face his would-be enslaver--"I never set eyes on you till ten minutes
+ago."
+
+Miss Leo's face changed swiftly from affection to resentment.
+"Carnaby," she exclaimed, as an ill-boding light flashed from her eyes,
+"do you hear that?"
+
+Carnaby, disturbed in his employment of draining the last drops out of
+the decanter, responded loudly, and, it seemed a trifle perfunctorily,
+"Never set eyes?  All right.  I'll take them out for you, and reset
+them directly."
+
+"But I'm not the man you want," Peckover protested.
+
+"Nobody," roared Leo, "will want you much after I've shaken hands with
+you."
+
+"I want Lord Quorn," Miss Leo declared resolutely.  "Failing Lord
+Quorn, I'll take you."
+
+"Well, but----" Peckover began to expostulate, when Mr. Leo rolled up
+and stopped him.
+
+"Now, look here, my pretty dickey-bird," he explained grimly, "I'm
+gentle up to a point, because my sweet sister doesn't like bloodshed.
+That poker," he pointed to the broken steel, "was his lordship's right
+arm; here is yours."
+
+He caught up the shovel, and with a quick movement snapped it, throwing
+the pieces back into the fender with emphatic and dismaying clatter.
+
+"Would you mind listening to me?" urged Peckover, regarding the
+object-lesson as unpleasantly superfluous.
+
+But the man of strength disregarded his appeal.  "I shan't hurt you
+yet," he declared with an under-lying threat, as he caught up the tongs
+and flourished them.  He opened and closed them with a snap several
+times uncomfortably near Peckover's nose.  "Both legs," he exclaimed,
+as, putting forth a mighty effort, he twisted and broke them, throwing
+them down with the same provoking clangour.
+
+"I tell you," Peckover declared desperately, "this house is not mine.
+It is not even at this moment Lord Quorn's.  It is let furnished.  I
+wish you would not interfere with the fire-irons."
+
+"I'm not particular," Leo returned.  "Can't stop to go into the
+ownership of fire-irons.  You've seen what I'm capable of; now send 'em
+up to his lordship with my compliments."
+
+"Lord Quorn is not at home here at present," Peckover insisted.
+
+"A lord," said Lalage, "is at home anywhere."
+
+The thought of the real Lord Quorn crossed Peckover's mind.
+
+"Fine thing to be a lord," he reflected bitterly.  "That poor chap has
+missed this fun."  Then seeing Carnaby evidently on the look-out for
+fresh worlds, or, rather, domestic implements, to conquer, he turned
+desperately to Lalage.  "I say," he proposed seriously, "can't we
+compromise this?"
+
+The words, or at least one of them caught the ear of her brother, on
+whom possibly the sherry was beginning to take effect.  "Compromise,
+you wombat?" he bawled.  "Compromise my beautiful sister?"
+
+"No, no, Carnaby," protested the beautiful one in question, with a look
+at Peckover which gave unmistakable point to her words, "how absurd you
+are."
+
+"Compromise my precious sister, you slink!"
+
+"No, no," Peckover objected, getting quite reckless between the two
+fires; "not your precious sister.  How absurd you are!"
+
+Next instant the giant had sprung at him and had him in his grip.
+"Absurd?  Am I?  I'll wring your neck!"
+
+"I mean settle," Peckover explained in a shriek.
+
+"I'll settle you," was the retort, emphasized by a tightening grip.
+
+"I mean settle with money," gasped the tortured one, hoping the magic
+word might have a relaxing effect upon the stricture.
+
+But whatever might have been its effect upon his tormentor's mind when
+unclouded by alcohol, it had now the reverse of the desired result.
+"Money!" he cried in maudlin indignation as he threw him off, "what is
+money where the honour of my lovely Lalage is concerned?"
+
+Peckover had come to the inevitable conclusion that it would be worth
+his while to make some pecuniary sacrifice in order to get out of the
+difficulty.  He would do well to jettison part of the cargo of his ship
+which had seemed to be coming home so nicely.
+
+"You see," he explained, "much as my friend Quorn may admire your
+sister, he will be bound to marry a rich girl to support his title."
+
+"A peer wants a lot of keeping up, I suppose," growled Mr. Leo, taking
+out another bottle from the cabinet and shaking it viciously,
+demonstrating by his action that a bush-bully requires a certain amount
+of keeping-up as well.
+
+"It stands to reason," Peckover replied.  "Now," he added
+insinuatingly, "if a hundred pounds----"
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when he was sorry he had
+uttered them.  There was an explosion, a smash, and the little table
+with its contents was lying on the floor broken by a thump from the
+mighty fist.
+
+"Hundred devils!" Mr. Leo roared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+So far as he dared, Peckover began to lose his temper.  "I wish you
+would not smash things," he ventured to remonstrate.  "I'll take your
+word for your muscle."
+
+"My muscle prefers to speak for itself," was the retort.
+
+"It need not talk with such a deuced lot of emphasis," Peckover
+rejoined.  "What do you say," he added, returning to business, "to two
+hundred pounds?"
+
+"Don't you wish I may take it?" exclaimed the fair Lalage with infinite
+scorn.
+
+"You can't expect any more," Peckover urged.  "Lord Quorn is a very
+poor man."
+
+"Is he?" Lalage asked, becoming thoughtful.
+
+"Certainly he is.  Really not worth looking after.  Now," he added,
+coaxingly.  "Can't you put a fair price on your journey?"
+
+"What price my glorious sister's broken heart?" bellowed Mr. Leo,
+truculently maudlin.
+
+"Damaged goods half price," was Peckover's inaudible reply.
+
+"Eh, you scallywag?"  The big man advanced upon him threateningly.
+"Let me go into figures with your beautiful Lord Quorn.  Once before a
+man played the fool with Lalage, and we got five thousand pounds out of
+his executors."
+
+"Executors?" repeated Peckover, interested in spite of more urgent
+considerations.  "Poor fellow died then?"
+
+"Yes, you see Carnaby called upon him," Lalage explained sweetly.
+
+"Now," proceeded Mr. Leo, always with unnecessary volume of tone,
+"before I proceed to extremities, I should like to know from you, as
+his lordship's friend, how we stand."
+
+It occurred to Peckover that the chances were that either he or both
+would stand on two stumps before long if the weather did not change.
+"Name your own sum for the return ticket," he said desperately.
+
+Mr. Leo walked up and placed his hands upon Peckover's shoulders with
+such energy that the smaller man wondered he did not collapse into his
+boots.  "Does he mean it?" he cried, glaring tipsily into Peckover's
+contorted face.  "Not he!  Look at his eye; it's shifty."
+
+The victim considered he might esteem himself lucky if the feature in
+question did not shift out of his head forthwith.
+
+"We must take time," said Lalage, laying a repressing hand on her
+brother's arm.
+
+"We'll stay a week or two with you," Mr. Leo declared; "till his
+lordship has decided whether he will remain on above ground or not."
+
+It occurred to Peckover that the property would be considerably out of
+repair by that time, but he recognized that a refusal was at the moment
+quite out of the question.  Then, as Mr. Leo, having given him a
+preliminary shake, released him from his clutch by sending him
+backwards with uncalled-for violence against a floor lamp which was not
+improved by the contact, the door opened and Miss Ethel Hemyock looked
+in.  "Oh, Mr. Gage, I have only just got rid of poor Mr. Sharnbrook."
+
+The young lady came in with a smile for Peckover and a doubtful glance
+at the strangers.  Perhaps Miss Leo's appearance suggested to her
+ignorance that she had not much to fear from that quarter in the way of
+rivalry; anyhow, her look changed to one of easy graciousness as
+Peckover, awkwardly enough, introduced them.
+
+"Let me present some Australian friends of mine," he said.
+
+"Very great friends," added Lalage, with a significant smile.
+
+"More than friends; brothers, eh, Gage, my boy," put in Carnaby taking
+the cue from his sister, and accompanying the words with a slap which
+nearly dislocated Peckover's shoulder.
+
+"Oh," said Miss Ethel, rather drawing back, and looking enquiringly at
+Peckover.
+
+"So pleased to know all your friends, dear," observed Lalage with
+mischievous significance.  "I am sure we shall be great friends,
+Miss--Miss----"
+
+"Ethel Hemyock," the young lady supplied frigidly, the word "dear"
+having congealed her.
+
+Lady Agatha and Dagmar came in.  The hostess' look of enquiry at the
+sight of the abnormal visitors was cut short by Ethel's anxious
+enquiry.  "Where is Mr. Sharnbrook?"
+
+The tone suggested to her mother's sharp ears that something was wrong.
+
+"Mr. Sharnbrook has just gone."
+
+"He is staying to luncheon?"
+
+"No," Dagmar answered.  "Mother did not ask him."
+
+"He must!" Ethel exclaimed, making for the door.
+
+"Ethel!" Dagmar cried, as she sprang after her.
+
+Lady Agatha, scenting mischief, turned to Peckover.  "Will you present
+your--friends?" she said coldly.
+
+Peckover, roused from the natural preoccupation induced by his
+position, did so.  "Miss Leo, Mr. Leo----"
+
+"Friends from the Bush?" Lady Agatha enquired superciliously, eyeing
+through her "witherers" Lalage's short hair and short dress.
+
+"Yes--just so," Peckover answered in his confusion.
+
+"What?" roared Carnaby.  "Bush?  I'll bush you!"
+
+"Carnaby," his sister remonstrated, "be calm.  Yes, we are just from
+Australia."
+
+"Friends of Mr. Gage's?" Lady Agatha enquired, in a tone of disgusted
+resignation.
+
+"Friends of Lord Quorn," Peckover corrected swiftly.
+
+"And of Mr. Gage's, I should hope," Lalage added with an embarrassing
+show of affectionate insistence.
+
+"Ah!" said Lady Agatha, transferring her attention and her glasses to
+Carnaby, "Lord Quorn's former sheep partner, perhaps?"
+
+"What?" shouted the worthy fellow, more bellicose than usual under the
+influence of the sherry.  "Sheep partner?"
+
+"It is not necessary," observed Lady Agatha with cutting distinctness,
+"to speak so loud.  I am not aware that any one in the room is deaf."
+
+"What," demanded Carnaby of Peckover in a roaring whisper, "does the
+old lady mean by calling me a sheep partner?"
+
+"Hush!  It's all right," he replied.  "She thinks you are an Australian
+swell--a mutton-king."
+
+"Mutton king?" Carnaby bawled, raising his arm as though to pulverize
+his insulter.
+
+The evidences of his strength had meanwhile attracted Lady Agatha's
+attention.  "Are you," she asked severely, "the person who has been
+taking liberties with the fire-irons?"
+
+"Yes," answered Carnaby with justifiable pride.  "I just snapped them
+to amuse this little wombat."  Then, as a brilliant afterthought, he
+suggested--"Shall I ring for some more and show you how it is done?"
+
+"By no means," was the frigid answer.  "I should very much object to be
+shown anything of the sort.  And I must request you, if your friends
+need amusement, to choose some other method of providing it."
+
+"All right, don't be alarmed," replied Carnaby, on whom her grand tone
+was quite wasted.  "Winter's coming on and I won't reduce the stock;
+I've got something more interesting to break than fire-irons."
+
+"By the way," Lady Agatha observed, "we saw a strange and not very
+prepossessing person in the shrubbery by the drive just now.  Was he by
+any chance a friend of yours?"
+
+"Not likely, ma'am," Carnaby answered, "unless it was Lord Quorn, and
+this little wallaby tells us he is in bed."
+
+"It was not Lord Quorn," said Lady Agatha.
+
+The Misses Ethel and Dagmar came in breathless, with Sharnbrook between
+them, looking as a pick-pocket might under escort of two policemen.
+
+"We caught him, mother, at the drive gate.  I told him how sorry you
+were you had let him go when you meant to insist upon his staying to
+luncheon."
+
+"Of course," Lady Agatha corroborated, conveniently ignoring the fact
+that she had practically sent him off as having no further use for him.
+"Mr. Sharnbrook might have known we never could be so inhospitable."
+
+Sharnbrook gave an enquiring glance at Peckover, who could only
+helplessly reply by a sign directing his attention to Miss Leo, at
+sight of whom hope gave way to despair in the Sharnbrook bosom.
+Bisgood announced luncheon.  Lady Agatha's look at Peckover said as
+plainly as speech--"What are you going to do with these impossible
+people?"  And under the look he felt more limp and nonplussed than ever.
+
+Under the circumstances Peckover was actually relieved when the tension
+of the situation was snapped by a loud exclamation of satisfaction from
+Carnaby.  "Lunch!  Good!  I'm all there!"  With a stride he placed
+himself by Lady Agatha's side, and offered her his arm with what might
+be supposed to stand in the Bush for the grand manner.  Ignoring his
+arm, Lady Agatha crossed her own and walked stiffly and resentfully
+from the room.  By no means abashed, Carnaby looked round and pounced
+upon Dagmar, who, having lost Sharnbrook in a struggle for him with her
+sister, was also disappointed of getting Peckover, whom Miss Leo had
+taken prompt care to annex.  But Carnaby was hardly acceptable, even as
+a consolation prize.  Dagmar drew back and made a sudden dart after her
+mother leaving the rest to follow in various degrees of discontent.
+
+"Oh, mother," she exclaimed breathless with indignation, "what
+appalling people!  We had better keep an eye on the silver.  Do you
+know, I saw that horrid man again in the shrubbery just now."
+
+As the last of the party were pressing through the library door "that
+horrid man" came up to the window and looked furtively in.  It was none
+other than Lord Quorn, the real Lord Quorn; he who had drunk Peckover's
+drugged champagne at the _Quorn Arms_ at Great Bunbury.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"I've  had enough of this, I'm going to get up," Mr. Gage, the
+_soi-disant_ Lord Quorn, declared, as Peckover after luncheon devoted a
+few minutes of his present complicated existence to visit that
+impatient patient.
+
+"No, you don't."
+
+"Won't I?" was the querulous rejoinder.  "Why not?  The doctor's gone,
+and----"
+
+"There's something worse than the doctor come," said Peckover with a
+long face.
+
+"I don't know what's worse than the doctor, unless it's the
+undertaker," returned Gage.
+
+"Well, I do," said Peckover feelingly.  "A most unfortunate thing has
+happened.  A girl who I was a bit sweet on out there has followed me
+over."
+
+Gage whistled.  "Then our game's all up.  Of course she'll know you are
+Quorn and I am not."
+
+"No," replied Peckover subtly.  "I have made it all right about that.
+Told her there was a mistake and I was not the rightful heir."
+
+"That was smart of you," Gage said with gloomy approval.  "Well, what's
+the trouble, then.  The lady doesn't expect me to marry her, does she?"
+
+"Yes," answered Peckover with intensity, "she does."
+
+"What?"  Gage nearly landed out of bed in his surprise.  "Me?"  Then
+laughed incredulously.
+
+"She says she has come six thousand miles to be Lady Quorn and she is
+going to be Lady Quorn."
+
+"The deuce she is.  How is she going to manage that?"
+
+"By force."
+
+"What?" Gage shouted.  "Marry me by force?"
+
+"Yes," answered Peckover seriously.  "You see, she has brought her
+brother with her, a dare-devil rampaging brute of a bush-ranger, six
+foot three tall, and broad in proportion, who sticks at nothing but
+your favourite vital part with a bowie knife."
+
+"I'd like to see him," Gage observed scornfully
+
+"You will, if you get out of bed and come downstairs," returned
+Peckover impressively.  "Also you will have an opportunity of remarking
+the havoc he has made with the fire-irons."
+
+"What?  Fire-irons?"
+
+"He has been snapping a few pokers and tongs just to show what he will
+do with you when he catches you."
+
+"What absurd rot," Gage said with rising exasperation.  "I never had
+anything to do with the brute's sister."
+
+"But you have got to marry her," rejoined Peckover quite seriously, "or
+take the consequences."
+
+"Oh, have I?"
+
+"Yes; you had better stop in bed."
+
+"Had I?" Gage exclaimed, flinging off the clothes.  "I rather think
+I'll get up and hand the ruffian over to the police, as you don't seem
+to have the _nous_ to do it."
+
+"Not I," returned Peckover shrewdly.  "Not quite such a fool.  Once
+open police-court proceedings, and our little arrangement will come out
+and be spoilt, even if nothing else happens."
+
+"Well, what are we to do?" Gage demanded, recognizing the weight of his
+friend's objection.
+
+"You stop in bed," said Peckover, with an air of authority based upon
+expediency.
+
+"D----d if I do," Gage retorted.
+
+"If you don't, you'll have to," replied Peckover with truth underlying
+paradox.  "A fortnight of the downy is better than six months of the
+plank."
+
+"What, stop here for a fortnight?" Gage cried wrathfully.  "It's a
+regular take in.  A rollicking time I'm having for my money;
+cold-shouldered, half-drowned, and now tucked up in this beastly bed
+for weeks.  Where does Lord Quorn come in?"
+
+"Lord Quorn," observed Peckover sententiously, "will go out if Mr.
+Carnaby Leo gets hold of him.  He has got a museum at home of pickled
+ears, and eyes and noses, et cetera, of which he has deprived certain
+parties who didn't do as he told them.  After all," he added
+persuasively, "it is better to stop in bed with the schedule of your
+features complete than to get up for a rollick and find some of the
+items missing."
+
+"Why the devil didn't you tell me you'd been playing the fool with a
+bush-ranger's sister?" Gage snapped savagely.  "I wouldn't have looked
+at you or your title.  You've got my money under false pretences."
+
+"You never gave me time to go into my past history," was the plausible
+reply.  "You might have known when you took over a peerage you were
+letting yourself in for something of the sort.  You know it's a way we
+have."
+
+"A pretty brilliant way, to get tangled up with bush-rangers," sneered
+Gage.
+
+"He didn't come on the scene till an hour ago.  I suppose, by the way,"
+he suggested mischievously, "you would not care to marry her, and so
+see your way to getting out of bed without damage?"
+
+"Marry ten thousand devils!  That's not my idea of fun."
+
+"Lalage is a fine figure of a woman," Peckover continued.  "Make an
+imposing Lady Quorn.  Fine mover; takes the drawing-room in three,
+including anything that stands in the way.  The coronet would suit her
+better if she'd let her hair grow."
+
+"Crops her hair short?" Gage enquired, in a tone of infinite disgust at
+the picture.
+
+Peckover nodded.  "Bit too much of the dragoon for our taste, my boy.
+You stop in bed, and let me try to get rid of them."
+
+"I won't stop in bed," returned Gage.  "Where are these brutes?"
+
+"Sent 'em down to _The Pigeons_," Peckover answered.  "Lady Agatha
+wouldn't have 'em in the house.  Don't blame her.  Their manners aren't
+exactly Vere de Vere.  Things were a bit awkward at lunch.  Carnaby,
+the beauty, had been mixing his liquors and fell asleep with his ugly
+head in the salad bowl, and the tomato which Lalage aimed at him to
+wake him up, missed, and spattered on Bisgood's shirt-front.  Lady Aggy
+wasn't pleased."
+
+"It's all very well," said Gage sulkily, "but I'm going to get up.  The
+woman can't make me marry her against my will, nor can the great ox,
+her brother."
+
+"No," Peckover agreed, "but he can have a good try for it, and the
+process might not be pleasant."
+
+"I never heard such nonsense."
+
+"No; I wouldn't have believed it," said Peckover, "if I hadn't had the
+fellow's dukes round my windpipe.  He is just a buffalo in trousers.
+And if you get up, and shy at the sister, who is a hyæna in petticoats,
+you'll know it; that is, if he leaves you in a state to know anything."
+
+"A pretty abominable treat you've let me in for," said Gage sourly.
+"But I'm not going to stay in this four-poster.  You've got to go and
+square this at once.  Ask them what they'll take to go back."
+
+"I've offered them a couple of hundred," Peckover replied, "and got
+nearly strangled for my trouble."
+
+"Couple of hundred!" said Gage contemptuously.  "You'll have to make it
+thousands and take it out of your five."
+
+"Oh, I say!" the other protested.
+
+"All right; if you don't," Gage declared resolutely, "I'll chuck the
+title and leave you and your friends to fight it out among yourselves.
+If she means Lord Quorn she shall have him, but not me, my boy.  And
+I'm not going to stop between the sheets for any bush-ranger in
+Australia or out of it.  So there!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+After Lord Quorn--supposed to be Percy Peckover--had been carried to
+Dr. Barton's surgery, he lay for several days in a state of now total,
+now semi, unconsciousness.  The astute Mr. Doutfire, pluming himself on
+his neat capture, hovered about the unfortunate peer, drank whisky and
+water with the much-bored medico, and discussed over sundry cigars the
+chances of the patient's slipping through his fingers into the next
+world.  The object of his solicitude did slip through them, though not
+quite so far as that.  And it happened in this wise.
+
+When Doutfire was not himself on guard (to the accompaniment of
+nicotine sedatives and alcoholic tonics) he took care to post a
+constable about the doctor's premises with instructions to keep a sharp
+look-out for any sign of activity on the part of the lethargic
+criminal.  Then suddenly the police authorities of Bunbury and district
+were thrown into a state of excitement by the news of a daring burglary
+which had taken place at Mansetter Park, the seat of Sir James
+Rumbelow, the importance of which crime was heightened by the fact that
+the stout baronet, roused from his post-prandial nap by the news, had
+unwisely attempted to pursue the thieves, who had by that time got four
+or five miles' start, and had cut short the chase, so far as he was
+concerned, by tripping over a croquet-hoop on the lawn and thereby
+severely injuring himself.
+
+It was clearly a case that called for the utmost activity on the part
+of the representatives of the law; the Bunbury police force was on its
+mettle, and the fussy Mr. Doutfire became in a moment the incarnation
+of bustling importance.  The comatose culprit at Dr. Barton's was
+forgotten in the gravity of Sir James Rumbelow's stolen plate and
+broken nose.  And it so happened when the detective was reminded of him
+it was by a communication from headquarters announcing that Peckover's
+associate, Cutbush, had been arrested, and he had volunteered a
+statement which made it appear that there might not be much of a case
+against his dupe.  Under the circumstances, Mr. Doutfire felt little
+hesitation in withdrawing the guard and drafting him into the Mansetter
+district, especially as the doctor assured him that he might be under
+no uneasiness as to the likelihood of the patient's being in a
+condition to get up and walk about.
+
+Nevertheless, that is exactly what Lord Quorn did.  Suddenly waking
+from a lethargic sleep, he stretched himself, sat up, looked round in a
+dazed fashion, and after a futile attempt to remember who and where he
+was, feeling an irresistible longing for fresh air, he got up, shuffled
+into his clothes, and walked unnoticed into the street.
+
+It was market day; the noise and the bustle worried him, and in his
+weak state the jostling of the yokels was more than he could stand.  So
+he turned into one of the quieter streets and thence wandered off into
+the country, his mind still a blank as to what had recently happened to
+him.  Although the fresh air revived him and was grateful after the
+drug-laden atmosphere of the doctor's dispensary, yet it did not quite
+drive the fumes from his brain, and his existence and identity were, as
+he strolled on, as much a puzzle to him as ever.
+
+"Have a lift?" asked a good-natured farmer, overtaking him on the dusty
+road, and noticing his dragging footsteps.  Quorn mechanically got into
+the cart, in his aimless, drifting state of mind; all he knew was he
+had begun to feel tired and wanted to get right away from the place
+whence he had come.
+
+"Going far?" inquired the farmer, as they bowled along.
+
+"Far as you like," was the dull answer.
+
+The farmer stared at him, and then proceeded to cross-examine him, with
+the result that he came to the conclusion that he had picked up an
+escaped lunatic.  With this idea he resolved to set his passenger down
+at the first village they came to, which happened to be Staplewick.
+Finding Quorn had no money, the good fellow took out a coin and gave it
+him, in lieu, as it were, of taking him further, and drove off in a
+state of cogitation.
+
+Naturally Quorn had been set down opposite an inn, the sight of which,
+combined with the touch of the silver in his hand, told him he was
+hungry and more especially thirsty.  He went in and called for
+refreshment, and then took his seat in a room which had already two
+occupants.  They were no others than Messrs. Fanning and Purvis, who,
+after their discomfiture at the Towers had dropped in at _The Pigeons_
+to discuss their all-absorbing grievance.
+
+Until Quorn's hunger and thirst were appeased he paid little attention
+to his companions, but when he had pushed his plate away and lighted up
+the churchwarden pipe that the house afforded, he fell to listening
+lazily to the unrestrained emphasis of their remarks.
+
+"Fi'pun note!  Fi'pun note!" exclaimed Mr. Fanning almost tragically.
+"And his blooming lordship, who didn't do nothin' more in the water
+than a cat would 'a done, smothered with wealth, just because 'e
+'appens to 'ave a 'andle to his name.  Mean, I call it; low mean."
+
+"That it is," agreed Purvis.  "And 'im adding insult to injury telling
+us to get a noo rig-out, and keep the change for our trouble.  Noo
+rig-out?  I'll wear my old boots and breeches down to the last nail and
+stitch first."
+
+"Right!" exclaimed Fanning, with an energy which ignored the æsthetic
+considerations which such a proceeding would involve.  "Fi'pun note!"
+he repeated, relapsing into his now chronic state of truculent
+grievance.  "Fi'pun note for us poor deserving 'eroes, and two hundred
+thousand quid for that bit of gilt gingerbread, Lord Quorn."
+
+"What?"
+
+In a flash of enlightenment the real Lord Quorn jumped from his seat,
+and stood staring at the two men with distended eyes.  "By Gum!  You
+said Lord Quorn?"
+
+"I did," Fanning declared, half defiantly, as not quite sure whether he
+had not opened his mouth rather too wide and too often.  "I said Lord
+Quorn, and I meant Lord Quorn, but my grievance ain't agin 'is
+lordship.  I blame no man for takin' wot's offered.  Wot I blame and
+'ate and detest is the meanness of those 'oo call themselves gents and
+reward a man not accordin' to the services rendered, but accordin' to
+persition in life."
+
+The trenchant pronouncement was entirely wasted on the person to whom
+it was addressed.
+
+"Lord Quorn!"
+
+He had started to his feet with a great cry of self-recognition.  The
+word seemed to have pierced the mist of oblivion which clouded his
+brain, and the incidents of the last hour of his former waking
+existence came thronging to his memory.  Lord Quorn?  Why, of course,
+he was Lord Quorn; although exactly what had happened to him in
+consequence he could not make out.  "Lord Quorn?" he demanded eagerly
+of the astonished pair of grievance-nursers.  "What about him?"
+
+"Do you know his lordship?" Fanning asked suspiciously.
+
+"I ought to."
+
+"Well, then," said the butcher resentfully, "you know the man who has
+earnt two 'undred thousand quid quicker and easier than any man ever
+did before.  Look 'ere!"  Determined to speak his mind to his lordship
+through his acquaintance, Fanning jumped up and tapped Quorn
+impressively on the chest to emphasize his story.  "Wot do you think o'
+this, mister?  Lord Quorn and a rich millionaire friend of 'is--I won't
+call 'im a gentleman--goes out fishin' on the lake.  They fools
+themselves overboard into the water, and is within an ace of drownin'.
+This gentleman," indicating Purvis who sat stolidly blinking with
+conscious merit, "and me, goes to the rescue, and at the risk of our
+lives pulls 'em out when they were just at the last gasp.  What
+'appens?  My nobleman persuades 'is friend that it was 'e 'oo saved 'is
+life, and ignores what me and this gentleman done.  Again wot 'appens?
+Millionaire, 'oo, in my opinion ain't fit to own two and sixpence, ups
+and settles a couple of 'undred thousand sov'rins on his lordship, and
+when me and this gentleman who 'ad risked our lives and ruined our best
+suit of clothes 'appens to ask where we comes in--what do you
+think?--'ee fobs us off with a beggarly fi'pun note."
+
+"I wouldn't have taken it," Quorn commented wonderingly, as he
+recovered from the extra hard slap with which the last words were
+driven home.
+
+Mr. Fanning waggled his greasy head knowingly.  "P'raps you wouldn't,
+mister.  But you didn't catch me nor this gentleman playin' into 'is
+'ands by refusin' it."
+
+"That accounts for it," said Quorn, following his own train of thought
+rather than Mr. Fanning's biassed narrative.  "That accounts for it.
+I've been half drowned.  Funny I don't remember anything about it."
+
+"You?" exclaimed Mr. Fanning.
+
+"According to your story," Quorn maintained.
+
+Mr. Fanning turned a glance on Mr. Purvis which suggested a grave doubt
+as to their companion's sobriety.  "Oh," he replied sarcastically, "and
+'oo may you be?"
+
+"Well," answered Quorn deliberately, "I rather think I'm Lord Quorn."
+
+Again Mr. Fanning's glance sought Mr. Purvis', and this time it
+indicated a diagnosis of more serious mental trouble than mere alcohol
+would account for.
+
+"Oh, you think that, do you?" he returned with gentle banter.  "Then,"
+he added mischievously, "I should recommend your lordship goin' up to
+the Towers 'ere, and turnin' out the party 'oo is at present occupyin'
+your position."
+
+"Oh?"  Quorn started up as a fresh puzzle took hold of his mind.  "Is
+that so?"
+
+Instead of replying directly to his questioner, Mr. Fanning turned to
+his friend, and somewhat exasperatingly repeated the enquiry to him.
+"Is that so, Mr. Purvis?"  Then with an exaggerated wink, he added,
+"Yes, no doubt about it, there's a screw loose somewheres."
+
+Quorn stared at him for a moment, and then turned to the door.  "What's
+the name of the place?" he asked over his shoulder.
+
+"Your lordship's residence?" grinned Fanning.  "Staplewick Towers."
+And as the door shut upon their late companion the two aggrieved heroes
+indulged in the first merriment they had found the heart for since it
+had been borne in upon them that their gallantry was held so cheap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Staplewick Towers.  That was the name of the place, his own, that he
+had been on his way to see.  He would soon get the answer to the
+riddle.  As to his having been nearly drowned, it could not have been
+he.  The last thing he remembered was drinking the drugged wine at the
+_Quorn Arms_.  Surely he had not gone through an active existence
+between that and his waking up in the doctor's surgery.  He argued the
+probabilities with himself as he hastened eagerly towards the Towers
+which loomed grey and real enough before him.  Confident now of his
+position he walked through the lodge gates with an air of ownership,
+and made his way up the drive until he saw a little way in front of him
+several people.  The sight checked his hurry.  It suddenly occurred to
+him that it would be a good plan and amusing to lie low and just see
+what was really going on before declaring himself.  One thing was
+certain.  He was not the Lord Quorn who had been rewarded with a
+fortune for pretending to have saved a millionaire's life.  That was
+too good to be true; he only wished it were.  Then who was the other
+Lord Quorn, and what devil's game could they be playing?
+
+So he turned off the drive and slunk along behind the shrubs which
+fringed it, lurking in the bushes until he could see his way clear to
+get up to the house.  He was seen, as has been shown, but the observers
+were too intent on their own ends to take more than casual notice of
+him.
+
+Presently, however, he got his chance, and was able to make his way
+unseen to the library windows.  He peeped through, and the first person
+his eyes lighted on was Percy Peckover.
+
+In an instant some idea of the real state of affairs flashed upon him;
+and his hazy guess was not far from being correct.  Fired with
+indignation and a furious desire to put an instant stop to the
+nefarious game that was being played, he put forth his hand to open the
+window.  Before he could do so a figure advanced from a side of the
+room which was hidden from him, and with a sickening shock he
+recognized his former flame, Miss Lalage Leo.  Behind her loomed now
+the unmistakable form of the great bully whom he had never actually
+met, but had learned to regard with the enhanced terror which the
+unknown inspires, and from which the present glimpse detracted nothing.
+Happily the frightened face was not noticed by any of the party who
+were setting their faces resolutely towards the dining-room.  So Quorn,
+as he recovered from the shock of the forgotten terror, was able to
+move back unobserved and slip away to a quiet spot where he could
+review his deplorable situation.
+
+
+After luncheon and Peckover's interview with Gage, he and Sharnbrook
+had a somewhat uncomfortable half-hour together over a cigar.  Lady
+Agatha had proved herself equal to what had seemed the impossible task
+of bundling the Leos out of the house.  But then Carnaby was in a state
+of comparative helplessness, and Lalage, although she would have liked
+to stay and, perhaps, smoke a cigar with the object of her matrimonial
+intentions, was disarmed by the superior style and the strength of Lady
+Agatha's grand manner.  It was something quite outside her experience,
+and, for the time at any rate, it paralysed any tendency to opposition
+and insistence on her part.  So she went off with her clumsy,
+staggering brother, and with a promise, unacceptable, but not to be
+ignored, to return very soon and keep a business eye upon Lord Quorn
+and Mr. Gage.
+
+"Whew!  That's a good riddance," Peckover exclaimed, with a great puff
+of relief as he lighted a big cigar and dropped into an easy chair.
+"I've had some uncomfortable meals in my time, but that bangs the lot."
+
+"Nice let-in for me," said Sharnbrook ruefully.  "I'm back in their
+clutches again, just when I was congratulating myself you had got me
+out."
+
+"Well, I couldn't foresee this volcanic eruption," replied Peckover
+apologetically.
+
+"No," Sharnbrook admitted.  "You did your best to draw them off.  They
+are nailers, and their staying power is wonderful.  But, I say, you are
+never going to marry that----?"  He jerked his head backwards in the
+direction Miss Leo was last seen taking.
+
+"Not if I know it," Peckover answered feelingly.  "I'm going to
+compromise----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I mean compromise any claim she may have on me; pay her off."
+
+"I see.  But how on earth did you ever get nuts on her?" Sharnbrook
+inquired wonderingly.
+
+"How, indeed?" thought Peckover.  "Well, you see," he answered, "out
+there the girls aren't enough to go round.  You're lucky if you see one
+in a month, and somehow, when you do see her you don't care to lose
+sight of her.  Where there's only one, that one's the best.  Over here
+Lalage suffers by comparison."
+
+"You bet she does," assented Sharnbrook with more warmth than gallantry.
+
+"Out there," Peckover declared, "she was unique."
+
+"So she is here," said Sharnbrook with conviction.  "Well, if you are
+going to square matters with her otherwise than on a matrimonial basis,
+you might call the fisher-girls off me again before I'm quite landed."
+
+"All right," assented Peckover who had now quite recovered his spirits.
+"I'll do anything to oblige, especially when there's a little fun
+attached to the job."
+
+At that moment Miss Ethel's voice was heard singing in the corridor
+leading to the picture gallery.
+
+"She's coming after me," Sharnbrook exclaimed in an agitated whisper.
+
+"Slip out," said Peckover, "and leave me to do my best for you."
+
+Sharnbrook gave him a nod of gratitude and ran off by the opposite
+door, just as Miss Ethel, keen on the scent, looked in.
+
+"Do come in, Miss Ethel," Peckover besought her, with an earnestness
+not to be ignored.
+
+"I was looking for Mr. Sharnbrook," she replied coldly.
+
+"He has just gone out that way," said Peckover indicating the other
+door.
+
+"Did he see Dagmar?" Miss Ethel inquired jealously, crossing the room
+with determined steps.
+
+Peckover sprang to intercept her.  "Don't run away from me, Miss Ethel.
+I know you must be annoyed by those vulgar people who intruded here
+just now----"
+
+"I should think so," said Ethel haughtily, trying to pass.
+
+"But," urged Peckover, "you won't be troubled by them again.  I'm
+paying their fares back to Australia; so that will settle them--out
+there."
+
+Ethel suddenly appeared to be somewhat less desirous of reaching the
+door.  "Oh?" she said slowly.  "And are you going with them?"
+
+"Not if I know it.  Old England's the place for my money."
+
+"Not going to marry the--the lady?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Do I look like it?" he replied insinuatingly.  "Now, don't trouble
+about them, or about that silly old Sharnbrook, who prefers to go off
+and buy his fifty-ninth fox-terrier to waiting for you.  Let's sit down
+and have a nice cosy chat."
+
+The invitation was, under the circumstances, hardly to be resisted,
+whatever short work the young lady might, under others, have made of
+it.  As they took their seats side by side, Peckover stretched out his
+arm behind the lady to arrange a cushion for her--and let it stay there.
+
+For as many seconds as probability allowed Ethel affected to be unaware
+of the caressing attitude.  Then suddenly she seemed to wake up to the
+fact that her companion's arm was round her shoulders, upon which she
+leant forward to allow him to withdraw it.
+
+But Peckover was not keen on taking hints when they ran counter to his
+amusements.  "Isn't it comfortable?" he asked.
+
+"Your arm."
+
+"My arm's all right," he assured her cheerfully.  "Do lean back.  Hope
+I'm not in the way.  Of course if you'd rather I went and sat at the
+other end of the gallery I'll do so.  Only it will be a bit slow."
+
+"Mr. Gage, how absurd you are."
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "the suggestion is rather far-fetched.  We may as
+well keep within kissing distance, mayn't we?"
+
+"Oh, but it is not proper," Ethel protested.
+
+"Kissing?" he asked in surprise, "I think it is proper; if you are
+going in for a proper time.  Why not?"
+
+"It is," she answered demurely, "between some people."
+
+"People who know how to make the time pass?" he suggested.
+
+"People who are--engaged," she said, with as much indifference to the
+immediate and personal application as she could assume.
+
+"Well," he rejoined flippantly, "you are engaged, and I may be."
+
+"Mr. Gage!"  She turned on him indignantly.  "I am not engaged."
+
+"Not to Sharnbrook?"
+
+"Mr. Gage, how absurd you are."
+
+"I hope so.  Are you engaged?" he asked significantly.
+
+"Whether I am engaged or free," she answered, "it is all the same to
+you."
+
+"No," he returned, "if you were a little more free it would be quite
+different."
+
+"Would it?" she asked, with a provocative glance at his face.
+
+"Wouldn't it?  Like this."  He closed his arm round her and tried to
+draw her to him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage, you don't mean it," she protested, holding back.
+
+"Come!" he said.  "One kiss."
+
+"Oh, no.  It wouldn't be right," she still objected.  Then she sighed.
+"Poor Jack!"
+
+"Ah, poor fellow," Peckover said, with a hardly suppressed grin.  "Poor
+old Sharnbrook."
+
+"He is very fond of me," she said, regretfully.  "But of course if I
+can't care for him as much as I ought to--I don't know what the poor
+fellow will do."
+
+"Give me something handsome, I hope," was Peckover's thought.  "Ethel,"
+he whispered, and this time did get something like a kiss.
+
+"Percy, it is wrong of you," she murmured.
+
+"I know it is," he admitted, drawing in a breath as of pain.  "Poor old
+Sharnbrook; and he thinks I'm his friend.  He'll never give you up," he
+added with conviction.
+
+For an instant Miss Ethel's look suggested that that matter might be
+safely left in her hands to bring to a satisfactory conclusion.  But it
+swiftly passed away, and she said, "Jack Sharnbrook is a good fellow.
+He will not stand in the way of my happiness."
+
+"That he won't, I'll go bail," said Peckover to himself.  "Ethel!" he
+murmured caressingly.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage," she returned, in half-yielding protest.  "Percy,
+darling," he suggested, drawing her to him for another kiss.
+
+"You must wait," she objected, "till we are engaged."
+
+"We Gages never wait," he assured her softly.  "It's a tradition in the
+family.  No.  We don't hang about for the mistletoe to grow."
+
+Nevertheless the present representative of that impatient race had to
+postpone his endearments, for the door opened softly and Miss Dagmar's
+scandalized voice cried, "Oh, Ethel!" making the fond pair start aside
+with electric unanimity.
+
+"Bother it," Peckover muttered, putting on the air of self-conscious
+indifference usual in such contretemps.
+
+"All right, Miss Dagmar," said Ethel through her teeth.
+
+"Hope we haven't disturbed you," exclaimed Sharnbrook who had followed
+Dagmar into the room.
+
+Peckover jumped up and went to him.  "Got a cigarette?" he asked in a
+loud voice, adding in a whisper, "Don't look so pleased, old man; or
+you'll spoil everything."
+
+Sharnbrook took the hint at once.  "Don't speak to me, Mr. Gage," he
+cried resentfully.
+
+"You've not lost any time," Dagmar sarcastically remarked to her sister.
+
+"No, dear," Ethel replied with feline sweetness.
+
+"He belongs to that appalling woman from Australia," said Dagmar
+confidently.  "She'll hold him.  Don't you wish you may get him."
+
+"I've got him," Ethel declared.
+
+"She's ready to break it off," whispered Peckover to Sharnbrook.
+"Don't be too eager.  Pretend to be broken-hearted."
+
+The other nodded.  "Mr. Gage," he said, with a fine show of dignified
+feeling, "I find I am mistaken in you."
+
+"That you are," Peckover muttered aside through the corner of his mouth.
+
+"How do you do the broken-hearted?" Sharnbrook enquired in a whisper,
+seeing the ladies were occupied in reciprocating sarcasms.
+
+"Don't make too much noise," Peckover instructed him, in the same tone.
+"Think you are feeling sick; that it's your wedding-day with Ethel.
+Fancy you've missed a pheasant and shot your best dog."
+
+"But I should make a noise," the pupil objected.
+
+"Well, mug a bit," said Peckover, with a model grimace suggestive of
+the wrong horse winning.
+
+"Oh, don't speak to me!" Sharnbrook shouted, as the ladies seemed to
+tire of their mutual repartees.
+
+"That's it," murmured Peckover.  "Don't let her go too easily."
+
+"I--I have something to say to you, Ethel," Sharnbrook declared with a
+sob in his voice.
+
+"Oh, Jack," she exclaimed, with a pretty imitation of remorseful
+distress.
+
+"Come round the garden with me, if it be for the last time," said
+Sharnbrook, his tones quivering with emotion.
+
+"Too loud," whispered Peckover critically as the jilted swain passed
+him.
+
+"Oh, Jack," cried Ethel, the distress in her voice counterbalanced by
+the look of triumph she threw at her sister, "don't look so miserable.
+I couldn't help it."
+
+Sharnbrook gave vent to an explosive, window-rattling sigh as, with a
+wicked half-grin at his deliverer, he held open the door.  The fickle
+Ethel, as she prepared to pass out, put her shapely hand to her
+treacherous lips and contrived to waft a kiss to her latest lover.  And
+she did this without detracting in any appreciable degree from the
+contrite expression with which she successfully veiled her sense of
+triumph.  Which shewed that, up to a point, she was a clever girl, or
+at least a credit to her maternal up-bringing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+It was, however, unfortunate that Miss Ethel had to leave her lover and
+her sister together.  Peckover, baulked of a kiss in one direction, was
+by no means above trying for one in another; and, while Ethel was
+getting off with the old love, thought he might as well utilize the
+opportunity in getting on with the new.  And Miss Dagmar, save in the
+matter of temper, was quite as interesting an object for his attentions
+as her sister.  What was considerably more to the point, her manner
+suggested that she was even more susceptible to his fascinations than
+Ethel.
+
+"Well," he observed with a leer, "while they are settling their
+differences we've got to amuse ourselves, eh?"
+
+A wild desire to cut her sister out on the spot took possession of Miss
+Dagmar.  Lord Quorn was for the time out of the question, and even if
+he were available, she was certain that she would give herself a far
+better time by marrying the richer man.
+
+"How shall we do that, Mr. Gage?" she asked, with an archly provocative
+glance at him.
+
+"Well," responded Peckover, by no means at a loss, "suppose we try how
+much we can get to like one another in ten minutes."
+
+"I'm afraid----" she began, when suddenly she became aware that his arm
+was round her waist.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Dagmar," he entreated.
+
+"I am," she returned, releasing herself.  "I'm afraid you are a
+deceiver."
+
+"Oh, no," he protested, far from displeased, however, at the accusation.
+
+"You have just been making love to Ethel."
+
+"Nothing to speak of," he assured her lightly.  "You see," he added,
+more amorously, "I did not know you cared for me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage!"
+
+"I didn't," he maintained, wilfully misunderstanding her protest.  "I
+dare say I ought to have, but I didn't."
+
+"And now"--she laughed meaningly--"you think you have discovered my
+secret?"
+
+The last word nearly brought a whistle to Peckover's lips, but he
+suppressed it in time.  "Yes," he urged, "if I am right, if I have
+discovered it----" he paused to get a look at her face, and something
+more.
+
+"Yes?" she murmured.
+
+"Let's make the most of it," he suggested.  "Give me a kiss."
+
+"Oh, no, it wouldn't be proper," she objected, holding back.
+
+"Quite proper," he assured her.  "There's nobody looking."
+
+"I don't quite see," said Dagmar thoughtfully, "how the fact that
+nobody is looking makes it proper."
+
+"Well," argued Peckover, "if nobody is looking I don't see how it
+matters whether it is proper or not."
+
+"But it does," she maintained, holding off.
+
+"So long as it's agreeable to both parties," he urged; "we've no one to
+please but ourselves.  Of course," he added airily, "if you've any
+rooted objection to kissing----"
+
+"It is," said Dagmar hastily, "a question of what is right and what is
+wrong."
+
+Peckover began to think this was dry work.  "You think kissing wrong,
+then?" he suggested.
+
+"Unjustifiable kissing," Dagmar declared.
+
+"Unjustifiable?" Peckover repeated, with the suspicion of a yawn.
+"Seems to me if both parties don't object the act is justified."
+
+Dagmar glanced reflectively at the clock and calculated how many
+minutes more remained to bring him to the point.  "Not necessarily,"
+she rejoined with provocative archness.  "There are certain people who
+may kiss each other, and the rest may not."
+
+"That's no reason why they shouldn't try," argued Peckover, warming
+again under the influence of the fetching glance.  "That's just where
+the fun comes in.  You ought to kiss your mother and your grandmother
+or your sister, or your aunt, or your----"
+
+"Or your fiancée," Dagmar supplied quietly yet promptly.
+
+"Naturally," he agreed, "but that doesn't count."
+
+"Doesn't it?" Dagmar enquired in a tone of surprise.
+
+"You see, it's expected of you," he explained.  "There's--much more of
+a catch, the poets tell us, in the unexpected."
+
+Dagmar was beginning to grow desperate.  Ethel's next (and nearly due)
+innings might hold the unexpected for her.  "There are some things,"
+she observed demurely, "which are made much more delightful by being
+looked forward to."
+
+"That's right enough," he assented, catching an inviting gleam from her
+eyes.  "But it's poor fun looking forward to a thing you aren't going
+to get.  You know what I'm looking forward to?"  He pointed the
+question with a leer.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage," she protested artlessly, "how can I know?"
+
+"By my teaching you," he answered promptly putting forth an endearing
+arm, which, however the lady deftly avoided.
+
+"No, no," she declared, as bewitchingly as her limitations allowed.
+"It is not right, as we are."
+
+It was a pretty broad hint, but the sands of opportunity were running
+low, and Miss Dagmar meant business.
+
+"As we are?" the philanderer echoed, with a short laugh of
+discomfiture.  "No, it's certainly not right or even possible when we
+are so far apart."
+
+Dagmar fancied she caught the hateful sound of her sister's voice.
+"That's what I mean," she said, covering her desperation that a touch
+of demureness.  "We might be close enough to----"
+
+"Right!" Peckover exclaimed eagerly, making a spring towards her.
+
+On this occasion she did not seek to elude his grasp, possibly
+considering that the time for that was past.  She contented herself
+with keeping her inviting cheek at a tantalizingly safe distance from
+Peckover's lips till he wearied of the struggle.
+
+For that spoilt child of Fortune was not used to opposition about
+trifles on the part of the fair sex.  "This is dry work.  What are you
+afraid of?" he protested impatiently.
+
+"You really mustn't.  We are not engaged," was the artificially
+agitated reply.
+
+"That doesn't matter," he insisted.  "Who'll be any the wiser?"
+
+Matrimony, not wisdom, was Miss Dagmar's concern just then.  "I
+couldn't let you," she declared, with a cunning suggestion of duty
+overriding inclination.  "I couldn't--unless----"
+
+To her disgust, she found herself suddenly released.  "Oh, all right,"
+said Peckover, settling his necktie.  "You shan't, if you don't want
+to.  There are other girls about who ain't so particular.  Ethel's not
+coy."  And he made for the door.
+
+In an instant she was after him.  "Ethel?" she cried, clutching his arm
+in desperation, as she saw the lady in question coming across the lawn.
+"You forget Ethel is engaged."  Which speech was, to say the least of
+it, rather disloyal.
+
+"What of it?" Peckover demanded off-handedly.  "All the better.  You
+allow engaged persons may kiss."
+
+"Yes, each other.  Ethel is engaged to Mr. Sharnbrook."
+
+"Oh, Sharnbrook won't mind," he returned, with more truth than
+politeness.
+
+Dagmar's clutch increased in force.  "Mr. Gage," she exclaimed, in
+almost horrified protest, "you are never going to be so thoughtless as
+to wreck two people's happiness?"
+
+"I wasn't aware of it," he replied, somewhat sarcastically.
+
+"Oh, but you are," she urged vehemently.  "Jack Sharnbrook is wrapped
+up in Ethel."
+
+"Finds the wrap a bit too warm to be pleasant," Peckover observed.
+
+"Sooner than see John Sharnbrook's happiness wrecked," the suddenly
+emotional and altruistic Miss Dagmar proceeded, "I would make any
+sacrifice.  Mr. Gage," the moment was critical, and her grasp now
+intense, "you shan't make love to her.  Promise me you won't, and--and
+you shall have a kiss, even before we are engaged."
+
+Footsteps sounded on the gravel just outside the window.
+
+"All right," Peckover responded cheerfully.  "I promise to let her
+alone if she lets me alone.  I'm not the man to stand in Sharnbrook's
+light."
+
+His arm was round her and his lips three inches from hers, when a
+vigorous exclamation of disgust from the window made it expedient that
+even they should pretend to be engaged in quite another of the varied
+but limited number of occupations which necessitate the heads of two
+persons being close together.  Nevertheless Dagmar found time, before
+the window opened to admit Gage, who had come down for an hour, and
+Ethel, to say hurriedly but with none the less fell intent, "Remember
+your promise.  You will be true to me, now?"
+
+Miss Ethel, rendered thoughtfully emulative by the evidences of her
+sister's progress, contented herself with tossing her head peremptorily
+and disdainfully at her treacherous sister.  Further activity on the
+part of the young ladies was, however, postponed by the announcement of
+tea.  Gage lingered behind to say a word to his friend.
+
+"Beats me," he observed sourly, "what's the matter with this peerage.
+Always thought a lord had it all his own way.  Instead of that, the
+girls talk about the weather and the flower-beds to me, and they drop
+into your arms one after the other."
+
+"They're a bit calculating all the same," Peckover remarked with a
+sense of failure.  "I don't know that we might not just as well have
+been talking about the weather."
+
+But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook came in whistling and radiant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+It was to appear that Mr. Carnaby Leo and his sister were not to be put
+off so easily as the confederates imagined.  Encouraged by what they
+considered the other side's weakness, and led on by their ignorance of
+European ways, they--or rather the lady--grew determined to make out of
+their trip a much bigger coup than at first seemed likely to be
+forthcoming from what was really nothing but a huge piece of bluff.  It
+is true that Lady Agatha, with her unassailable manner, was a serious
+obstacle in the path which this enterprising couple proposed to take,
+but she, after all, Lalage argued, was but an outside and detached
+factor in the affair, an outlying rampart, as it were, in the defence.
+
+Nevertheless the influence of her repellent personality was so great
+that neither of the Leos cared to come face to face with her again if
+that situation could by any possibility be avoided, and in their
+councils of war (in which Lalage tried to teach her thick-witted
+brother how to back up her brain by his muscle) the temporary mistress
+of Staplewick was never regarded as a negligible quantity.
+
+So it happened that when, in the evening, the Leos resolved to pay
+another visit of coercion to the Towers, they took care to enter
+unannounced, and to keep out of Lady Agatha's way.  Confident in the
+reasonable cause of their presence, they made their way quietly from
+the hall along a corridor leading to the picture gallery which seemed
+to offer an inviting lurking-place.  As luck would have it, the
+gallery, as being somewhat isolated, had been appointed the
+trysting-place of Peckover and Miss Ethel.  And it was there that the
+arch-deceiver with a cynically expectant smile on his face was awaiting
+his lady-love.
+
+The long room had struck chill as he entered it, and he had lighted a
+cigarette, if not with the idea of warmth, at least to keep his nerves
+in order.  "Quiet," he remarked aloud to himself as he glanced with a
+little shiver along the line of effigied Quorns before whose canvases
+at intervals were arranged, like sentinels, stands of armour.  "Not to
+say Madame Tussaudy.  Rum things ancestors.  What a lot some folks seem
+to think about 'em.  Can't say I ever troubled about mine.  That
+reminds me, I must get up a family history of these Quorn Johnnies, and
+impart it to poor old Gage.  It need not," he gave a little knavish
+laugh, "be all strictly correct according to 'Ume and Smollett.  Well,
+Percy, my boy," he kept talking to himself as though to keep the
+silence at bay, "you've dropped into a nice thing.  It's a fine life to
+be a rich toff, or the imitation of one--which is quite sufficient for
+the general public.  Ethel is a smart little thing; she has come on
+wonderfully since those Australian nuisances gave her a fright.  Poor
+old Gage!  Strikes me I'm having the fun he's paying for.  Ah, here she
+comes."
+
+Footsteps were heard by the door.  He flung away his cigarette, and
+went forward as quickly as the semi-darkness would allow him.  "Ethel!"
+he whispered.
+
+The figure whom he addressed emerged into the stream of moonlight, and
+he saw, to his dismay, Lalage Leo.
+
+"It's me, dear," was her greeting, pleasant, yet with a suggestion of
+business behind it.  "Lalage."
+
+"Eh, yes," he stammered, trying to mask his annoyance with a laugh.
+"Funny place to meet, isn't it?"
+
+"You and Miss Ethel evidently don't think so," was the obvious retort.
+"So you were expecting her?"
+
+"I thought the step was hers," he replied disingenuously.
+
+"Poor girl!  She must have a heavy tread if it is anything like
+Carnaby's," Lalage returned pleasantly.
+
+On the hint Peckover looked beyond her and saw the looming figure of
+her brother with an irritating grin on his just discernible face.
+"Carnaby has got a heavy foot," his sister pursued significantly, "and
+he is going to put it down and keep it there.  Eh, Carnaby?"
+
+The objectionable figure lurched forward.  "Point out the spot you want
+it planted, Lal," he said truculently, "and down it goes."
+
+Peckover found himself wishing that the abominable extremity had been
+planted in the Antipodes and had taken root or, for preference,
+withered away there.  "Where?" he asked wearily.
+
+"Where," Miss Leo echoed.  "Why, on your carrying on with these Hemyock
+girls.  Carnaby, dear," she made the appeal with a vicious look, not at
+her brother but at his intended victim, "you won't see me fooled?"
+
+"But I tell you----" Peckover began, when she snapped him up.
+
+"If you are good enough for other people, you are good enough for me.
+So no nonsense."
+
+"Nonsense?" Carnaby roared.  "I'll----"
+
+Lalage thoughtfully turned to shut the door.  "That's it," she
+whispered.  "Frighten him a bit."  For it seemed to her that the effect
+of the snapped fire-irons was wearing off.  "Tell Mr. Gage," she said
+aloud, holding Carnaby in the moonlight with a glittering eye, "what
+happened to those three mounted police who went after you."
+
+Owing either to the suddenness of the demand or the spell of his
+sister's masterful glare, the small mind which dominated the mass of
+muscle seemed paralysed.  "Ah, yes," he responded stupidly.  "Didn't
+they!"
+
+Miss Leo for the moment seemed to justify her name; she looked like a
+lioness ready to spring, but withheld by considerations of expediency.
+"Go on," she whispered through her clenched teeth.  "Carnaby!" she said
+more mildly and aloud.  "The three who looked after you in the Bush."
+
+But either the hero's recollection was hazy or invention was not his
+strong point.  "Eh?" he said confusedly.  "Yes.  They--they followed me
+into the Bush."
+
+"Yes?  Well?" enquired Peckover, curiously.
+
+"And two of them are there now," continued Lalage with a world of
+uncomfortable meaning.
+
+"I wish you two were," thought Peckover.  "Tell us all about it," he
+said resignedly.
+
+"Go on, Carnaby," his sister commanded.
+
+Whether or not the man of thews and sinews had been keeping up his
+constitution injudiciously at the _Three Pigeons_, certain it was that
+his brain did not seem in glib working order.  "Ah, yes," he said
+slowly, quailing under Lalage's eye, "three mounted constabulary----"
+after which thrilling statement he paused.
+
+"Came after you in the Bush," the flippant Peckover ventured to supply.
+"Yes, we've heard that."  For the little man saw no chance of ending
+the interview till the narrative was concluded.
+
+Mr. Leo, failing to stimulate his imagination to the required point,
+fell back upon a more ready and less intellectual form of address.
+"I'll eat you in a minute, boots and all," he informed his impatient
+listener with an undue amount of emphasis.  Then, as though the
+outburst had spurred his invention, he went on, "Three--three mounted
+police at me at once.  Three to one----"
+
+"Cowards," commented Peckover warmly.
+
+"I was alone," shouted the son of Mars, now plunging recklessly into
+the recital; "no bush-armour; nothing but my fighting-jacket.
+They--they----" he stammered and stopped as the trickling stream of
+imagination ran dry.  He, however, sought to make up for verbal
+shortcomings by fixing Peckover with a stare of the most appalling
+ferocity.  Lalage saved the situation by prompting from the darkness
+behind him into which she had slipped.  "They came on at the charge,"
+he roared, never relaxing his truculent glare at his listener; "one in
+front, one on each flank----"
+
+"That's right," whispered Lalage.  "Keep it up."
+
+"And one----" roared the encouraged swashbuckler.
+
+"Thought you said there were only three," objected the irrepressible
+Peckover.
+
+"I'll wring any man's neck who interrupts me and puts me off my
+stroke," was the savage response, and as the application of the remark
+could bear but one interpretation, its object decided that it would be
+better to curb his critical faculties before they brought on an
+interference with his personal appearance and comfort.
+
+"On they came like a hurricane," roared Carnaby, as the promptings
+reached him, "one here in face: one on the right flank, one on--on----"
+
+He stopped with some hazy notion that he had made a mistake.  In his
+graphic action illustrating the narrative he had landed himself beyond
+ear-shot of his prompter.
+
+"On the left," Peckover supplied sympathetically.  "What's the matter?"
+For the reciter seemed confused.
+
+"He has had so many fights that he forgets them," explained Lalage,
+emerging from the darkness to the rescue.  "More than the other fellows
+do, though.  Go on, you great fool!" she politely adjured the
+free-lance under her breath.
+
+Thus incited, Carnaby put on a grimace which would have been nicely
+calculated to send an old lady into a fit or an infant into
+convulsions, albeit there lay beneath it an abject fear of his sister's
+displeasure.  "I'll show you!" he bellowed, while Peckover, with an
+uneasy calculation of the means of exit, wondered whether the object
+lesson would involve his posing as the inadequate representative of the
+unfortunate mounted police.  "First chap," the mighty one proceeded,
+with, it must be confessed, a certain tendency to reiteration, "first
+chap comes on full gallop in front."  Peckover nodded his absorbed
+interest.  "I pull off my boot and dash it in his face."  For an
+instant Peckover looked dubious; then realizing his ignorance of
+fighting under antipodean conditions, he accepted the statement for
+what it was worth.
+
+"Down he goes," the story continued, "tobogganning over the horse's
+tail."  Peckover, having without prejudice admitted the premises, could
+not resist accepting the conclusion as highly probable.
+
+Suddenly the warrior's hand shot out and grasped him by the shoulder.
+"You," he shouted, becoming intoxicated with excitement as the tale of
+his prowess grew, "are the second man.  As you pass, I slip under your
+arm and catch you a smack on the point of the jaw which puts you to
+sleep."
+
+Instantly Peckover covered with both hands the part of his anatomy
+referred to, and was understood to intimate that his own powers of
+imagination were quite equal to the task of realizing the particular
+form of assault which it was unnecessarily proposed to illustrate.
+
+Postponing for the moment the exemplification of the knock-out blow,
+Mr. Leo proceeded in spluttering ferocity with his narrative.  "In a
+moment I have got hold of the first man's cutlass----" here he caught
+up in his excitement a sword which unfortunately hung near, and
+flourished it in a fashion not hitherto adopted by any recognized
+school of arms.  "I turn, and cry----" he bellowed, when, as luck had
+it, his energy led him to catch the weapon, in his terrific swing,
+against a suit of armour which was brought toppling over upon him and
+thence to the floor with a crash which sounded through the gallery with
+startling din.
+
+The effect on the man of doughty deeds was, however, even more than
+startling.  He fell forward under the shock of the cold metal, and with
+the helmet, thus jerked loose, striking him a smart blow on the head,
+his roaring was changed in a moment from truculence to terror.  "Oh!
+Oh!" he cried, as he sprawled over a chair, "don't hurt me.  I am only
+pretending!"
+
+But his quicker-witted sister was already at hand to cover his
+confusion.  "Carnaby will have his joke," she exclaimed laughing
+loudly.  "You see?" she demanded suddenly of Peckover, effectually
+dispelling the amusement which was gathering on his face, "he is a man
+of action," she continued with grim significance.  "Cares for nobody,
+except his sister.  And he won't see her made a fool of."  Then, having
+beaten Peckover into retreating from too close an inspection of her
+brother's real state of mind, she turned, caught the sprawling fighter
+by the collar, and pushed him to his feet.  "Great goose!" she hissed
+at him.  "I could strangle you!"
+
+The striking of a clock told Peckover that the time appointed for his
+assignation had arrived.  "We'll hear that bloodthirsty anecdote
+to-morrow," he said, half trembling at his own temerity.  "It's too
+good to be wasted on an audience of one."
+
+"All right, my little wallaby-rat," responded Carnaby in a tone
+unpleasantly threatening, and with a valiant attempt to cover his
+discomfiture.
+
+"Don't wait," Peckover's apprehension of a coming complication forced
+him to say.  "Not much fun in this dark, chilly place.  I'll stop and
+pick the tin plates up."
+
+But as he made for the scattered armour, Lalage seized him.  "No, you
+don't," she said, with determination that filled her victim with
+despair.  "You come with us.  I don't trust you out of my sight."
+
+"Going to meet a girl here?" cried Carnaby, with a quite surprising
+flash of intuition.  "I'd like to see him."
+
+"We will," said Lalage, with quiet insistence; "we will see him.
+Here!"  She took up a breastplate and helmet.  "Get inside this armour,
+Carnaby dear, and we'll just keep an eye on him."
+
+Piece by piece she picked it up and buckled it on him, Carnaby during
+the somewhat irksome operation relieving his feelings by addressing
+various minatory remarks to the now discomfited Peckover.  "You stir a
+foot, and I'll twist it off, my pigeon.  You just mention we're here,
+and I'll pull your tongue out, my little magpie.  So you'll play fast
+and loose--chrrr Lal, you're pinching me--fast and loose with my
+beautiful sister, will you?  You just try it on, my chicken, and it
+will be the last article you ever do try on.  I'll flatten you out, and
+then swab the floor with you."
+
+With a running fire of such cheering announcements did Mr. Leo relieve
+the tedium of his process of adornment.  At length the pieces of armour
+were fixed to him.  There were absurd gaps in the covering;
+nevertheless, in the semi-darkness there was no manifest difference
+between him and the empty suits of mail.
+
+"Now," directed Lalage, as she arranged him on a stand, "you stay there
+as still at you can.  And you"--she turned to Peckover--"stir from the
+room if you dare.  You just tell the young minx you won't have anything
+to do with her, and, if she poaches on other people's preserves there
+won't be much sport for her by this day week."
+
+"Yes!"  A husky voice filtered through the vizor of Carnaby's helmet,
+as he flourished the sword in his hand.  "If you try fooling I'll cut
+your----"
+
+"Hush!" Lalage commanded, as she drew back into the obscurity of a
+recess.  "Some one coming."
+
+"Nice evening this evening," muttered Peckover ruefully as the door
+softly opened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+"Mr. Gage--Percy--are you there?"
+
+"Yes, I'm here," was the lugubrious response.
+
+"Have you been waiting long?" Ethel asked, coming close to him.
+
+"Hours," he declared feelingly, then quickly corrected the statement.
+"No, I mean, not long."  Back in the darkness he fancied he could see
+the truculent eyes glaring through the bars of the helmet.
+
+"I couldn't get away," Ethel said invitingly.  "Had to dodge Dagmar."
+
+"Ho! she wanted to come too, did she?" Peckover remarked in
+desperation.  "The more the merrier."
+
+Ethel drew back with rather a sour look on her expectant face.  "Mr.
+Gage, what do you mean?"  Then with characteristic tenacity, she sidled
+up to him again.  "Percy, how cold you are," she observed reproachfully.
+
+"Cold?" he returned miserably.  "Yes, it is a bit chilly.  Enough to
+give any fellow the shivers.  Chamber of Horrors is a fool to it.  I
+mean," he quickly added, as an ominous movement of Carnaby's sword
+caught his eye, "the armour strikes cold."
+
+"Of course," said Ethel huffily, "if you would prefer Dagmar, I'll go
+and send her to you."
+
+"Oh, no; please don't trouble.  You'll do," he replied, with an
+indifference born of desperation.
+
+The lady resolved to try another tack.  "Oh, Mr. Gage," she said, with
+a tremor in her voice; "how unkind you are!"
+
+Her face was so close to him that the trial was almost more than he
+could stand.  "No, no, not unkind," he denied, looking wildly round for
+a way of escape.
+
+"So changed," she insisted.
+
+"No, not changed," he replied equivocally.
+
+"So distant."
+
+"Wish I was--a hundred miles distant," he groaned to himself.  "Can't
+help it," he declared, goaded by the consciousness of those four eyes
+magnetizing him from the darkness.  "Perhaps I've been too familiar."
+"Oh, no," she protested, growing desperate in turn, as the prize of a
+millionaire husband seemed slipping from her.  "If I don't mind it
+Percy, dear----"
+
+She put out her arms, but he fell back.  "Don't," he exclaimed, the
+hateful words almost choking him.  "It isn't proper, you know."
+
+"I'm afraid," she urged forlornly.  "I have been too absurdly proper."
+
+"Oh, no--yes, I mean, no, no."  In his state of mind Peckover found it
+impossible to differentiate between what he longed and what he was
+forced to say.
+
+"You said to-day it was dry work," Ethel observed caressingly.  "You
+may have a sip if you like."
+
+The invitation, reminding him, with a difference, of his Crystal Palace
+and Welsh Harp days, was well nigh too much for the well-versed
+philander of the suburbs.  "Oh, don't, don't!" he almost shrieked.
+"Please go away.  You will drive me mad.  This is awful," he groaned.
+
+"Of course, if you'd rather not----" Ethel suggested with a toss of the
+head.
+
+"It's never rather not with me," he protested under his breath.
+"Only----"
+
+Accepting his lowered tone as one of endearment and invitation, Ethel,
+wondering at his unusual diffidence, drew closer to him.  Mechanically
+and most unwillingly, he drew back.  "Well, you need not run away," she
+pouted.
+
+From what he could, in the semi-darkness, see of her eyes he fancied he
+detected there an intention to spring at him, or at any rate to fall
+into his arms.  In tantalizing terror he hastily retreated still
+further, and in doing so stumbled against the stand of armour which
+just then contained the redoubtable Carnaby, receiving for his
+clumsiness a sound cuff from the mailed fist of that truculent spirit.
+Luckily, as the episode took place in the shadow, it was not noticed by
+the lady who had stopped her pursuit of matrimony and mammon in a not
+unjustifiable huff.
+
+"I know," she declared resentfully.  "It's all that horrid Colonial
+girl.  How you can like her beats me."
+
+"Oh, she's not bad," was Peckover's reluctant explanation.
+
+"I think," returned Ethel with decision, "she is simply awful.  If that
+is Colonial taste, I am sorry for you.  You could never think of
+marrying her!"
+
+"I'm afraid so," he blurted out in his woe and confusion.  His guilty
+eyes perceived a disquieting movement on the part of the man in armour,
+and in turning, ready to flee from the probable onslaught, he saw in
+the gloom Lalage's eyes scintillating vengeance.  "I--I mean I hope
+so," he corrected, almost in a shriek.
+
+Induced by this strange and contradictory behaviour, Ethel suddenly
+made a dart and flung her designing arms round him.  "Oh, Percy," she
+cried with an adequate imitation of a sob, "you are not going to throw
+me over for that creature?"
+
+"I must," he replied, releasing himself firmly and with what dignity
+was possible under the circumstances, "obey the dictates of honour."
+
+Miss Ethel drew back, looking very sold and desperate in the moonlight.
+"What a charming brother-in-law you will have!" she exclaimed, panting
+with scorn and her late exertion.  "Great lout!  Only fit to guzzle and
+smash furniture."
+
+"And," Peckover added miserably to himself, "people who don't agree
+with him."
+
+His silence gave rise to a wild hope in the besieging breast that the
+defence was wavering.  In a trice, with an improvement upon her former
+tentative onslaught, she had thrown herself with greater deadliness of
+aim and more convulsive tenacity into his willing, yet unwilling, arms
+again.
+
+"Oh, Percy," she howled in a judiciously modulated pitch, "I can't bear
+your coldness!  I can't let you go!"
+
+Peckover's situation with those four glaring eyes and those two
+matrimonially determined grips upon him was truly deplorable.  "I'm a
+dead man," he gasped, as he saw, over Ethel's reckless shoulder, the
+awful mail-clad figure raise the sword with grim significance.  "I say;
+stop!" he cried, struggling ungallantly to free himself.  "Keep away!
+I can't marry you!"
+
+"Mr. Gage!  Do you mean it?"  It was most undignified from both
+parties' point of view, but the fact must be chronicled that she
+shook--actually shook him.  "Oh, I won't be swindled like this!" she
+cried, in the height of exasperation.
+
+Finding that with the obvious intention of being as good as her word,
+she, instead of releasing him with scorn, was hugging him tighter in
+desperation, he was fain to cry, in a hoarse whisper, "Hush!  Keep off!
+We are not alone.  Somebody in the room."
+
+Ethel started back and looked round with a half-indignant,
+half-distrustful eye and saw--Dagmar.  That young lady having had her
+suspicions aroused by the prolonged absence of her sister and their
+eligible guest, who, by the way, was supposed to be cheering the sick
+bed of his friend, Lord Quorn, had started off on a search expedition,
+and had just then crept pryingly into the picture-gallery.
+
+"Ethel?" she cried with a pounce.  "All alone with Mr. Gage here, of
+all places, and in the dark!  This is disgraceful."
+
+"Mr. Gage," Ethel declared calmly, "is going to marry me."
+
+She was quite ready for her sister to join issue on that statement, but
+to her surprise the contradiction came from another quarter.
+
+"Mr. Gage is not going to do anything of the sort."  It was Lalage Leo
+who, emerging from the obscurity which had shrouded her, uttered the
+flat denial.
+
+"There!" said Peckover in uncomfortable justification of his
+backwardness, "you see we were not alone."
+
+"No!" cried a loud voice as Carnaby clanked forward.  "Not much."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage, how dishonourable," Ethel exclaimed trying to look
+scandalized while she resolved how best she could turn the situation to
+account.  "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
+
+"I did tell you not to hug me," Peckover replied bluntly.
+
+"If," suggested Carnaby with a leer, having, after a struggle to a
+running accompaniment of murmured strong language, got his helmet off,
+"if you want anybody to hug----"
+
+"Oh!" Ethel cried in manifest disgust, as though her demonstrativeness
+was regulated by any less material consideration than its object's bank
+balance.
+
+"I'll take the armour off," Carnaby assured her, his tone suggesting
+that that might make all the difference.
+
+"I will not be treated like this," Ethel exclaimed indignantly, aware
+of the necessity for having her position in the complication settled
+then and there.  "Mr. Gage is engaged to me."  She seized Peckover's
+arm and hung on to it grimly.
+
+"No, to me," Dagmar objected as with a desperation born of an insecure
+tenure she clutched his other arm.
+
+Lalage, with mischief in her dark eyes, swooped down upon the trio.
+The unhappy Peckover's arms being fast held, the only way that occurred
+to him of avoiding the coming assault was to endeavour to sit down on
+the floor, in which he succeeded, after a short and spirited attempt on
+the part of his captors to defeat the manoeuvre.
+
+"I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage," said Lalage with
+calm determination; "and I mean to enforce it, eh, Carnaby?"
+
+"Just let me get out of this rotten armour," growled her brother, thus
+appealed to.  "I'll----"
+
+"But it's not my fault," urged Peckover plaintively, from his
+undignified position on the floor.
+
+His weakness was not, however, shared by the ladies who, having him
+fast in their grips, knelt, under the exigences of the situation,
+beside him.
+
+"He is engaged to me," Ethel maintained stoutly.
+
+"You are engaged to Sharnbrook," objected Dagmar.
+
+"I am not," she denied loudly and with decision.
+
+"All right!  That's settled," exclaimed a blithe voice from the gloom,
+from which next moment the said John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook emerged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The real and resuscitated Lord Quorn had all this while been having a
+deplorable time of it.  Driven from the _Three Pigeons_ in consequence
+of that hostelry being the abode of the terrible Leos, denied access to
+his own home through the same fear, he had betaken himself to a
+neighbouring village, and there spent his days, only venturing towards
+Staplewick after nightfall, when he would prowl about the Towers like
+an uneasy, discontented ghost.  But now the small sum he had been able
+to raise on the little jewellery he wore was all but spent, and he was
+becoming desperate.  Every day he expected to find that his trackers
+from the Antipodes had departed in disgust; every night he was
+disappointed.  Surely, thought he, with the false Lord Quorn to all
+intents established, what have these nuisances to wait for?  Surely
+even the self-and-brother-reliant Lalage can scarcely be stupid enough
+to suppose that she had a chance of catching the substituted lord of
+Staplewick.  If he has the cleverness and enterprise to fill that
+position backed by his friend's money he will hardly be such a rank
+idiot as to allow himself to be snapped up by those Australian sharks.
+
+Meanwhile the position for the real owner was drawing to a point when
+something would have to be done.  Necessary as it was for him to lie
+low, it was yet more necessary for him to live, and his resources were
+now about exhausted.
+
+And the other Lord Quorn, he who had, so to speak, bought a title
+without a title, was, except so far as nourishment went, in an almost
+equally uncomfortable position.  He had vowed that he would get up (his
+chill having left him) and he had done so, much to Peckover's annoyance
+and apprehension.  That astute person, rendered yet more wily by the
+chance of losing a handsome income, and furthermore of being kicked out
+of the fairly safe asylum he had found in the Towers, had set himself,
+with all the desperate disingenuousness he could summon to his aid, to
+work upon the fears and personal considerations of the convalescent.
+The consequence was that Gage, obstinate as he was, so far succumbed to
+the lurid picture, drawn by his friend, of the certain consequences of
+showing himself, that he had to submit with a very ill grace to
+confining his perambulations to the more secluded parts of the house
+and garden.
+
+He would not have minded this so much had his circumscribed existence
+been mitigated by the charm of constant--or even inconstant--female
+society.  But the fact was that so long as the rich Mr. Gage,
+represented by the strategic Peckover, was more or less free, Lord
+Quorn, even with a fair income, the result of his performance in the
+lake, was, to these ladies at least, less to be desired than the man of
+wealth.  The Misses Hemyock were too familiar with an aristocratic
+position for it to have any charms for them.  They were also well
+versed in the tricks of keeping up appearances on limited means, which
+meant going in for the parade and going without the desirables of life;
+in consequence of which their discontented hearts were both rigidly set
+upon solid fortune rather than upon empty grandeur; money was what they
+hankered after; they were tired of mere social standing.  So Mr. Gage's
+yearning was still ungratified, and so he told himself, and his friend,
+Peckover, in no measured terms as he rampaged about the more secluded
+quarters of the demesne.
+
+Meanwhile the time for the Hemyocks to give up their tenancy of
+Staplewick had arrived, and that designing family had left the Towers.
+Not to go far, though.  Lady Agatha with an eye to bringing the
+business in hand to a happy conclusion, had persuaded some
+acquaintances, two elderly sisters, to turn out of the Moat, a house
+within half a mile of the Towers, and seek the invigorating air of a
+seaside resort for a month or two.  From this point of vantage she
+continued to keep an opportunist's eye on the eligible bachelors, whose
+position of comparative freedom was now from the lady's point of view
+that of a bird who is let out of its cage and allowed to hop and
+flutter to the extent permitted by the string attached to its legs.
+But the Moat and the _Three Pigeons_, where the enterprising Leos still
+lingered in an attitude of doubtfully restrained aggressiveness, were
+both marked with a red cross in the minds of Peckover and Gage, to be
+given a wide berth in their rambles.
+
+Now a curious chance was to bring about a still more complicated state
+of affairs than already existed.  Gage was out riding one afternoon,
+exploring the roads and bridle-paths of the neighbourhood alone, for,
+since his adventure with Harlequin, Peckover had decided that life on
+five thousand a year was too precious to risk on horseback.  He was
+jogging along a woodland road, turning over in his mind plans for the
+extraction of more fun than he was just then getting out of his
+purchased dignity, when suddenly a turn in the way gave him a glimpse
+of the well-known figures of the ladies from the Moat who did not
+exactly fit in with the distractions he was seeking.  Luckily their
+backs were towards him, while the grassy road deadened the sound of his
+horse's hoofs.  Quickly he reined up and turned aside into the wood
+with the intention of striking a bridle-path, a few hundred yards
+ahead, which would bring him to the park and safety.  As he gained the
+covert he heard or thought he heard, the would-be charmers giving
+tongue in pursuit.  Accordingly he shook up his horse into a smart
+trot, hoping to get clear away without apparent rudeness.
+
+Now it is manifestly difficult to ride fast and far through a pathless
+wood unscathed.  In his anxiety to press forward Gage had one or two
+narrow escapes from being rubbed off by interposing trees.  As he was
+being carried away at a smart pace he suddenly had occasion to duck
+over the saddle-bow to avoid a low branch.  While in this attitude,
+leaning sideways, his horse tripped over an exposed root, plunged
+forward and recovered himself, but not before the impetus had shot his
+rider out of the saddle.  In trying to save himself Gage somehow
+contrived to twist and wedge his foot in the stirrup as he fell.  So he
+was dragged along, just able to keep his head from contact with the
+ground by the purchase he got from the bridle which he still clutched.
+He tried in vain to stop the horse, preferring naturally the society of
+the Misses Hemyock to the excitement of that bumping progress; but the
+animal was not amenable to snaffle or reason, and the severely
+inconvenient mode of getting over the ground continued.
+
+Then suddenly, in his undignified, not to say dangerous, position, Gage
+heard a man's voice cry, "Whoa, boy!" the horse swerved inconveniently
+for his hanger-on, who became aware as the painful method of equitation
+came to a stop, that a man was at his head.  Without unnecessary loss
+of time Gage allowed himself to be extricated from his unbecoming
+attitude and set on his feet.
+
+"Awkward position to adopt," remarked his rescuer dryly.  "Lucky thing
+I happened to be on hand."
+
+"I'm awfully obliged to you," Gage said, gratefully, feeling that his
+good time had hung in the balance during those exciting moments.
+"Shouldn't wonder if you've saved my life."
+
+He surveyed his preserver inquiringly to gather what manner of man he
+was.  A shabby, hungry-looking fellow, who ought to have been more
+respectable than his clothes proclaimed.
+
+"I think it's quite likely," was the cool response.
+
+"Horse stumbled when I was off my balance ducking away from a bough,"
+Gage thought proper to explain by way of excusing his late pose.
+
+"Ah!  Just so.  Not an easy position to recover from when once you're
+well shaken into it," the man commented indifferently; "with the horse
+a bit fresh, and the ground not exactly a billiard table.  Lucky I
+noticed you, if you happen to be in no particular hurry to hand in your
+checks."
+
+"I really am more than grateful to you," Gage protested warmly,
+realizing the narrow squeak he had had of losing a big investment.  "I
+hope I may be able to prove my gratitude.  Do you belong to these
+parts?"
+
+"No.  Not exactly," the man answered gloomily.  "Came down here to get
+a place only to find it snapped up by somebody else."
+
+"Ah, the way of the world, I'm afraid," Gage commented sympathetically.
+"Well, perhaps I can find you something to do on my place here.  I'm
+Lord Quorn."
+
+"Oh, are you?" returned the man in a tone which left Gage a little
+doubtful as to his manners.
+
+"I've taken over an old place that wants a deal of looking after to get
+it ship-shape," he continued.  "Any experience in land and farming?"
+
+"Plenty," was the prompt answer.
+
+"Then you ought to do for me," Gage said.  "Anyhow I should like to put
+something acceptable in your way.  You've done me a service I shan't
+easily forget, and I hope you won't do anything to make me want to
+regret it.  Now, will it suit your book to take a position on the
+Staplewick estate?"
+
+"Just what I was after," replied the stranger in a curiously mechanical
+tone.  He seemed strangely preoccupied, even apathetic, but Gage was
+not going just then to criticize too closely the man who had saved his
+life.
+
+"Come along, then," he said.
+
+The man seemed to rouse himself from a reverie, then laughed oddly.
+"Yes, I'll come," he agreed more briskly.  "You shan't find fault with
+the way I look after my place."
+
+"We'll talk it over as we go," said Gage, throwing the bridle over his
+arm and moving on.
+
+
+"Full of fun and pretty surprises, the peerage," Gage observed to his
+friend later in the afternoon.  "Makes one wonder what the next start
+is going to be."
+
+"What's wrong now?" Peckover inquired with a laugh.
+
+"Had a nasty spill, and nearly got sent to bye-bye just as the fun is
+beginning."
+
+"Come off?"
+
+Gage answered by an aggrieved nod, as though he held his friend
+responsible for the mishap.  "Got my foot caught in the iron and was
+dragged ever so far."
+
+"Awkward," Peckover commented.  "Still you can't put that down to the
+peerage.  Noblemen's feet don't swell, although their heads may."
+
+"I don't," returned Gage snappishly.  "Only the Quorn title doesn't
+seem exactly a mascot."
+
+This was a proposition which the vendor of that equivocal dignity did
+not feel himself in a position to traverse.  "How did you get out of
+it?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+"The iron?  I shouldn't have been taken out alive, with the brute
+bumping me over the ground fit to drive my spine out at the top of my
+skull," Gage replied in a victimized tone, "if it hadn't been for a
+chap that came along in the nick of time and held him up."
+
+"Lucky," remarked Peckover.  "Going to settle a few hundred thou. on
+him?" he inquired playfully.
+
+"Not exactly.  But I'm going to give him a billet on the estate.  Poor
+devil, out-at-elbows; superior sort for all that.  Knows all about
+farming, he tells me.  He'd better have that glib old thief Treacher's
+place at the farm.  Turn him in there, and let him make the best job he
+can of it.  He has given me an idea of how he'd work the land, which
+seems pretty sensible, and at the worst he can't rob me more than
+Treacher has been doing."
+
+"Good idea," Peckover agreed, not wildly interested in the arrangement.
+
+"Yes," said Gage.  "After all, the fellow saved my life.  I owe him a
+chance of showing he can be honest as well as useful.  Now, as I'm
+considerably bumped about and only fit for a hot bath, I'd be glad if
+you'd just trot the fellow down to the farm, give Treacher his notice,
+and show his successor how the land lies.  We can put him up somewhere
+till Treacher clears out."
+
+"All right," Peckover responded with a yawn.  "Anything to oblige.
+Where is the party?"
+
+"He's in the gun-room.  I told Bisgood to get him something to eat.
+Poor fellow seemed half starved.  His name's Jenkins.  Treat him
+kindly.  He has done us both a service," he added significantly.
+
+"All serene," Peckover assured him with another yawn.  "I'll handle him
+tenderly.  In the gun-room, eh?"
+
+As Peckover opened the gun-room door, Gage's preserver was standing
+with his back to it, scrutinizing a sporting print.  "Up, Jenkins," was
+Peckover's facetious salutation and mode of attracting his attention.
+Next moment it was down Peckover, for he staggered back and subsided
+helplessly into a low chair as, in the stranger who turned quickly, he
+recognized with a gasping cry the real Lord Quorn, whom he had believed
+to be lying poisoned and forgotten in Great Bunbury churchyard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+For several seconds neither man spoke; Peckover, sprawling limply as he
+fell, staring with distended, apprehensive eyes at Quorn who, master of
+the strange situation, regarded him with a certain grim amusement.
+
+"Hope you are having a good time, Mr.--Gage, is it?--or something else,
+which for the moment has slipped my memory?"
+
+Peckover's wits were rapidly recovering from the shock of dispersal
+caused by the unexpected bomb which had fallen on them.  "Curious we
+should meet again like this," he said with a sickly smile.
+
+"Very," was the pointed response.  "And a trifle awkward, I should
+fancy, for you."
+
+"Oh, no," Peckover protested, pulling himself together and assuming the
+boldest face he could summon up.  "It wasn't my fault you drank that
+doctored wine, which I intended for my own consumption."
+
+"Dare say not," Quorn returned uncompromisingly.  "Admitting for the
+sake of argument that was an unfortunate mistake, how about you and
+your friend annexing my place and title?"
+
+Peckover's face showed bland surprise.  "Me and my friend taking your
+place and title?  What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh," replied Quorn with impatient sarcasm, "we are dense this evening.
+It may astonish you, Mr. Alias Gage, but I rather fancy Staplewick Park
+and Towers belong to Lord Quorn."
+
+"Who suggested they didn't?" asked Peckover wonderingly.
+
+"I'd like to see the man, that's all," retorted Quorn.  "And," he
+resumed, "I'm rather under the impression that I'm Lord Quorn."
+
+"I dare say," was the prompt rejoinder.  "But it doesn't follow you are
+that nobleman."
+
+"What?" he roared.
+
+"Don't make a noise," said Peckover, with a touch of dignity; "the
+servants aren't used to it."
+
+"I say I am Lord Quorn," the other repeated with less volume but more
+intensity.  "And you know it."
+
+"But Lord Quorn says he's Lord Quorn," argued the wily Peckover with
+maddening plausibility.  "That's all I know.  I'm not the Heralds'
+College."
+
+"You're a pair of frauds," cried Quorn.
+
+"Naturally, if you're the rightful peer," was the bland reply.  "But we
+don't know it, nor anybody else."
+
+"Don't they?"
+
+"Except yourself, I was going to say, and a lady and gentleman who have
+come all the way from Australia to stick to it--and you."
+
+The hit told.  Quorn's manner visibly weakened.
+
+"What--you've had the nuisances up here--what is their infernal game?"
+he asked, darkly apprehensive.
+
+"Simple enough," replied Peckover, beginning to feel the courage he had
+hitherto simulated.  "The fair Lalage's game is to be Lady Quorn, or to
+know the reason why.  And she has brought over dear old Carnaby as an
+extra note of interrogation."
+
+"Oh!  What persevering devils they are," Quorn observed uneasily.  "And
+what do they say to your friend who calls himself Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Say?"  Peckover's native smartness was quick to turn the situation to
+advantage.  "Why, their idea is that one Lord Quorn's as good as
+another and failing one the other will do nicely."
+
+Quorn gave a long whistle.  "Why, you don't mean to say that Lal Leo is
+going for your friend?"
+
+"She is, though, by George," was the blunt answer.  "Only, of course,
+she hasn't got the hold on him she would have on you.  And that's where
+Carnaby comes in."
+
+Quorn looked at him searchingly, but was fain to accept the statement.
+Besides which, it tallied with his idea of the Leonine methods.  "Well,
+that's a queer go," he said, and then fell into a puzzled silence.
+Presently he burst out with a question, not unnatural under the
+circumstances.  "Who the devil is the thief who has the cheek to call
+himself Lord Quorn?"
+
+Peckover shrugged.  "For aught I know to the contrary he is Lord
+Quorn," he replied blandly.
+
+"Rats!" cried the dispossessed one wrathfully.  "It's a put-up job
+between you and him."
+
+"My good sir----"
+
+"You know he's not Lord Quorn, and you know I am."
+
+"I've told you already, not being in the know of the Heralds' College,
+I'm not in a position to say anything about it."
+
+"Aren't you?" sneered Quorn.  "I know all about it, though.  When I
+drank that loaded stuff that sent me to sleep that was your chance, and
+you took it."
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"You did.  And I don't blame you.  But I've woke up now."
+
+"Then," rejoined Peckover sarcastically, "since you are so wide-awake,
+perhaps you can explain why I didn't take the title myself?"
+
+"I suppose," Quorn replied nastily, "you didn't feel you could fill the
+part."
+
+"Of a British nobleman?"  Peckover laughed scornfully.  "Too steady and
+respectable, eh?  My highly creditable record wouldn't have stood in my
+way if I'd had a chance of nobbling the coronet."
+
+Quorn brought his fist down with a bang on the table.  "D--n it, man,
+who is this fellow?"
+
+"Lord Quorn," Peckover maintained.
+
+"Lord Quorn!"  The real man could not find words to express his
+disgust.  "How did you pick him up?" he demanded, seeing the
+uselessness of arguing the question of identity.
+
+"He picked me up," Peckover replied coolly.
+
+"How?  When?  Where?"
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, if you won't make such a noise," Peckover
+said suavely.  "He came to the _Quorn Arms_ just after you had made
+that little mistake in the refreshment, and announced himself as Lord
+Quorn; and who was I to say he was not Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Funny," remarked Quorn, "that he should have brought you along here."
+
+"Fact is," was the ready explanation, "he was afraid of being caught by
+those Hemyock terrors who straightaway began tumbling over one another
+to get him.  Brought me along here as a chaperon, or an umbrella, if
+you like, and I've made myself useful."
+
+"I see," said Quorn suspiciously.  "And how about being a millionaire?"
+
+"That," replied Peckover, "is how we worked the trick.  Lady Agatha is
+a nailer.  She wouldn't have wasted board and lodging on a poor man.
+And as a rich chap I can whistle the dear girls off when they get
+closer to Quorn than he cares about."
+
+The assumption of the title irritated its real holder.  "Quorn?" he
+repeated resentfully.  "I like that.  There's only one Quorn, and I'm
+going to show everybody where he is."
+
+"Lalage and all?" was the pertinent objection.
+
+"Oh, confound Lalage!"
+
+"Just so--confound Lalage," was the hearty response, "Only take care
+Lalage does not confound you."
+
+For a few moments Quorn preserved an aggrieved and discomfited silence.
+"You don't suppose," he said at length, "I am going to stand being
+humbugged like this."
+
+"I don't reckon anything about it," replied Peckover with wise
+mendacity.  "You two Quorns had better fight it out between yourselves.
+Only----"
+
+"Only what?" the other snapped.
+
+"If I were you I should wait until the ring's clear before I put up my
+hands."
+
+Quorn stared in front of him in gloomy silence.  "Pretty darned mess it
+is," he remarked presently.
+
+"It is.  But it will clear up," said Peckover cheerfully.  "That is if
+you give it time."
+
+Quorn made a sour face.  "Nice position for me----"
+
+"If you will go engaging the affections of ladies from the Bush with
+short hair and muscular brothers," put in Peckover.  "It's a mercy as
+it is that this other claimant cropped up.  He has saved you a lot of
+worry."
+
+"So they're after him?" asked Quorn with grim amusement.
+
+"You bet.  He had to stay in bed for a week to keep out of their way.
+Lalage has crossed over to be Lady Quorn, and she means business."
+
+"The devil she does!" exclaimed Quorn uneasily.
+
+"Just think," urged Peckover with telling plausibility, "what this
+other Quorn has saved you from.  Dear old Carnaby has a rare hankering
+after experiments on people's physiognomies; trying how a man looks
+with his nose bent, his eye closed, and a tooth or two smudged out.  He
+fitted his dooks once round my throat, and I can feel 'em there now."
+
+"What was that for?"
+
+"Just to keep his hand in.  He is uncommonly keen on meeting you, and
+he has got a bagful of funniments ready for the occasion."
+
+"Pleasant fellow," ejaculated Quorn ruefully.
+
+"Yes," pursued Peckover, "it's providential this chap, t'other Quorn,
+turned up.  And if you take my advice you'll let him sit where he is
+till the Leos have eaten their heads off at _The Pigeons_ and turned
+the game up."
+
+"Looks as though I'd better," Quorn agreed reluctantly.
+
+"It will be bad enough if Carnaby catches you about as it is,"
+continued Peckover, encouraged by the success of his argument.  "He may
+do something distinctly unpleasant, but, not being for the moment Lord
+Quorn, you won't have to marry old Lalage into the bargain."
+
+"That's something," murmured Quorn.
+
+"Everything, almost," said Peckover cheerfully.  "If you wriggle out of
+that matrimonial spring-trap, you won't mind leaving half of your tail
+behind.  You may lose a feature or two, but you'll be saved a life-time
+of bother."
+
+"To get quit of Lalage would be gratifying," Quorn admitted gloomily.
+"But with my nose sliced off----"
+
+"If," urged Peckover encouragingly, "you keep away from the
+looking-glass you'll never miss it."
+
+"But other people will," Quorn objected, clearly discomposed by the
+idea.
+
+"Well, then," Peckover summed up, "if you don't feel equal to tackling
+the gentle Carnaby either as Quorn or Jenkins, you had best lie low
+till they cart themselves away.  The other Quorn won't be particular,
+since you saved his life, and Treacher doesn't go for a month.  We'll
+fix you up a room in one of the lodges, and you can spend your time in
+keeping out of Lalage's way.  Give out you are surveying the estate,
+which, if it should turn out to be yours, won't be trouble thrown away.
+I'll look after you, and back you up.  You can trust me."
+
+"I don't know that I can," was the not unnatural objection.
+
+"Of course you can," Peckover assured him sympathetically.  "Anyhow,
+you've got to, unless you want Carnaby to wring you out and swab the
+stable yard with you."
+
+"A nice thing," Quorn protested distastefully, "for me to be skulking
+about, and playing the understrapper on my own estate."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Peckover sententiously. "We often have to pay for our
+fun when we least expect to."
+
+
+Thus it came to pass that matters shaped themselves to the wily
+Peckover's handling, and he was able with native shrewdness to snatch a
+fresh reprieve from the threatening exposure.  And it was of manifest
+importance for him to do so, since every day's income made an
+appreciable addition to the little capital he was amassing.  If only he
+could keep the game up for a few months it would be for him, an
+independence.  That former income of his, thirty-five shillings a week,
+would be his for life, and without working.  No wonder he sharpened his
+wits to keep his oddly diversified puppets dallying.
+
+So the unsuspecting Lord Quorn by purchase continued to enjoy his
+title, little dreaming of the Jenkinsian volcano at his very door.  So
+likewise the chafing and mystified Quorn was assiduously taken in hand
+by Peckover and his fears kept up to high-water mark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Lady Ormstork was a practitioner in somewhat the same line of business
+as Lady Agatha Hemyock.  Her dealings were however, of a wider scope
+and carried out with more histrionic embellishment than those of her
+sister schemer who, as may have been gathered, had her hands full with
+her two discontented and recalcitrant daughters.  Lady Ormstork had,
+she was thankful, and also given to say, no daughter.  But other people
+had them.  Also she had no money to speak of, and again other people
+had.  So, being a tough and wise lady of tireless energy and a grasping
+turn of mind, she set herself to take certain other people's daughters,
+for matrimonial objects, be it understood, and at the same time as much
+of their money as she had the face--and hers was fairly expansive and
+brazen--to ask for.
+
+In pursuance of a scheme which her ladyship had already several times
+put in practice with success, she, on hearing certain rumours, ran down
+to Great Bunbury, and secured a furnished house on the outskirts of
+that somewhat uninteresting borough.
+
+As the upshot of this apparently pointless and fatuous action, it was
+one afternoon announced to Gage who was seeking relaxation from the
+duties of his position in a game of billiards with his friend Peckover,
+that Lady Ormstork and Miss Ulrica Buffkin were in the drawing-room.
+
+"Who the deuce are they, Bisgood?" Gage inquired, in not the best of
+humours at being interrupted in a promising run of nursery cannons.
+
+"I don't know, my lord," answered Bisgood stolidly, his air suggesting
+that it was his master's business to find out for himself.  "Never
+heard of the ladies before."
+
+"What are they like?" asked Peckover, ever on the alert for an
+unpleasant surprise.
+
+"Middle-aged lady, sir, and a young one."
+
+"Good-looking?" Gage demanded, weighing the visitors against the joy of
+the prettily placed balls by the top pocket.
+
+"The young lady decidedly so, my lord," Bisgood answered with the
+dictum of a connoisseur.  "As regards the elder lady opinions might
+diff----"
+
+"Oh, bother the old lady.  You can look after her, Percy," said Gage,
+putting on his coat.  "I suppose they are ladies, Bisgood?"
+
+"Lady Ormstork, my lord."
+
+"Where's the book?  Let's look her out."
+
+Bisgood fetched Debrett, while Gage brushed his hair and gave an upward
+twist to his moustache.
+
+"Yes, here it is, correct enough.  'Harriot, Lady Ormstork, widow of
+Henry Fitz-fulke Candlish, fourth Baron Ormstork.'  Come on, old man,"
+Gage commanded; and with pricking curiosity concerning Miss Buffkin, he
+led the way to the drawing-room.
+
+The first glance told both men that Bisgood had not overstated the
+case.  Miss Buffkin had a roguish, voluptuous prettiness which fitted
+each man's ideal of feminine beauty.  Indeed it was so long before they
+could bring themselves to notice her companion that any other than the
+gratified Lady Ormstork would have reasonably shown signs of being
+offended.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" the wily peeress inquired sweetly, looking from one to
+the other; and for once, perhaps naturally, at fault.
+
+Gage, wrestling with his sudden preoccupation, went forward and shook
+hands.  "How do you do?" he inquired tentatively, in a manner from
+which no unprejudiced observer would have deduced any deep concern as
+to the state of her ladyship's health.
+
+"I must introduce myself."  She opened the conversation winningly, as
+the men took chairs opposite to her and kept furtive eyes on the
+alluring Ulrica.  "I was a great friend of the late peer's--your
+cousin----"  Gage bowed.  "My husband and he were at Eton together and
+kept up a life-long friendship."  Lady Ormstork sighed.  The men tried
+to look sympathetic and merely found themselves looking at the
+beautiful Miss Buffkin to see how she took it.
+
+"We often stayed here," the peeress proceeded in a voice of tender
+reminiscence.  "We always loved Staplewick and the--the neighbourhood."
+
+With an effort the men accepted the interesting statement with a duly
+chastened glance at the maundering lady.
+
+"So much so," Lady Ormstork continued, dropping with surprising ease
+the tone of lament in favour of one which suggested business-like hope,
+"that being sadly in need of change of air after the fatigue of the
+London season, I suggested, instead of the inevitable Homburg, the
+healthy and peaceful paradise of Great Bunbury."
+
+It struck as much of the minds of her listeners as they could afford to
+detach from the prepossessing Miss Buffkin that it had never occurred
+to them so to regard that unlovely market-town, but they made
+allowances for variation in tastes and found it possible to rejoice
+that some one, particularly this talkative old peeress, took pleasure
+in it.
+
+"It's an interesting old place," Gage agreed, with as much irony as
+anything else.
+
+"Nice change after London," Peckover chimed in, with a slight shudder
+at the recollection of his first impressions of that unattractive town.
+"Don't you think so?" he suddenly asked Miss Buffkin.
+
+The young lady hesitated, and her hesitation could not be said to count
+as a testimonial to the grimy place in question.  "It's not exactly
+lively," she answered with a smile that disclosed an irreproachable set
+of teeth.  "When you've walked up one side of the street and down the
+other you are ready, if not anxious, to bid Great Bunbury a life-long
+farewell."
+
+"My dearest Ulrica," Lady Ormstork remonstrated, "you have no romance."
+
+"If I had a sackful, Great Bunbury would shake it out of me pretty
+quick," her protégée retorted.
+
+"Well," the elder lady resumed almost plaintively, "perhaps it is that
+I view it in the light of happier days.  It used to be quite a treat to
+drive in from here on a fine afternoon to shop in the quaint little
+town."
+
+Both men glanced at Miss Buffkin as inviting a comment.
+
+"The things you buy there aren't much of a treat," she observed dryly.
+
+"And that is why," proceeded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the remark, "my
+heart turned towards Great Bunbury and dear old Staplewick, so that I
+felt I must come and see it again, even at the risk of being considered
+intrusive."
+
+The expression on the two men's faces was calculated to assure her that
+so long as she appeared similarly accompanied she need have no fear of
+her welcome.
+
+"I'm sure I'm delighted," Gage assured her, with a sly glance at the
+fascinating Ulrica.  "I hope you will stay to tea now, and come often,"
+he said with real enthusiasm.  "As often as you can."
+
+Lady Ormstork looked deeply grateful; indeed, as though a load of
+ungratified longing had been lifted from her shoulders; while Miss
+Buffkin seemed, from one cause or another, highly amused.
+
+"Thank you, Lord Quorn, it is most kind," Lady Ormstork replied
+gushingly.  "I shall revel in revisiting the dear old haunts.  I warn
+you I shall take you at your word, and come very, very often."
+
+"Can't come too often," Gage assured her gaily.  "Hope Miss Buffkin
+will come too.  You mustn't leave her moping in Great Bunbury.  We'll
+try to get up some fun for her out here."
+
+Lady Ormstork had no intention of leaving the profitable Ulrica behind,
+and she intimated as much.  Miss Buffkin, on her part, seemed to find
+more than a transitory amusement in the effect she had produced upon
+the men.
+
+"Perhaps you would like a turn before tea and look round the gardens,"
+Gage suggested, nudging his friend, "Rather untidy, but we are going to
+make them trim directly."
+
+"Oh, I should dearly love to see them as they are," the wily old
+peeress assured him.  "Untidiness lends itself to romance, does it not?"
+
+"I dare say it does," responded Gage, "and gets interest out of it."
+
+Lady Ormstork was too busy manoeuvring to get hold of Peckover to
+notice the joke.  Her game was to throw the new Lord Quorn and the fair
+Ulrica together with ultimate profit to herself.
+
+Peckover, it may be stated, was not wildly interested in the dowager
+peeress.  Not quite taking in the situation, he had anticipated that
+she would hang on to Gage, leaving Miss Buffkin in his willing charge.
+But the whole sense of the meeting was against him.  Between the
+grasping old lady and the repudiating Gage, he had no chance.
+
+"Go on!" commanded his friend in a peremptory whisper pushing him
+towards the peeress.
+
+"Don't you love a winter garden?" that astute dowager enquired sweetly
+as she annexed him, and then, without waiting for his predilections on
+the horticultural question, proceeded to arrange for "dear Ulrica" to
+be personally conducted by Gage.  There was no help for it, and
+Peckover resigned himself to the tolerance of aristocratic age and
+presumed inanity.
+
+"I can't tell you," Lady Ormstork observed in the cooing tone with
+which she smoothed over her designs, "how delighted I am to make the
+acquaintance of your friend, the new Lord Quorn, and to revisit dear
+old Staplewick.  What a charming fellow he seems."
+
+"Oh, yes; he's a slice of all right," Peckover agreed, wondering whence
+the lady had formed that conclusion, since Gage's behaviour had
+hitherto shown more signs of being charmed than charming.
+
+"He has," declared Lady Ormstork, "the family likeness.  Particularly
+the nose.  I saw the Quorn nose at once."
+
+This was a somewhat trying statement for Peckover, but he manfully
+repressed all evidence of agitation.  "Yes," he assented, "he's got the
+nose all right, and a bit of the Quorn lip, I'm thinking."
+
+Looking round as it were to verify the comparison, Lady Ormstork was
+pleased to see the lagging pair in close and animated conversation.
+
+"Yes, he reminds me of the late peer, particularly when he smiles," she
+declared with boldness, considering that she had never set eyes on a
+Lord Quorn in her life, nor been until a week before, within fifty
+miles of Staplewick.
+
+"Oh, does he?" responded Peckover indifferently, as he suppressed a
+yawn.
+
+"It will be so nice to come over here often," pursued Lady Ormstork,
+ignoring her companion's preoccupation.  "So delightful for my dear
+young friend, Miss Buffkin.  Naturally to a high spirited girl Great
+Bunbury is a little dull."
+
+"I should think it would be," Peckover responded.
+
+"Yes," said the lady with a little sigh of relief, "and so it will be
+such a pleasant change for her to have, so to speak, the run of this
+lovely park."
+
+"I'm sure," Peckover said with emphasis, "Lord Quorn will be delighted
+for Miss Buffkin to come here all day and every day."
+
+"How good of him," exclaimed Lady Ormstork, greedily accepting the
+suggestion.  "And I shall enjoy it too, more than I can express."
+
+Peckover was silent as he fell gloomily to wondering whether his
+desirable lot would be to entertain this suave old lady while his
+friend flirted with the fair and lively Ulrica.
+
+"My young friend," proceeded Lady Ormstork, "is a really charming
+girl--what a superb Wellingtonia!--Yes, I see a great deal of her.  Her
+father is not able to take her about, and so she has become almost like
+my own daughter."
+
+"Except that she doesn't exactly take after you in looks," thought
+Peckover; but he merely bowed acceptance of her statement.
+
+"You see, her position is quite enviable," the lady continued in her
+society voice and drawl, "As an only child she will be immensely rich.
+Indeed Ulrica has her separate fortune now.  I'm sure I may confide in
+you, Mr.----'
+
+"Gage," Peckover supplied alertly.
+
+"Mr. Gage.  Not one of the Shropshire Gages?"
+
+"Not that I know of," he replied, beating down a sporting instinct to
+claim kindred with that highly respectable, if rural, family.
+
+"Ah!  Some of the Worcestershire branch, the Lovel-Gages, were my
+greatest friends," said Lady Ormstork regretfully reminiscent.  "You
+don't come from Worcestershire?"
+
+"Not straight," he answered.
+
+Lady Ormstork laughed, as she always did when there was the possibility
+of a joke being intended.  "Well my dear Mr. Gage, I may tell you in
+confidence, as I feel we are going to be very good friends, that one of
+the reasons I brought dear Ulrica down to this quiet place was to be
+out of the way of certain fortune hunters who were pursuing her with
+their attentions."
+
+"I don't wonder," responded Peckover, with a touch of enthusiasm.
+
+"No," the lady agreed.  "Apart from her immense fortune, she is
+adorable.  So handsome! and so clever!"
+
+"Yes, she's all that," said Peckover, enviously thinking of what a good
+time his friend was having, and regretting for once, that he had let
+the title go.
+
+"One person in particular," pursued the dowager, "has given me great
+anxiety.  A Spanish duke, of undeniable family, a Grandee of Spain, and
+all that sort of thing, don't you know, but very poor, and consequently
+most persistent.  You know what these foreigners are."
+
+"Rather," Peckover assured her, in a tone which implied an intimate
+acquaintance with the procedure of Spanish Grandees, rich and poor.
+
+"Of course," the lady continued, "--oh, how pretty that peep is!--of
+course an alliance with Ulrica would set him, the duke, on his feet
+again.  It would enable him to resume his position and live on his
+estates like a prince."
+
+"Get a new hat to wear in the royal presence," added Peckover,
+remembering that attribute of Spanish Grandees which he had read of in
+the "interesting items" column of a weekly paper.
+
+"He is, I believe, devotedly in love with Ulrica, apart from her
+fortune," continued his companion.  "And of course from the point of
+view of mere rank and grandeur, the alliance would have been quite
+desirable.  But, after all, an English girl should marry an Englishman,
+that is my feeling and the wish of Ulrica's father; and so we have come
+down here to let the storm of the Duke de Salolja's passion blow itself
+out."
+
+"I see," said Peckover thoughtfully, wondering how much of the storm
+was true, since his last habit of mind was naturally now prone to
+suspicion and to look askance at unwarranted confidences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+"Well, Percy, my boy, what do you tot them up to come to?" inquired
+Gage jovially as they turned from an impressive adieu to their guests
+who drove off radiant--at least as far as Lady Ormstork was
+concerned--at the success of their visit.
+
+"They're all right," Peckover answered somewhat gloomily.  Considering
+the poor time he had had as the medium through which the wily peeress
+desired to convey certain information to his friend he could scarcely
+be expected to emulate that gentleman's enthusiasm.
+
+"Right?  I should think so," Gage exclaimed with emphasis.  "The girl
+is simply scrumptious."
+
+"I dare say," Peckover returned, with a jealous twinge.  "Rather
+different from our friends at the Moat, eh?"
+
+"Slightly.  There's no comparison.  She's a real beauty, and full of
+fun."
+
+"Oh, you found that out, did you?" Peckover observed curiously.
+
+"Rather.  This is the sort of Lord Quorn I'm paying for."
+
+"She has a lot of money," said Peckover.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"The old lady-bird told me so.  Confidential old party.  Good as
+admitted they had come down here to have a dash at you."
+
+"Me?" cried Gage, much interested.
+
+"Your title.  Or, rather mine," his friend declared sombrely, so
+dismally, indeed, that Gage said--
+
+"Come, you are not going to repent?  This is what I paid for.  I told
+you so at the outset."
+
+"Oh, yes," Peckover agreed.  "It's fair enough," and with the image of
+Miss Buffkin's commanding beauty in his heart, he darkly resolved to
+try whether some of her smiles might not in future be for him.
+
+
+Lady Ormstork was, as might have been confidently anticipated, as good
+as her word.  Almost every day she brought the fair Miss Buffkin to
+Staplewick, and on those that were missed the two friends contrived to
+find an excuse for calling at Cracknels, as the villa, built by a
+retired biscuit baker, was named.  The game was not a very pleasant one
+for Peckover, seeing that in it the dowager was invariably his partner,
+nevertheless he continued to stick to it doggedly in the hope that his
+opportunity for making running with the captivating Ulrica would surely
+come.
+
+Accordingly he disguised his feelings and the alertness with which he
+waited for an opening to assert his powers of fascination, making
+himself the while as agreeable and attentive to the astutely meandering
+peeress as the nature of her society talk permitted.
+
+"Lord Quorn and dear Ulrica seem to have taken quite a fancy to one
+another," she remarked one afternoon, tactfully leading the way so as
+to give a wide berth to a plantation of rhododendrons in the midst of
+which she had reason to suspect the other pair of promenaders was
+lingering.  "Don't you think so, Mr. Gage?"
+
+"Looks like it," answered Peckover with a sardonic curl of the lip.
+
+"You are his great friend.  He would naturally confide in you,"
+observed the lady with a pointed invitation to betray the said
+confidence.
+
+"Oh, yes.  He is very far gone," was the somewhat ill-humoured reply.
+"No need for him to mention it, so long as I retain my eyesight."
+
+"I am inclined to think," Lady Ormstork observed meditatively, "that
+the alliance would not be at all a bad thing."
+
+"No?"  Peckover, smarting under his confederate's good fortune, would
+not commit himself to an opinion.
+
+"Don't you think so?" the dowager asked suavely.
+
+"I don't blame old Quorn," Peckover replied, rather crudely.  "As to
+whether Ul--Miss Buffkin might not do better is a matter of opinion."
+
+"Possibly she might; or she might do worse," was the sage response.
+"After all, Quorn is a charming fellow."
+
+"Oh, yes," his friend assented in a tone so warped that it seemed to
+signify, "Oh, no."
+
+"It's a fine old title," said the lady reflectively.
+
+"Title's all right," he agreed equivocally.
+
+"Undeniable," Lady Ormstork maintained.  "But of course, my dear Mr.
+Gage, you understand that advantage would weigh nothing with me if
+Quorn were not genuinely fond of Ulrica."
+
+"Just so," responded Peckover with a wink at a passing swallow.
+
+"Naturally," she pursued, "you will see my position is a somewhat
+delicate one.  It is on that account, my dear Mr. Gage, that I make no
+scruple in asking you, a clever man of the world--if I may call you
+so----"
+
+"Oh, don't mention it," he replied glibly.
+
+"I'm asking you not to let me be in the dark as to your friend's real
+feelings and intentions.  For if I were sure that Quorn had no idea of
+proposing I should consider it my duty to take Ulrica away from here at
+once."
+
+"He has not expressed any such intention to me," Peckover replied,
+brightening a little.
+
+"But surely you think he will, he must?" demanded the lady anxiously.
+
+"Yes, he should by rights," Peckover agreed.  "But he may not be a
+marrying man."
+
+Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.  "Every man is a marrying man when he
+meets a girl like Ulrica.  Besides, it is the duty of every peer to
+marry, or what will become of our old nobility?  Heaven only knows to
+whom, as matters stand, the Quorn title will go next."
+
+Peckover had an idea that he could claim to share the knowledge.  "He
+ought to come to a firm offer if he means business," he said.
+
+"Our time here is getting short," Lady Ormstork declared significantly.
+Not but what she was prepared to grace Great Bunbury with her presence
+for a twelvemonth if that were likely to bring off the match.  "As
+Ulrica's temporary guardian I cannot allow Quorn to flirt with her
+indefinitely if he has no intention of proposing."
+
+"No," Peckover responded promptly, wondering how he could get a look
+in.  Then a happy idea struck him.  "Quorn is a shilly-shallying
+fellow," he said guilefully.  "Can't make up his mind.  I usually have
+to do it for him."
+
+"I wish you would in this instance," the lady exclaimed fervently.
+
+"Well, I think I might," he replied with sudden animation.  "But of
+course it won't do for me to tell him straight he ought to propose.
+He'd see you working the figure.  No, I've got a more artful plan than
+that."
+
+"Oh, you dear Mr. Gage!" cried Lady Ormstork, brightening at the
+prospect of an end to her uninteresting sojourn at The Cracknels.  "Do
+tell me."
+
+"Easy enough," said Peckover, sparkling likewise; "and highly
+effective.  One trial will prove it, or money returned.  Make him
+jealous."
+
+"How can we?" asked the dowager with a dubiousness which her companion
+did not find altogether complimentary.
+
+"Leave it to me," he replied, his sparkle subsiding to a touch of
+huffiness.  "Don't you think I'm equal to it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed, dear Mr. Gage," the lady drawled, eyeing him still
+rather doubtfully.
+
+"Don't you make any mistake about it," he protested severely.  "I
+always was first favourite with the ladies, and Quorn knows it--to his
+cost, I may tell you."
+
+"And you are still friends?" was the astute comment.
+
+"Sworn friends," Peckover replied with much truth.  "I'll prove it by
+making up his mind for him to marry the finest girl in England."
+
+"And what is your plan?" Lady Ormstork inquired approvingly.
+
+Rapidly the alert little mind had blocked in the outline of his scheme.
+"Let me make the running for a lap or two," he suggested.  "If that
+doesn't hurry him up, nothing will.  You come up as usual to-morrow;
+I'll slip away from Quorn, meet you, and go off for a stroll with Miss
+Ulrica.  You come on to the Hall.  Tell Quorn offhand, when he asks,
+what has become of the young lady.  Say she thought she'd prefer a
+stroll with me for a change, and if he sits still after that it's odds
+against Miss Buffkin being Lady Quorn.  You watch the effect."
+
+Lady Ormstork looked as though she might be safely trusted to keep her
+eyes open for it.
+
+Next day things happened as had been arranged.  Peckover made a timely
+desertion, and Lady Ormstork arrived at the Towers dignified and alone.
+
+"Not brought Miss Buffkin to-day?" Gage asked, trying to look as though
+he had still got the better half of the Cracknels establishment.  "Hope
+she's not ill?"
+
+"Oh, dear no," Lady Ormstork answered sweetly.  "She is here.  But we
+met your charming friend, Mr. Gage, just by the lodge gates, and dear
+Ulrica said she had been cramped up in the fly long enough, so she got
+out to stroll up through the park."
+
+Gage evidently experienced some difficulty in looking as pleased as a
+host should at the idea of his guest doing what pleases her best.  "I
+see," he said, uneasily reflective.  "Shall we walk back and meet them?
+It's a lovely day."
+
+"So Ulrica thought," the astutely suave lady responded.  "And the park
+looked so tempting.  Yes, a short stroll would be delightful."
+
+Accordingly they made their way down the drive at a pace which, set by
+the deliberate old peeress, ill accorded with Gage's impatience.
+
+Naturally Peckover had foreseen this move, and had proposed a
+circuitous and covert route to the house.  Ulrica, quite privy to the
+scheme, offered no objection.
+
+"Sun's rather hot," Peckover observed, when the carriage with its
+guileful occupant had rolled away from them.  "Let's keep under the
+trees."
+
+Ulrica laughed, and took without comment the path he indicated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+"This is a real pleasure to me," Peckover remarked, determined to get
+on flirting terms without wasting precious time in preliminary
+small-talk.
+
+"This lovely day?" Ulrica responded, with an obvious pretence of
+misunderstanding his drift.  "Yes, it is quite a treat."
+
+"I meant," he pursued, with a stimulating glance at the fresh, pretty
+face, highly provocative now with a roguish smile, "a walk with you.
+I've been longing for this moment ever since I first set eyes on you."
+
+Her glance of amused surprise suggested that she thought he was
+plunging _in medias res_ with a vengeance.  "Clearly," she commented,
+"patience is one of your virtues."
+
+"I don't know about patience," he replied.  "If I've waited a long time
+for my chance, it has not been exactly patience, but because I couldn't
+get it sooner."
+
+"Everything comes to him who waits," Ulrica observed with a careless
+laugh, to show she was not taking him too seriously.
+
+"I hope you don't mind the change?" he suggested.
+
+"In the weather?" she asked mischievously.
+
+"Bother the weather!  No.  From Quorn to me."
+
+"That remains to be seen," she answered.  "So far, I have no objection
+to it."
+
+"Same here.  Lady Ormstork is a proper old grandee, but, well,
+naturally she's not exactly my idea of an afternoon's fun."
+
+"I dare say not," Ulrica said dryly.
+
+"Now you are," he declared boldly.
+
+She ignored the compliment together with the amorous look which
+accompanied it.  "I have often wondered how you and dear old Ormstork
+were getting on;" she remarked with self-possessed blandness.  "One
+hears of such curious matches nowadays."
+
+For a moment Peckover hardly realized the drift of the remark.  Then he
+stopped dead.  "Why, you don't mean to say," he gasped, "you thought I
+was making love to the old gal?"
+
+She looked intensely amused at his face of disgust.  "Lady Ormstork is
+not bad looking for her age," she suggested wickedly.  "You must admit
+she is rather handsome."
+
+"I dare say," he returned, not certain how far she was in earnest.  "It
+never occurred to me to take stock of her."
+
+Ulrica kept her countenance steady, but her eyes were dancing.  "Then
+your devotion was purely Platonic?" she observed.
+
+"You may call it what you like," he replied, playing for safety.  "As I
+wasn't taking any."
+
+"Ah, then, I suppose it was devotion to your friend, Lord Quorn," she
+pursued, the corners of her mouth twitching with mischief.  "Of course.
+He saved your life, didn't he?  And you--yes; how generous of you."
+
+"Oh, bother my life," Peckover exclaimed with an impatient laugh.  They
+had covered a good deal of ground without getting on very far towards
+the end he had in view, and any moment now Quorn might run them down.
+
+"I expect poor old Quorn is feeling rather sick by now," he remarked
+pointedly, "at your giving him the slip and going off with me."
+
+"You don't think he'll be jealous?" she asked with a laugh.
+
+"Shouldn't be surprised."
+
+"There is no real reason why he should be," she said.
+
+"Nor no reason why he shouldn't be--if you like," he rejoined
+insinuatingly.
+
+"I don't understand you, Mr. Gage," she said, looking at the same time
+as though she understood him perfectly.
+
+"If you liked me half as well as I like you," he explained bluntly,
+under the compelling spur of her charms.
+
+"You think it would matter to Lord Quorn?"
+
+"You ought to know best," he returned.  "I know it would matter a lot
+to me.  The question is, which do you prefer?"
+
+"Oh, his lordship, of course," she answered mockingly.
+
+"Because he is a lord?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I see," said Peckover catching her tone.  "Is that your own original
+idea or Lady Ormstork's?"
+
+"It is certainly Lady Ormstork's," was the evasive answer.
+
+"But not yours.  Not altogether," he urged wickedly.  "You might have
+room in your heart for a little fondness for me?"
+
+She laughed.  "Why should I?"
+
+"It would be such a treat," he pleaded.
+
+"You are very, what Lady Ormstork calls, unconventional," she said
+quizzingly.
+
+"Does that mean nice?"
+
+"It may."
+
+"You can't tell unless you give a fellow a chance," he said amorously,
+as his arm, extended behind her, somewhat unnecessarily, to put aside a
+bough, remained there.  "Ulrica!" he murmured.
+
+"Mr. Gage!"
+
+"Percival--Percy," he suggested with empressement.  "Ulrica, time's
+short, so don't let's quibble about trifles.  You're the loveliest girl
+I've ever set eyes on," he continued with glib passion, "and I'm
+desperately in love with you.  I've been dying to tell you so all the
+time, but never could till this blessed chance came along.  Ulrica, say
+you're a little fond of me, in return."
+
+"Mr. Gage!"  Ulrica's expression was compounded of indignation, scorn
+and amusement.  But perhaps the last was the only sentiment that was
+genuine.  "It is not necessary," she protested, "to overdo the part
+like this."
+
+"The part?"
+
+"Lady Ormstork's little scheme," she said coolly.  "You need not take
+the trouble to make it quite so life-like."
+
+"Oh, it's no trouble," he assured her promptly.  "It is a pleasure."
+
+"I understood," she observed laughingly, "that the idea was to put it
+into Quorn's head that he ought to be jealous."
+
+"That's it," Peckover replied readily.  "And I'm doing my very best to
+give him cause for jealousy."
+
+"It is very spirited of you," she said, with her provocative,
+mischievous twinkle.  "But you need not act quite so hard, need you?
+At any rate till he sees us."
+
+He made a wry face.  "Not much fun in waiting till he sees us.  It
+occurs to me this is a little game it pays to play in earnest.  That
+is," he added pointedly, "if both parties are agreeable."
+
+"Ah, that's the question," she said tantalizingly.
+
+"Won't you answer it?" he asked insinuatingly.
+
+"H'm!  I rather like you," she admitted.  "You are breezy."
+
+"Thanks," he replied.  "Then I ought to be in request on a warm day
+like this."
+
+"Lord Quorn," she said with provoking irresponsiveness, "is breezy.
+But with him it blows from a rather different quarter.  And he is apt
+to be a little gusty."
+
+"Ah, yes.  Dare say he would be," Peckover agreed, recalling certain
+squally passages in their intercourse.  "Well, after all, a change of
+air ought to be grateful.  Does you good."
+
+Ulrica laughed.  "With the wind chopping about there is likely to be a
+storm coming."
+
+"Is there?" he returned.  "Then let us take advantage of the fine
+weather while it lasts."
+
+He was about to give a practical suggestion of how they might make the
+best of the sunny hours, with his arm only prevented from encircling
+her waist by a vigorous repulsive action on Ulrica's part, followed by
+a suggestion that the conditions did not exactly lend themselves to
+waltzing, when suddenly a man emerged from the bushes and stood in
+front of them.  It was not the Lord Quorn they were expecting, but the
+real Quorn who had sighted them while prowling about the grounds, and
+now confronted them with an expression of jealous irritation on his now
+chronically aggrieved face.
+
+"Hullo, my cunning little puppet," he exclaimed rudely.  "Enjoying
+yourself this fine morning?"
+
+"Trying to," replied Peckover, betwixt resentment and politic
+submissiveness.
+
+"That's right," said Quorn with a distinctly objectionable sneer.
+"Poaching on the preserves of the person who calls himself Lord Quorn,
+it strikes me."
+
+"Who is this rude person?" asked Ulrica, not knowing whether to be
+amused or alarmed.
+
+"Oh, he's all right," Peckover assured her uneasily.
+
+"Yes," responded Quorn with dismaying suggestiveness.  "I am
+particularly all right.  About the only man on the place who is all
+right, it strikes me."
+
+Peckover, reduced to an apprehensive and gloomy silence, noticed that
+Quorn's eyes were fixed on Ulrica with a look of unmistakable and more
+than passing admiration.  The aggressive manner was softening too,
+clearly for the lady's benefit, and indeed Miss Buffkin showed signs of
+a temptation to laugh at the embarrassment of her cavalier.
+
+"Right you are," Peckover said, nodding to Quorn as pleasantly as the
+situation permitted, and at the same time trying to get a chance of
+winking at Ulrica to intimate thereby that she need not take the
+new-comer seriously.  "Well, we must be getting up to the Towers now."
+
+But Quorn showed no intention of budging from their path.  His eyes
+were still fixed in the same resolute admiration on the fascinating
+Ulrica, and it was manifest that the spell of her beauty was holding
+him more strongly every moment.
+
+"You run off to the Towers, old man," he ordered Peckover, with a wave
+of the arm, while his eyes never left the object of their attraction.
+"You're wanted up there at once.  I'll escort the lady."
+
+There was a note of determination in his voice that Peckover had not
+noticed before.  Doubtless it was derived from the enchantment of Miss
+Buffkin's personality.  Peckover dared not disobey.  Happily a ruse
+suggested itself to him.  He nodded to Ulrica; "See you again
+presently," and made off down the winding path.
+
+Scarcely had Quorn time to pull himself together in his overmastering
+admiration, and frame the preamble of a rough flirtation, when Peckover
+came rushing back with apprehensive face.
+
+"Well, what's the matter now?" Quorn demanded, upset by the
+interruption.
+
+"Lions on the prowl," Peckover announced in a loud whisper.
+
+"Lions?" cried the exasperated Quorn.  "What do you mean.  You must be
+dr----"  Then the meaning flashed upon him, and he grew white.  "Not
+Leos?" he demanded hoarsely.
+
+Peckover nodded warningly.  "Both of 'em.  Looking nasty.  They'll be
+round the corner in a moment."
+
+Lord Quorn had decided before that moment elapsed not to stay to test
+the truth of the statement.  With an exclamation which savoured less of
+good manners than of abject, if wrathful, fear, he sprang without a
+word of leave-taking or excuse into the bushes and disappeared.
+
+Then Peckover winked at the astounded Miss Buffkin.
+
+"That was clever of you," she remarked with a puzzled laugh.  "How did
+you do it?"
+
+"Superior power of intellect," was his somewhat vague and unsatisfying
+explanation.  "Mind can start muscle any day.  Never mind that poor
+chap.  Where did we leave off?"
+
+"You wouldn't," she replied significantly.  "If I remember rightly."
+
+"No more I won't," Peckover exclaimed, with boldness increased by his
+late coup.  "Wasn't I just----?  I don't mind beginning again, if you
+don't."
+
+His impudence made her burst out laughing.  "You are absurd.  And you
+are not treating your friend well."
+
+"P'raps not," he returned.  "But when I look at you I feel called upon
+to treat myself well.  Besides, he'll never miss it."
+
+"Miss what?" she asked, innocently or by design falling into his trap.
+
+"A kiss," he answered.  "You'll let me have one, Ulrica?"
+
+Miss Buffkin was saved the trouble of dealing with the--perhaps
+embarrassing--request, by the appearance of Gage, who came up somewhat
+heated and resentful, followed by Lady Ormstork, whose face wore the
+look which dowager peeresses wear when their plans, matrimonial and
+financial, succeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Gage, _soi-disant_ Quorn, was, to put it mildly, anything but pleased
+at Peckover's manoeuvre, Nevertheless he did not take the first
+opportunity of proposing to the fascinating Miss Buffkin.  In point of
+fact he preferred the role of Philander to that of Benedick.  He was in
+no hurry to settle down, however strongly the superb Ulrica might tempt
+him to matrimony.  He was more than rich enough to treat her wealth as
+a negligible quantity; added to which he desired to taste the sweets of
+life as dished up to a bachelor peer, and this was the first of them
+which had not turned sour in his mouth.
+
+Naturally he was not going to allow any interference or competition on
+the part of his paid confederate, Peckover.  That gentleman, had, he
+considered, put off the trappings of nobility for a handsome
+consideration, and was in honour bound not to start an opposition
+business on his own account, nor to obtain credit in the guise of a
+millionaire, within an equitable radius from Staplewick, or, indeed,
+from the person, wherever it might be, of the peer by purchase.
+
+The first practice of the scheme not having produced the desired
+effect, namely a proposal, it was arranged to repeat it next day; but
+Gage was too resentfully wide-awake to be taken in again.  He stuck to
+Peckover with all the persistency, and much more than the annoyance, of
+his shadow, and finally took care as the hour of their visitors'
+arrival drew near to post himself at the point of interceptance; the
+wily Peckover remaining at the house in a state of tantalizing
+discomfiture.
+
+But Lady Ormstork, who had not lived in vain in a world where even
+peeresses play "beat my neighbour," was equal to the occasion, and more
+than equal to the suddenly alert Mr. Gage.  Perhaps she had anticipated
+his move; anyhow, she was prepared with a prompt counter.
+
+As Gage met the carriage by the lodge, the driver, being either new or
+instructed, did not pull up for a hundred yards or so.  Then Lady
+Ormstork quickly alighted and the carriage bowled on at a good pace
+towards the Towers.
+
+With a wealth of amiability the lady advanced towards Gage who was
+hurrying up with a lowering face.
+
+"Where's Miss Buffkin?" he cried in a cold, exasperated voice.
+
+Lady Ormstork held out both hands gushingly.  "So delighted to come
+again.  So sweet of you to have us!" she crowed.  "Another quite
+heavenly day.  And the dear old park looking more lovely than ever."
+
+"But where's Miss Buffkin?" Gage demanded hoarsely, clutching the old
+lady's double-dealing hands and thinking unutterable things.
+
+"Oh, dear Ulrica is rather tired," was the plausibly artless reply.
+"She went for a walk to the Scotton Woods this morning.  So she has
+gone on in the carriage and will make herself at home till we come.  I
+am sure that you, as the soul of hospitality will not mind that."
+
+Mr. Gage looked as though he did mind it very much indeed.  However, he
+shut his lips, perhaps to keep back the unspeakable, and began to move
+on towards the house.
+
+"The park is truly delightful to-day," exclaimed his companion with
+studied rapture.  "The air is simply life-giving.  Do let us stroll up
+by the beech avenue, dear Lord Quorn.  It is a sin to hurry indoors on
+an afternoon like this.  Ulrica will not mind."
+
+Gage's face suggested thoughts too poignant for words.
+
+"Shall we stroll round by the rhododendron walk?"  Lady Ormstork
+suggested with a fine air of ignorance of anything abnormal in the
+situation.
+
+"Must go up to the house first," Gage insisted bluntly, his rage being
+almost too great for coherent speech.  "Was on my way there when you
+drove in.  Just remembered, forgot to give Bisgood an important order."
+
+"Oh, then do let us go by all means," the lady assented graciously, her
+heartiness stimulated by a wave of satisfaction in thinking that the
+proposal could not be far off now.  "If only you had told us, you might
+have got into the carriage and driven up with Ulrica.  What a pity."
+
+Considering the steps she had taken to obviate such a contingency this
+was a somewhat bold speech on Lady Ormstork's part.  But the grand
+manner carries a certain, if not altogether convincing, plausibility
+with it, and disarms rude censoriousness.
+
+So they walked towards the house together; the gracious dowager
+finding, as was natural, the slight incline up to the Towers rather
+against anything like pace.
+
+"We have had rather a disagreeable surprise to-day," said Lady
+Ormstork, summoning back to her side the irritated Gage whose
+impatience kept him farther in front of her than politeness might have
+dictated.
+
+"Oh?" he responded discouragingly, wishing she would keep her breath
+for the pedestrian effort and defer conversation till the Towers and
+the elusive Miss Buffkin were reached.
+
+"Yes," she proceeded.  "I think I told you--or was it Mr. Gage?--of a
+very persistent suitor of dear Ulrica's, the Duke of Salolja, a fiery
+Spaniard, who had been paying her great attention in town last season.
+In fact it was mainly to escape his importunities that we came down
+here."
+
+"Oh, then you didn't come to see Staplewick?" he observed, between
+chafing and chaffing.
+
+"That was my object," the lady maintained with dignity.  "And I brought
+dear Ulrica with me to Great Bunbury as to a sanctuary where we could
+be safe from the duke.  Judge, then, of our embarrassment when, driving
+up the High Street, we saw him coming from the station."
+
+"Awkward, if you've been fed up on him in town and don't want any
+more," Gage commented.
+
+"Very.  He proposed five times at least to Ulrica, and would not take a
+refusal."
+
+"It's a way they have in Spain, I believe," remarked Gage, wondering
+gloomily how this new development might interfere with his amusement.
+
+"Still," continued Lady Ormstork, "as I think I told Mr. Gage, one
+cannot have the dear girl forced into a marriage, even with a Spanish
+duke, against her inclination.  One cannot blame him, poor man; she is
+lovely, and altogether most adorable; but from our point of view why
+should she exile herself in Spain for the sake of a man she does not
+care for?"
+
+"Why, indeed?" assented Gage, wondering what the odds were on the
+Spanish duke's being a creature of the old lady's imagination.
+
+Meanwhile the fatigued Miss Buffkin had come as an agreeable surprise
+upon the baffled Peckover, and that alert opportunist had lost no time
+in making the most of his good fortune.
+
+"Dear old Ormstork has hooked Quorn down by the lodge," she explained
+laughingly.  "But I expect they'll be up here before long by the look
+on his face as she fastened on him and he saw me bowling on up here."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said Peckover with a grin.  "Well, if we've got to
+make him jealous, don't let's lose any time in preliminaries."
+
+"Mr. Gage, you are too absurd," Ulrica remarked as she unwound her
+feather victorine.
+
+"Don't see much absurdity in that suggestion, anyhow," he returned.
+"What's the good of a chance if you don't take it?"
+
+"We need not exactly act in earnest," she suggested.
+
+"I've always thought that make-believe was poor sport," he rejoined
+engagingly.  "We were getting on nicely yesterday; if only----"
+
+"Ah, yes," she continued archly; "there's always an if only----"
+
+"If only," he continued, "Quorn wasn't on our track, we need not be in
+such a hurry to say what's uppermost in our minds.  As it is----"
+
+His arm seemed, to her alert eyes, to have a caressing twitch about it.
+"Shall we go out into the garden?" she proposed, by a plausible
+manoeuvre putting the table between them.
+
+"Too many men about, setting the place straight," he objected
+knowingly.  "Safer here, and snugger too, Ulrica!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage!" she expostulated, as by a swift dart he got round to
+her side of the table.
+
+"Ulrica," he said seriously, for since yesterday a wild design and hope
+had taken possession of him, "Ulrica, need you marry Quorn?  Tell me,
+like a dear girl.  You don't love him as much as all that, do you?"
+
+She laughed.  "How do you know?  I'm not going to tell you."
+
+"It's only for the title," he pleaded, feverishly anxious to arrive at
+an understanding while the chance lasted.  "That's nothing.  It can be
+bought, if you go the right way about it.  Ulrica, I don't believe you
+like him as well as you like me.  Tell me you don't.  Tell me the
+truth, dearest."
+
+He seized her hands insistently.  There was no doubt about his
+earnestness and she could hardly laugh at him now.
+
+"I like you well enough," she answered.
+
+"Darling!" he cried with genuine rapture.  "Then you'll marry me?
+Won't you?  Say yes.  You're your own mistress.  Say you'll marry me?"
+
+"How can I?" she laughed evasively.  "I've got to marry Quorn."
+
+"Because he's a lord?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+She shrugged.
+
+"You like me best?"
+
+"You're more my sort," she was fain to answer.  "But it is no good."
+Then suddenly breaking away she said, "I've just seen another of my
+admirers, a real Spanish duke."
+
+"Oh, that chap!  I've heard of him," said Peckover with sovereign
+contempt.  "Well, you wouldn't look at him again?"
+
+"I daren't," she replied.  "I was afraid he'd see me."
+
+"You leave him to me," said Peckover in his grand manner.  "I'll settle
+the Dook.  I'll slice the top off the Spanish onion.  Ulrica, you'll
+have me?  Hang the title.  Have the man you like."
+
+She looked at him.  He was very different from the reckless little
+fugitive who had once tried to put an end to his existence at the
+_Quorn Arms_.  Prosperity, high living, and a general good time had
+transformed him, smartened him up, and, backed by a certain native
+shrewdness, made him fairly presentable.  Still----  Ulrica laughed.
+Her ideas and original breeding were but middle-class in spite of her
+wealth and expensive education.  But for certain successful
+speculations on the part of Buffkin _père_ (who knew his striking
+limitations, and wisely kept in the background) there would have been
+nothing very unequal in the mating of his daughter with Peckover.  And,
+after all, in spite of the transmuting power of wealth, of changed
+circumstances and surroundings, human nature has always a tendency to
+seek and revert to its old level; to find most pleasure and ease in the
+society of those who are as it once was.
+
+So it was that she made answer to her eager wooer.  "I like you well
+enough, but a rich girl can't choose as she likes."
+
+"I should have thought," he urged, "she can like where she chooses."
+
+"So she can," Ulrica rejoined.  "But she can't marry him."
+
+"I'm just as much a gentleman as Quorn," he argued.  "He happens to
+have the title, but I might have had it and fitted the part just as
+well as he," he added with hidden truth.
+
+"So you might," she agreed.  "But you haven't got it.  And that makes
+all the difference."
+
+"I'll get one if you'll marry me," he pleaded, vaguely optimistic on
+the subject.  Then he fancied he heard Gage's voice outside.  "I say,"
+he urged with desperate affection, "here they come.  Quick.  If you
+love me give me a kiss."
+
+"I don't know that I do," she objected, her voice rising to a half
+scream of remonstrance as he clutched her.
+
+"Give me the benefit of the doubt," he insisted drawing her face
+towards him.
+
+But before his lips could reach hers, Lady Ormstork's shrill voice
+called "Ulrica!"  The handle of the door was turned, and Peckover
+sprang guiltily over as much carpet as he could cover from that
+interesting take-off, as Gage burst in upon them with a face of
+suppressed fury which was not diminished by the obvious suggestiveness
+of the attitudes of the conscious pair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+"Look here, old man," said Gage to Peckover, as they settled down to
+their cigars after dinner, "you're not playing the game."
+
+"What about?" his confederate inquired blandly.  He had felt from
+Gage's sulky attitude all dinner that something was coming and was
+consequently prepared for it.
+
+"Your carrying on with Ulrica Buffkin," was the blunt answer.  "She is
+my girl; and you know that as well as I do."
+
+"It's not in our contract that all the girls belong to you," Peckover
+suggested gently.
+
+Gage frowned.  "She came for me.  She was after me," he returned in an
+exasperated tone.  "That was the arrangement.  And I don't pay you five
+thousand a year to interfere in my love affairs."
+
+"It's not my fault," Peckover urged coolly, having drunk champagne
+sufficient for a reckless enjoyment of the controversy, "if the girl
+fancies a change.  It's your business to make yourself sufficiently
+interesting to keep her affection.  If you don't, well, I may as well
+take her on as any other fellow."
+
+"Don't you talk a lot of conceited nonsense," retorted Gage, keeping
+down his fury with an effort.  "The girl's all right: but she's led by
+your infernal monkey tricks into thinking that I'm neglecting her; so
+naturally she pretends to take up with you."
+
+"Well, that's one way of looking at it," Peckover observed with vinous
+sarcasm.
+
+"It's the only intelligent way," Gage returned.
+
+"From your point of view," his friend rejoined, tossing off a glass of
+port wine.
+
+"It's from my point of view that we've got to look at the affair," Gage
+said, with rising anger, for the other's coolness and confidence were
+more exasperating than his words.  "And," he proceeded, banging his
+fist on the table, "my view of the case is, that if you don't stop your
+little game and sheer off the Buffkin there's going to be a row."
+
+"I wouldn't," observed Peckover sententiously, "have anything to do
+with a girl, however good-looking, for whom my sole attraction was my
+title, and who didn't mind showing as much."
+
+"Has she told you that?" Gage snapped.
+
+Peckover shrugged.  "Practically."
+
+"Of course," Gage returned with an ugly mouth, "that's because she's
+huffy with me, thinking I'm not so keen on her as I ought to be, and
+you are."
+
+"I suppose her feelings don't count," Peckover retorted, being pretty
+sure of himself with the fair Ulrica.
+
+"Mine do, at any rate," Gage declared wrathfully.  "I've been humbugged
+enough over this precious title.  And as to your expecting me first to
+take on your revolting Australian pet and then to give up a girl like
+Ulrica Buffkin, why, you don't diagnose my character right, that's all.
+This is my show.  I'm paying for it, and I'm going to run it."
+
+"Then," returned Peckover, still cool and unmoved by his friend's
+thumping and shouting, "you'd better make it your business to see who
+that is prowling round the booth."
+
+Gage's irate eyes followed Peckover's nod to the window.  Outside, just
+discernible in the dusk, the figure of a man was moving to and fro.
+Gage jumped up and threw open the French window.
+
+"Who are you?  What do you want here?" he demanded in a rough and
+unnecessarily loud tone.  Peckover rose and lounged against the
+mantelpiece, cigar in mouth, lazily interested in the encounter.
+
+The man outside stopped, turned, brought his heels together, and made a
+low bow.  "Have I the honour to address myself to his Excellency the
+Lord Quorn?" he asked in a high-pitched voice and foreign accent.
+
+"You have.  What do you want?" was the ill-matching, even brutal, reply.
+
+The man approached the window; then bowed again.  "I have the honour of
+the friendship of the most gracious Lady Ormstork," he said.  "As one
+who enjoys that privilege, I trust I may not be regarded as a
+trespasser."
+
+He spoke with such ceremonious politeness that Gage was shamed into
+gulping down his ill-humour and softening his mode of address.  "What
+can I do for you?" he inquired.
+
+"I have," said the stranger with another courteous flourish, "already
+given myself the high pleasure of surveying your charming park and
+castle by moonlight.  It is romantic, it is enchanting.  And now there
+but remains to me to crave the honour of a short conference with your
+lordship.  Am I permitted, then, to flatter myself that my request is
+granted?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Step in," said Gage, not over cordially.
+
+"Before I so unceremoniously cross the threshold of your window,"
+observed the man with another bow, "permit me to announce myself--my
+name and condition."  With more flourishes he produced a pocket-book
+almost entirely covered with an immense gold coronet and cypher,
+extracted therefrom a card of unusual dimensions, and with a deep bow
+presented it to Gage, who drew back into the light, glanced at it, and
+showed it with a wink to Peckover; that worthy greeting the information
+it conveyed with a low whistle of amusement.
+
+"Your friend----?" said the stranger with a low bow to Peckover.
+
+"Mr. Gage."
+
+"Ah?  I have heard of him too.  Mr. Gage, I have the honour."  And he
+bowed again.
+
+When at last he resumed an upright position with some prospect of
+permanency, the friends could see what manner of man the stranger
+looked.  He was small, wiry and rather bald.  His bristling moustache
+turned up from under the longest nose and above the most prominent jaw
+nearly into the fiercest eyes they had ever seen.  With less
+aggressively piercing eyes he would have been rather a comical figure;
+as it was, except when he shut them (which he had a trick of doing), or
+hid them by bowing, he was no laughing matter.  His jutting chin wore a
+closely clipped Vandyck beard, and his clothes were black.
+
+Both men, as they regarded him, tried to persuade themselves that they
+were amused, without, however, the result being quite convincing.
+
+"I have the honour," said the stranger, inclining his head and shutting
+his eyes, "to request--I do not say, demand--the grace of a few words
+with my Lord Quorn and his honourable friend."
+
+"Have a glass of wine?" Gage proposed.
+
+The stranger made a stately gesture of refusal.  "We have a proverb in
+my country, Spain," he said, "'The thistle before the fig.'  You are
+too kind.  But with your permission I will defer the acceptance of your
+gracious hospitality for the present."
+
+"Not a cigar?" Peckover suggested, pushing along the box.
+
+Again the pantomime of refusal.  "At considerable pain to myself, I
+must decline--at least till I have done my poor best to make myself
+understood," the man replied, with his eyes shut.  "Nevertheless, you
+will not impose upon me the heavier penalty of seeing you forego the
+enjoyment of your own cigars?"
+
+They bowed, none the less appreciatively that neither man had
+entertained the slightest intention of doing so.  But they were
+strangely subdued.  Somehow, ridiculous as they assured themselves it
+was, the stranger's personality chained and fascinated them.  He was a
+little man with an absurd nose, but----  They found themselves staring
+at him, drinking in every detail, every flourish, as he drew forward a
+chair with a gesture of asking permission, then sat down and faced them
+with a quiet mastery of the situation which was horribly disconcerting.
+So they waited in a silence, half apprehensive, half quizzical, for him
+to begin, not without a shrewd idea of the purport of the approaching
+communication.
+
+At length with a preliminary flourish of a ringed hand, and an
+effective raising and dropping of the fierce eyes, he began.
+
+"You will have already graciously noted by the acceptance of my poor
+card that it is the Duke of Salolja, Hereditary Grand Sword Bearer to
+his Most Gracious Majesty the King of Spain, Lord Keeper of the Royal
+Vaults, Duke also of Oswalta, Marques of Risposta, with many other
+titles and offices, and a Grandee of Spain,"--at the recital of each
+succeeding dignity he raised his voice till at the culminating title
+the reverberation made the glass rattle--"who has the honour to address
+your grace."
+
+Both men bowed, and at the same time did their best not to feel much
+smaller than the diminutive duke who held them as an undersized
+rattlesnake might fascinate a couple of finches.
+
+"I must begin," said the duke, with what looked like the dangerous calm
+of a quiescent volcano, "by craving your grace's most amiable patience
+while I touch, very briefly, on a few points which stand out in my
+family history, the chronicles of the noble House of Salolja, of which
+I have the honour to be the present unworthy representative."
+
+Peckover glanced at Gage and his look said, "Family history.  We've got
+hold of a crank," and they both looked less uneasy.
+
+"Families have their characteristics and idiosyncrasies," pursued the
+duke, nodding his head to and fro sententiously.  "In my country,
+Spain, this is peculiarly the case.  Family tradition is strong, it is
+tenacious, inexorable, immovable."  At each succeeding adjective his
+voice rose till it reached the climax in an intense scream.  Then he
+dropped back quite casually into a conversational tone, and proceeded--
+
+"It is a notorious tradition in my family that we never suffer an
+interloper in affairs of the heart."
+
+The faces of his two listeners indicated a realization that he was now
+coming to business, and their interest visibly quickened.
+
+"In the year," the duke threw back his head, as though searching for
+the date in the ceiling, "1582, my noble ancestor, Alfonzo de Salolja
+was pleased to love a Castilian lady of great beauty, Donna Inez de
+Madrazo.  A certain vain Hidalgo, one Lopez de Fulano, was rash enough
+to cast eyes on her and enter the lists with him.  Alfonzo did not
+insult the lady by questioning her preference.  He ran de Fulano
+through the heart.  His blood is still to be seen on the Toledo blade
+which hangs in my poor palace in Segovia."
+
+He paused to let the anecdote soak in, before pouring out another.  His
+audience looked interested, but uncertain in what spirit to take the
+recital.
+
+"Nearly a hundred years after that," the duke resumed, chattily
+reminiscent, "a rash Frenchman, the Comte de Gaufrage, suffered himself
+to indulge a passion for the lovely Donna Astoria de Rivaz y Cortano,
+heiress of the de Rivaz lands and wealth.  Duke Miguel de Salolja, who
+at that date represented my honoured family, heard of this breach of
+punctilio on the morning of the day he had appointed for offering the
+fair Astoria his hand and dukedom.  By noon the Comte de Gaufrage was
+in Purgatory and Duke Miguel in Paradise."
+
+"Both killed?" asked Gage.
+
+"Cut him out?" suggested Peckover.
+
+"My ancestor," the duke replied in stately tones and with a flash of
+the eyes, "did not die till thirty years later.  And," he turned to his
+second questioner with a bow and a wave of the hand, "permit me to tell
+your Excellency, no duke of the Saloljas ever stooped to 'cut out' as
+you term it.  We do not enter into competition.  We have a shorter and
+more effectual way.  I may explain that by noon the Comte was in his
+coffin, and Duke Miguel accepted by the lady."
+
+The tone seemed to snub their denseness of comprehension.  Peckover
+accepted the elucidation with a faint and inept smile.
+
+For a few moments there was silence as the duke sat immobile; confident
+in, as it were, the cloak of homicidal tradition in which he had
+wrapped himself.
+
+Then with a suddenness which made the two jump (for he was beginning to
+get on their nerves) he plunged again into his blood-stained narrative.
+
+"To pass over many like instances of this family trait, and come to
+comparatively modern times," he said pleasantly, "it happened to my
+great grandfather, Duke Christofero, to commit a deplorable mistake.
+He and his neighbour, the Prince de Carmona, unknown to each other,
+loved two sisters, the daughters of the Marques de Montalban.  One
+night they both determined to serenade their respective lady-loves.
+When the duke arrived at the Castle he heard a guitar, and came upon
+the unfortunate Prince beneath the windows of the ladies' apartments.
+Only when he was drawing his rapier out of the Prince's left lung did
+he learn that it was Donna Maria and not Donna Lola for whom the
+compliment had been intended.  It was unfortunate; nevertheless it
+tends to illustrate the working of the traditional law which governs
+our house."
+
+"Oh, yes.  I believe that sort of mistake did often happen in the good
+old times," was the not altogether confident remark of Peckover, who
+felt he must make a stand against this sanguinary catalogue.
+
+A flash from the duke's remarkable eyes, brought any further tendency
+to volubility to a full stop.
+
+"Such occurrences," he said pointedly, "are, pardon me, by no means
+confined to bygone times.  The traditions of my house will end only
+when my race is a thing of the past.  In the year--to venture with your
+courteous permission to resume--in the year 1841, a titled compatriot
+of your own, Sir Digby Prior, allowed himself at one of the Escurial
+balls the freedom of paying too much attention to my father's
+_fiancée_, the sainted lady whose unworthy son I have the honour to be.
+Next morning they met on the Buen Retiro Park, from whence in that same
+hour Sir Digby was carried with a bullet in his brain.  Yes!"  He
+sighed reflectively.  "It is not perhaps a cheerful, or agreeable
+record; still it is curious and interesting to trace the same
+inevitable characteristic of our blood in almost each succeeding
+generation."
+
+"Very," Gage agreed.
+
+"Most singular," Peckover chimed in mechanically, as he tried to fall
+into a pose of polite indifference under the duke's eye.
+
+The little man received their appreciative commonplaces with a grave
+bow.  "We have now arrived at a point," he said glaring at them, but
+speaking with quiet if significant deliberation, "when it becomes my
+duty to claim the honour of your unwavering attention."
+
+The request was in the highest degree unnecessary.  Both men were
+incapable of greater heed than they were already giving.  "Now it's
+coming," was the simultaneous and uneasy thought in their minds.
+
+"But I fear the politeness with which your graces have brought
+yourselves to listen to my long preamble has caused your cigars to
+extinguish themselves," remarked the duke, with an ambassadorial smile.
+"Pray let me have the supreme pleasure of seeing you relight them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+"Having now," resumed the duke, when the two men had, with a fine
+affectation of nonchalance, but with somewhat unsteady hands, lighted
+up again, "taken you through as much of the history of my family as to
+persons of your acuteness of perception is necessary, I have the honour
+to invite your attention to the moral of my house's story."
+
+His listeners, by this time mentally detached from each other, and held
+pitilessly and without respite by those auger-like eyes, puffed
+nervously at their now tasteless cigars, and by their apprehensive
+silence bade him proceed.
+
+"The present unworthy holder of the dukedom of Salolja," that person
+continued, with a deprecatory gesture, "--to leave ancient history
+behind us--is for the moment in one of those inexpedient positions to
+which his ancestors were occasionally liable, and from which they
+invariably took prompt measures to extricate themselves.  In the
+province where we hold sway there is a proverb, 'A Sololja's rival
+should make his will.'  When one wishes to describe a useless action,
+'It is like granting a lease to the rival of a Salolja.'  Meaning that
+he does not live to enjoy it.  The phrase is expressive."
+
+"Rather neat," commented Peckover, with an effort.
+
+"Now to come to the point," pursued their tormentor, his fierce eyes in
+singular contrast to his bald head and deliberate speech, "the present
+Duke of Salolja--to keep the discussion conveniently impersonal--has
+made up his mind to contract an alliance with a certain English lady; a
+commoner, it is true, but one whose beauty and wealth may claim to make
+up, in a measure, for genealogical deficiencies.  The lady's name is
+Miss Ulrica Buffkin."
+
+Both hearers nodded an acquaintance with it.
+
+"It has come to the duke's knowledge," continued that same nobleman,
+raising his tone to a slightly minatory pitch.  "That another person,
+an Englishman, I should say an English nobleman, has, unwittingly I am
+ready to allow, been led into paying certain attentions to the lady in
+question.  I am sure that to capable and clever men like yourselves it
+is not necessary for me to set myself the disagreeable task of pointing
+out the inevitable result of such an unwarranted and deplorable
+interference should it be persevered in."
+
+He paused, took out a silk pocket-handkerchief embroidered with a
+flamboyant coronet and cypher, and passed it lightly across his lips,
+never taking his vicious eyes off the two men who had by this, under
+the paralysing gaze, assumed the appearance and almost the condition of
+a pair of waxworks.
+
+As the lengthening pause seemed to demand a response, Gage with a great
+effort roused himself from the Tussaudy rigidity, and, with a desperate
+attempt at boldness, replied--
+
+"You might let us know, while we are on the subject."
+
+"No harm in mentioning it," Peckover chipped in with a somewhat ghastly
+pretence of a smile.
+
+The little duke thrust back the handkerchief into his breast pocket,
+and then threw out his hands expressively.  "I should have imagined,"
+he replied, with a transcendentally threatening eye, "that men of the
+sagacity and penetration of your graces would have found no difficulty
+in deducing from the instances you have just heard with such admirable
+patience, the fate in store for any one who is rash enough to enter the
+lists with a Duke of Salolja."
+
+His voice, rising with abrupt suddenness, thundered out the last words
+with a volume and intensity which made his rivals fairly jump in their
+uneasy seats.  Anyhow, the wordy Grandee had come to the point, and the
+point had to be faced or run from.
+
+Gage, whose mode of life had kept his nervous system in better order
+than his companion's, was the first to reply.
+
+"That's all very well," he said, bracing himself to join issue with the
+fiery little Castilian, and assuming a courage he did not feel.  "But
+this is a free country; and in these enlightened days you can't run a
+man through the body before lunch because your best girl has the good
+or bad taste to prefer him."
+
+Fury leapt like a flame in the duke's eyes, but he replied calmly, even
+suavely, "Your excellency is wrong.  What is to prevent me?"
+
+"The police," Peckover suggested promptly, trying to catch boldness
+from Gage's attitude.
+
+The duke burst into a loud and particularly unpleasant laugh.  "The
+police?  Really, your graces compel my amusement.  May I ask you three
+questions?"
+
+"Three dozen, if you like," answered Gage unsteadily.
+
+The duke accepted the bounty with a bow.  "Three will suffice."
+Whereupon very loudly, "One."  Then in a normal tone, "How many police
+have you within a radius of, say, three miles from Staplewick Towers?"
+
+"One or two," Gage was forced to answer rather sheepishly.
+
+The duke bowed, this time with a sarcastic smile.
+
+"Two."  Again the disturbing, superfluous shout.  "How long would it
+take you to send for the nearest, supposing you found him at home?"
+
+"Oh, about twenty minutes," Gage tried to reply casually.
+
+Once more the absurdly loud enumeration.  "Three.  And how long do you
+consider it would take me to put a bullet through your body?"
+
+Simultaneously with the question a glittering object shone in his hand.
+It was the highly polished barrel of a revolver which he had whipped
+out casually with a deftness which seemed born of practice, and with
+which he now covered his rival.
+
+Both men started to their feet with blanched faces.
+
+"Here, I say!" Peckover remonstrated in ill-concealed terror.
+
+"How long?" sang out the little demon of a duke in his commanding
+voice.  "Oblige me by answering the question."
+
+"A second, I suppose," gasped Gage.  "Now please turn that revolver
+away."
+
+"That is," proceeded the duke in a tone of satisfaction, "nineteen
+minutes and fifty-nine seconds before the policeman arrives."  Still
+holding the weapon in his hand, but now pointing to the floor, he rose,
+brought his heels together and bowed.  "I trust, milord Quorn and Mr.
+Gage, my most honourable friends, that at length we understand one
+another."  Then he sat down again, his aggressive eyes moving with
+mechanical regularity from one man to the other, since the exigencies
+of the moment had sent the friends apart.
+
+But now, throughly roused by the critical situation, Peckover spoke.
+"I don't know, my lord dook, whether you are aware that we have strict
+laws in this country against murder."
+
+"And," put in Gage, "against carrying firearms without a licence."
+
+The duke laughed scornfully and with superfluous volume.  "Do your
+Excellencies think we have no such laws in Spain?  And do your graces
+suppose that if the Dukes of Salolja had cared a fig for them the
+occurrences which I have narrated to you would have happened?  You hang
+a man for what you call murder here.  But have you ever heard of your
+English law hanging a Grandee of Spain?  And do you think you would be
+allowed to do so?  Pah!"  He snapped his fingers with a noise like the
+crack of a whip.  "What is your English law compared with the
+immemorial traditions of the Saloljas?  NOTHING!  Shall it stand
+between a Salolja and his vengeance, his desire?  NEVER!"
+
+He shouted the answers to the last two of his many questions with
+scornful vehemence.  His manner was, no doubt, irritating, and that,
+perhaps, accounted for Peckover's boldness.
+
+"You don't bluff us you are above the law," he said, trembling at his
+own temerity.  "If we haven't hung a Spanish Grandee as yet, it's
+because none of you have killed anybody over here that I remember."
+
+The demon duke grinned and spread out his hands before him, as though
+sweeping away a feeble protest.
+
+"My gracious friend, you jump at hasty conclusions.  Who talks of
+killing, of murder.  Faugh!  It is a vulgar word.  Accidents happen,
+here as in Spain; deplorable, fatal accidents.  Firearms go off, almost
+of themselves; it is sad to think how easily they go off.  I could tell
+you stories of such miserable fatalities in my own family, but you have
+probably heard enough of the ways of the Saloljas for one evening.
+Death is very near us always," he continued sententiously.  "So near
+that the healthiest of us is only just alive.  Which of us bears a life
+worth an hour's purchase?  NONE!  And the man who trifles with a
+Salolja cannot call the next moment his own.  There it is.  Accept it
+or not, it is the truth, the eternal, bitter, naked truth."
+
+His voice was like a Nasmyth hammer, now pounding, roaring, seeming to
+shake the room, now gentle and soft as a shy schoolgirl's.  As he
+concluded his speech his tone sank into a solemn hush, indicative of
+the awesome inevitable.  For some moments there was silence in the
+room, save for the ticking clock.  Then, when the tension had lasted as
+long as was desirable, the duke rose, and advancing to the table took
+the finest peach in the dish.  The flashing had now faded from his
+eyes, and the expression on his face was truculently amiable.
+
+"I sincerely hope I have not wearied your excellencies," he observed.
+"It has been most condescending and gracious of you to let me explain
+myself at such length.  A veritable poem of a peach; I have not met its
+fellow in England.  May I now, since our slight misunderstanding is at
+an end, do myself the honour of drinking a glass of wine with your
+graces?"
+
+Rousing themselves from the gloomy preoccupation of their discomfiture,
+their graces, with a quite futile pretence of ease, hastened to
+minister to their undesirable visitor's request.  That worthy proceeded
+to toss off a couple of bumpers with a relish commensurate with his
+long and thirst-giving harangue.  "If I ask further for one of your
+graces' excellent cigars," he suggested with a pleasantness which could
+not seem other than grim, "it is as another proof of how unwilling I am
+to bear malice.  Ah!"  He lighted the cigar and blew out a long cloud
+with evident enjoyment.
+
+"Unlike my ancestors I make allowances," he declared significantly.
+"Unlike them again, I never strike without warning.  Yes," he added,
+dropping his voice into a genial tone; "it is perhaps well for us that
+we did not live, and in the same relations one to another, a hundred,
+two hundred years ago.  At least we should not all three be enjoying
+these superb cigars."
+
+It was a difficult sentiment for the smarting pair to respond to.
+"Just so," was all Peckover, with an awkward laugh, could think of.
+
+"I am ashamed to have stayed so long," said their guest, with an
+expressive glance at the clock.  "But it is better to risk missing the
+strict punctilio than to have to intrude again.  Your excellency's
+house and park are delightful.  I felicitate myself on my visit.  Your
+cigars are exquisite.  I take another, in token of our better
+understanding, to enjoy on my way to your somewhat depressing Great
+Bunbury.  Good-night, milord Quorn.  Good-night, Mr. Gage.  A thousand
+compliments and adieux to you both.  May it never be necessary for us
+to meet on less amicable terms than those which prevail between us at
+present.  Once again my most distinguished homage.  Adieu."
+
+With his heels together he made to each man a most profound bow; then
+turned to the window, opened it with a sure touch upon the latch,
+turned again, bowed, and disappeared into the night.
+
+For some moments the two men stood staring speechless into the
+darkness.  Then their eyes met.
+
+"This is a glorious title," said Gage, clipping out the words with
+bitter intensity.  "I am having a ripping time with it.  It's a fine
+thing to be alive just now."
+
+"All things considered, it's lucky we are alive," was Peckover's dry
+but feeling response.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+"Tell you what it is, Percival, my boy," said Gage at breakfast next
+morning; "I've had about enough of nobility.  Grandeur and aristocracy
+have too many inconveniences to suit me.  I've a mind to clear out, and
+hand you back this precious title of yours."
+
+Peckover laughed awkwardly.  "Don't do that yet awhile, old man," he
+urged.  "You haven't given it a fair trial."
+
+"It has given me one," was the prompt and pointed retort.  "And it
+strikes me if I don't look sharp and get out of the peacock's feathers
+I shall soon be pecked to death.  That Salolja chap last night was an
+eye-opener."
+
+"Unpleasant customer," his friend agreed.
+
+"Unpleasant?  Noisy little devil!"
+
+"Barking dogs don't bite," observed Peckover, but without conviction.
+
+"I wouldn't trust him," returned Gage with the firmness the other's
+remark lacked.  "These Spaniards are the very deuce when they're
+jealous.  They get simply mad.  And nobody on this earth is safe from a
+loose madman if he takes it into his head to go for you.  Our friend,
+the duke, meant business."
+
+"Only so long as you interfere between him and Miss Buffkin," Peckover
+agreed.
+
+"How was I to know what I was being let in for?" Gage exclaimed in an
+aggrieved tone.  "When the old lady mentioned a foreign chap who'd been
+dancing after Ulrica I naturally thought it was some monkeyish fellow
+who'd squirm if you shook hands too hard, and would cry if you spoke to
+him unkindly.  She never gave us a hint she'd got a bald Beelzebub with
+a voice that sends you the jumps and a homicidal history that gives you
+the shivers--to say nothing of that sickening revolver.  Ugh!  I can
+see the gleam of it now, as I've seen it all night.  I was on the point
+of trying to get in first shot with a champagne bottle."
+
+"Yes," Peckover admitted; "I've spent a pleasanter five minutes than
+when he was playing with the highly polished popper."
+
+"Well, much more of this and I go back to plain Mr. Gage," that
+gentleman declared in a disgusted tone.  "They talk of the fierce light
+that beats on royalty, but I didn't know the nobility lived in a
+set-piece of fire-works with occasional red-fire."
+
+"They can't all of them do it," argued Peckover.
+
+"They are all of 'em liable to it," Gage returned.  "The squibs are
+there, only waiting for some little complication to come along and
+touch 'em off.  It is getting on my nerves, and I'm wondering where the
+next little disturbance is coming from."
+
+It seemed almost in answer to his thought that, just as he had voiced
+it, Bisgood announced that Lady Agatha Hemyock was in the drawing-room.
+Theirs was a late breakfast; still the call was early.
+
+"That's where it's coming from," Peckover observed with an uneasy grin.
+
+Lady Agatha was sympathetically troubled as she shook hands with them.
+Her preliminary business was to ask them down to the Moat to tea that
+afternoon; but as the men, exchanging significant glances, gladly
+accepted the invitation as affording an asylum from any immediate
+complications connected with the Duke of Salolja, they both felt that
+something more was coming, and of greater moment than a message which a
+note would have adequately conveyed.  They were not long left in doubt.
+
+"I had another object," said Lady Agatha, pursing her lips and looking
+unutterably important, "in paying you this unconventional visit.  One
+has heard from various sources of the advent of Lady Ormstork to this
+neighbourhood.  I have even been informed that the lady in question has
+gone so far as to call upon you, which is the reason why the Colonel
+thought it would be only neighbourly and friendly to give you a word of
+warning."
+
+"Anything wrong," Peckover asked apprehensively.  His nerves had not
+recovered from the previous night's disturbance.
+
+Lady Agatha took a letter from her pocket with business-like
+deliberation.  "Very wrong--or likely to be," she replied as she slowly
+unfolded it, "from what my friend, Lady Bosham tells me.  I happened in
+writing to mention Lady Ormstork's name as having taken a furnished
+house near here, and my friend writes by return imploring me to have
+nothing to do with her.  A most dangerous woman," she added, presumably
+quoting from the closely written letter.
+
+Gage and Peckover caught each other's guilty and apprehensive eyes.
+
+"She has," continued their visitor, confident in the effect she had
+produced, "I believe, a young person--a young lady nowadays she would
+be called--with her.  A Miss Buffkin.  A mysterious Miss Buffkin, given
+out as an heiress."
+
+"Isn't she an heiress?" Peckover inquired rather foolishly.
+
+Lady Agatha shrugged.  "Possibly.  That is a matter known only to Lady
+Ormstork and Miss Buffkin.  But the more vital question is what are
+Lady Ormstork's character and intentions."
+
+It was somewhat a relief to both men to find someone else's intentions
+called in question.
+
+"Lady Bosham says," proceeded their visitor, "and indeed one has heard
+something of the kind vaguely oneself, that Lady Ormstork is notorious
+for getting hold of good-looking girls, often of very doubtful origin,
+and finding husbands for them--for a consideration."
+
+Both men expressed a surprise which they could scarcely be said to feel.
+
+"According to Lady Bosham, she is a determined and most unscrupulous
+woman," continued Lady Agatha, apparently quoting from the report.
+"Once she gets people into her toils they find it no easy matter to
+extricate themselves."
+
+It occurred to her hearers that there were other titled spreaders of
+nets besides the histrionic Lady Ormstork, but they did not say so.
+
+"Of course," said Lady Agatha, with apologetic plausibility, "it is
+perhaps a great liberty which I take in venturing to warn you.  But
+being such close neighbours and friends, and knowing you to be,
+comparatively speaking, strangers to this country and some of its less
+desirable features, we thought it only right to do so."
+
+"Much obliged to you, I'm sure," responded Gage.
+
+"Quite so," added Peckover.
+
+"Of course," Lady Agatha pursued tentatively, "I am unaware how far
+this Lady Ormstork," she spoke the name with withering emphasis, "may
+have forced her intimacy upon you.  Still, it is better to be
+forewarned, even if yours is as yet nothing beyond a formal
+acquaintance."
+
+"Just so," Gage agreed with balking irresponsiveness.
+
+"Lady Bosham is very strong on the undesirability of these people's
+acquaintance," said Lady Agatha rising.  "She, that is, Lady Ormstork,
+is a terrible old woman when once she gets her tentacles fixed on the
+victim she has marked down.  But there, I trust I have said enough to
+sensible men like yourselves to put you on your guard."
+
+"Quite," replied Gage, wondering where, in it all, the Duke of Salolja
+came in.
+
+Lady Agatha took her leave, having made them promise to come early to
+the Moat that afternoon.
+
+The promise was faithfully kept, since it seemed expedient to both men
+to avoid their friends from The Cracknels, at any rate till they saw
+how their Castilian rival was going to be disposed of.
+
+"They are bound to come up this afternoon as usual," Gage observed to
+his friend.
+
+"With that Spanish terror after them, shouldn't wonder," said Peckover.
+"We're best out of the way."
+
+"Ethel and Dagmar will be poor fun after Ulrica," Gage remarked
+gloomily.
+
+"Tell you what it is, my friend," said Peckover.  "The sooner you bring
+yourself to consider Ulrica a thing of the past the better chance
+you'll have of making old bones.  Ethel and Dagmar may not be all our
+fancy painted, but at least they haven't got a blood-thirsty Spanish
+nob hanging about them with traditions and a nasty way of talking
+polite flummery with a revolver playfully pointed at the vital parts of
+your anatomy all the time.  You won't have a ducal freak poking his
+long nose in there."
+
+"Well, we had better go down, have a fling with the second quality
+beauties and then clear out of the place till things cool down," said
+Gage with the air of a man who has made up his mind.
+
+Accordingly, after an early luncheon, they went down to the Moat, and
+flirted so recklessly with the not unduly obdurate young ladies, that
+Lady Agatha was induced to dismiss from her mind a grand plan she had
+been formulating for the recapture of John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, and
+even went so far as to canvass the respective claims of pink and
+apple-green in connexion with the general scheme of colour for a double
+bevy of bridesmaids.
+
+It was late, as late for safety as they could make it, when Gage and
+Peckover returned home, discussing plans for a sudden flight next
+morning.
+
+"Lady Ormstork called?" Gage asked Bisgood carelessly, as he turned
+into the smoking-room for a cigarette before going up to dress.
+
+"Yes, my lord.  And Miss Buffkin."
+
+"You gave her ladyship my message?"
+
+"Yes, m'lord."
+
+"Did she say anything?"
+
+"Her ladyship said she would wait, my lord, as she had something very
+important to tell your lordship."
+
+"Ah," Gage said knowingly.  "Did she wait long?"
+
+"Her ladyship and Miss Buffkin are in the drawing-room, my lord."
+
+The cigarette fell from Gage's parted lips, thrust out by a profane
+charge which exploded behind it.
+
+"In the----" he turned helplessly to Peckover.
+
+"Percival, old man, they're waiting for us," he gasped.
+
+"Anybody else?" Peckover inquired of Bisgood, with a vision of a pair
+of terrific eyes backed by a bald head and set off in front by a long
+nose and a gleaming revolver barrel.
+
+"No one else, sir," Bisgood answered with as much surprise as that
+functionary ever permitted himself.
+
+"Better scoot, eh?" suggested Peckover in a panic-stricken whisper, as
+the butler left them.
+
+"No.  Let's go and hear what the old bird has to say," Gage replied,
+after a few moment's hesitation.  "If any one is equal to tackling that
+Spanish nuisance she's the person.  Let's go and hear how she takes it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Lady Ormstork received them with pleasure tinged with just a shade of
+vexation.  "We were so disappointed at not finding you at home to-day
+of all days," she exclaimed.  "We heard this morning of an absurd
+misunderstanding which we were anxious to set right without delay.  And
+we have been waiting nearly four hours."
+
+"You've had tea?" Gage suggested, somewhat beside the point.
+
+"Oh, yes, thank you," Miss Buffkin assured him.
+
+"We heard casually," pursued Lady Ormstork, "that you had gone to call
+at the Moat, and naturally expected you would be back soon.  But no
+doubt,"--this with a world of spiteful significance--"Lady Agatha
+Hemyock made a point of keeping you there as long as she could.  I know
+her."
+
+"Of course," said Gage gallantly, ignoring the suggestion, "if we had
+known you were waiting we should have been back long ago."
+
+"Not if Lady Agatha knew it," was the tart reply.  "But never mind
+about that hateful woman.  I have waited to see you on a more important
+subject."
+
+She glanced at Miss Buffkin, who rose with an amused face and sauntered
+to the window.  "I'll take a turn among the flowers while you are
+telling the tale, Lady Ormstork," she said casually.  "I'm getting a
+little tired of it."
+
+Both men looked longingly after her as she strolled across the lawn,
+but a consuming anxiety to hear the latest news of the duke curbed the
+desire to invent an excuse for making after her.
+
+"The Duke of Salolja, tiresome person," Lady Ormstork began, "called at
+The Cracknels this morning, and upset us very much by telling us of a
+visit he had the impudence to pay you last evening."
+
+"Yes; we had a pleasant hour of him here," said Gage, grimly
+reminiscent.
+
+"He tells me," proceeded the lady in a tone of righteous anger, "that
+he has, in the most unwarrantable manner, suggested the existence of an
+engagement between himself and dear Ulrica.  Is that so?"
+
+"He suggested that he wasn't going to allow anybody else to be engaged
+to her," Peckover replied.
+
+"Most improper!" commented Lady Ormstork.  "And most unwarranted.  Dear
+Ulrica detests him.  But he is most absurdly persistent."
+
+"Yes, he's a bit of a nailer," Peckover agreed feelingly.
+
+"Was he very rude?" the lady inquired.
+
+"No, he was polite; the most confoundedly polite cuss I ever
+encountered," answered Gage.
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," said Lady Ormstork.  "And so your interview,
+preposterous as it was on his part, was quite amicable?"
+
+For a moment neither man felt equal to answering the question.  Then
+Peckover said, "Quite amicable, only a touch one-sided.  You see, it
+don't exactly pay to be nasty when a fellow's sitting over you with a
+revolver."
+
+Lady Ormstork threw up her hands.  "A revolver?  Ridiculous person!
+Really--I hope you told the foolish man that that sort of thing was
+quite out of date."
+
+"The revolver wasn't though," objected Peckover with a reminiscent
+shiver.  "It looked quite new, with all the latest improvements and in
+first-class working order."
+
+"Really?" cried the lady incredulously.
+
+"As far as we could judge.  Didn't want any closer inspection.  I'm
+content to take a revolver's business capacity for granted."
+
+"But surely," remarked Lady Ormstork with an amused curl of the lip,
+"you don't mean to say that you allowed this droll Salolja to alarm
+you?"
+
+The men glanced at each other with long faces.
+
+"We weren't exactly sorry when he said good-bye," was Gage's evasive
+answer.
+
+"Oh, but this is too absurd," protested the lady.
+
+"The funny side wasn't exactly turned to us last night," said Peckover.
+
+"I have," proceeded Lady Ormstork coolly, "told the duke he is making
+himself ridiculous."
+
+"And how did he take it?" Gage inquired with considerable curiosity.
+
+The lady shrugged.  "It is hopeless to argue with that sort of person.
+And naturally dear Ulrica is, from every point of view, a girl whom
+even a duke would find it difficult to give up hopes of.  But her
+father, a man of great discernment and determination would never hear
+of such an alliance.  A foreign title does not appeal to him.  So, my
+dear Lord Quorn, you need have no fears that Ulrica is in any danger of
+becoming Duchesse de Salolja."
+
+This was pretty direct speaking.  "It would be a pity," Gage agreed
+warily, "if Miss Buffkin should be coerced into a distasteful marriage."
+
+"There is," replied Lady Ormstork resolutely, "no chance of that.  I
+have told the duke so in unmistakable language.  And I also gave him a
+piece of my mind with regard to his uncalled-for interference between
+Ulrica and yourself.  He had the impudence to suggest that you were at
+his bidding ready to break off your understanding with Ulrica and
+relinquish her to him.  To him!  To a man whom she detests, I simply
+laughed at him, as I hoped you had laughed too."
+
+Gage started up.  "You didn't tell him I was engaged to Ul--to Miss
+Buffkin?" he gasped.
+
+"Naturally I did," was the composed answer.
+
+"But--but I'm not," he protested.
+
+Lady Ormstork gave a smile of pitying encouragement.  "My dear Lord
+Quorn, you are not going to allow yourself to be frightened out of your
+engagement by the bluster of that grotesque little Spaniard?"
+
+"But," he urged wildly.  "Spaniard or no Spaniard, I am not engaged."
+
+Lady Ormstork shrugged.  "Anyhow, Ulrica is under the impression she is
+betrothed to you.  I have even gone so far as to inform Mr. Buffkin of
+the engagement, being, as you will understand, responsible to him for
+Ulrica's well-being.  You cannot in honour even pretend to be induced
+by threats to repudiate it.  You have your own reputation as well as
+Ulrica's to consider.  That is why I spoke so straight to the duke this
+morning."
+
+Her tone was resolute and conclusive.  Gage knew not whether to look
+upon it as a well-arranged piece of bluff or as his dying knell.
+
+"It's all very well," he replied wildly.  "I'm very fond of Ulrica and
+all that.  But the traditions of the Salolja family have, from time
+immemorial, pointed to killing their rivals on sight.  There's not much
+use to either of us in my being engaged to Ulrica if I'm to be shot
+next minute."
+
+"Even if you anticipated such a contingency," Lady Ormstork replied
+coolly, "it would not justify you as an English nobleman in jilting
+Ulrica.  It is a point of honour.  You see that, don't you, Mr. Gage?"
+she demanded, suddenly turning to the deeply interested Peckover.
+
+"Just so," he answered with a start.  "Only it's poor fun having your
+wedding and your funeral on the same day."
+
+"I do not," Lady Ormstork declared, "understand such pusillanimity.
+After all," she urged, "you are man to man.  Why should you be more
+afraid of the duke than he of you?"
+
+"I've no homicidal traditions in my family," Gage explained.
+
+"A jealous Spaniard is the very devil," supplemented Peckover, whose
+experience of foreign temperament was derived from penny serials and
+half-crown melodrama.
+
+"Fact is," added Gage, "what I want is a good time, without any fuss or
+bother from Spanish dukes or anybody else.  I'm willing to do the right
+thing, so far as it can be done without friction."
+
+"A somewhat shallow, not to say unromantic, view of life," was Lady
+Ormstork's sarcastic comment.  "I must confess it never struck me that
+the Duc de Salolja carried such terror in his absurd person.
+
+"He carries a revolver on his absurd person," was Peckover's pointed
+rejoinder.
+
+"Ulrica will under no circumstances be allowed to marry him, even if
+she wants to," the lady declared, changing her tone.  "I have announced
+to her father that she is going to be Lady Quorn, and am certainly not
+going to take upon myself the odium of suggesting that Lord Quorn has
+been frightened out of the match by the first ridiculous little
+Spaniard who chooses to flourish in his face his family traditions and
+a--possibly unloaded--revolver."
+
+"We didn't go into that question," Peckover remarked with a reminiscent
+shiver.
+
+"The whole business is too droll," said Lady Ormstork with an amused
+smile.  "But of course we cannot submit to the duke's impudent
+coercion.  It is, however, easily obviated.  I will take the matter in
+hand, since you seem reluctant to do so.  I am responsible for dear
+Ulrica's welfare and happiness.  It is my business to see the sweet
+girl does not fall a prey to a foreign fortune-hunter.  Yes, dear Lord
+Quorn, you may leave the matter with absolute confidence in my hands.
+You may depute me, as Mr. Buffkin has already done, to deal with the
+Duc de Salolja."
+
+Gage did not receive the assurance in the spirit in which it was so
+confidently given.  On the contrary he looked more uncomfortable than
+ever.
+
+"All very well," he said, after an embarrassed pause, "but the more you
+insist on sticking me up the more he'll feel called on to knock me
+down.  Eh, Percival?"
+
+"Right you are," was Peckover's gloomy response.
+
+"I'll take care of that," Lady Ormstork assured him.
+
+"He won't go for you; he'll go for me," urged Gage.
+
+"Not he.  I'll draw him off," said the lady.
+
+"Suppose he won't be drawn off?" suggested Peckover.
+
+"Trust me," replied Lady Ormstork, grandly confident of her powers.
+"Diplomacy counts for much."
+
+"Strikes me it will count revolver shots if we aren't careful," said
+Gage dryly.
+
+Lady Ormstork drew back her mouth in a pitying smile.
+
+"My dear Lord Quorn!  This is unworthy of you," she declared.  "Do
+think of Ulrica.  Have you so little regard for her?  Is not
+she--superb creature!--worth a little daring?"
+
+"Certainly," Gage assented doubtfully.
+
+"All you want to do," continued the lady, following up her successful
+appeal, "is to show a bold front, and the terrible Duke of Salolja will
+run away."
+
+"Think so?" asked Peckover, his secret hopes reviving.
+
+"I am sure of it," said their visitor, rising.  "There, I am certain
+you never meant, dear Lord Quorn, to repudiate in earnest your
+understanding with the dear girl.  Ulrica will be the loveliest and
+most queenly peeress in the kingdom.  And with her immense wealth, the
+alliance is most desirable in every way.  Don't give the wretched,
+preposterous duke another thought.  Do, like a sensible man, dismiss
+him from your mind.  And if he should have the impudence to intrude
+here again show him the door and tell him to go back to his own----"
+
+"Perhaps you'll do that for us, Lady Ormstork," said Peckover, whose
+restless eyes had been kept on the window.  "There he is."
+
+The others looked round with a start.  There sure enough was the Duke
+of Salolja, stalking, with as long strides as his short legs would
+allow, across the lawn, obviously in pursuit of the fair Miss Buffkin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+The sight of yesterday's visitor seemed to paralyse both men, and the
+grim fascination that had held them before now clutched them again.
+Gage, who had, under the influence of Lady Ormstork's bitterly
+persuasive tongue, began to pluck up courage, and to view the
+magnificent Miss Buffkin once more in a proprietary right, now visibly
+wilted.  He even glanced round at the door, as though meditating
+flight.  Peckover whistled uncomfortably and tunelessly through his
+clenched teeth; a more elaborate expression of feeling he did not feel
+equal to.  Then they both glanced somewhat helplessly at Lady Ormstork
+in search of some indication of a plan of campaign.
+
+"Actually intruding here again," the lady exclaimed indignantly, as the
+duke's purposeful strides took him out of sight behind a hedge of
+laurels.  "If I were you, Lord Quorn, I would not hesitate in ordering
+him out of your grounds."
+
+Gage did not look the least inclined to act upon the suggestion.  "Oh,
+let him walk about there, if he likes," he replied with a weak laugh.
+
+"Walk about?" repeated the lady warmly.  "But he's walking after
+Ulrica.  It is not to be tolerated.  I was under the impression that I
+had given him his _congé_.  Lord Quorn--Mr. Gage," she turned fiercely
+upon Peckover, "as Lord Quorn seems content to endure this intolerable
+conduct rather than be man enough to protect his future wife from this
+tiresome person, perhaps you will go and intimate to the duke that his
+presence is undesirable."
+
+Peckover's reception of the order did not suggest alacrity.  "No affair
+of mine," he protested with a resolution born of care for his own skin.
+"Don't believe in interfering in other people's business.  My motto
+is----"
+
+"Motto!" cried Lady Ormstork scornfully.  "Is chivalry quite dead, that
+a lovely girl like dear Ulrica must be persecuted and victimized by an
+under-sized desperado, and two Englishmen stand by tamely and allow it?"
+
+Notwithstanding this somewhat pointed appeal, the two Englishmen seemed
+still disinclined to sally out and try conclusions with the Spanish
+terrorist.  Luckily, however, the argument was diverted by the
+appearance on the lawn of three persons, the duke, Miss Buffkin, and
+Lord Quorn, all with looks of stress on their faces.
+
+"Ah, here they come," said Lady Ormstork with her teeth set ready for
+battle.  "Who, may I ask, is that person with them?" she asked,
+lowering her eye-glasses and turning to the men who were for the moment
+preoccupied in weighing the merits of the respective courses of
+standing their ground or seeking a sanctuary in the wine cellars.
+
+"That?  Oh, that's Jenkins," answered Gage, wondering what he was doing
+in the _galère_.
+
+"Jenkins?" Lady Ormstork echoed the name, as though it did not convey
+very much to her.
+
+"One of my people," Gage explained, in an agony of indecision as to the
+propriety of flight.
+
+By this time the approaching trio had reached the window, inside which
+Lady Ormstork stood grimly waiting for them.  Next instant the duke had
+thrown it open and was with a flourish and a bow inviting Ulrica to
+enter.  A similar though modified pantomime having been gone through in
+the case of Lord Quorn the three at length stood inside the room, with
+the irate Lady Ormstork facing them, and with Gage and Peckover within
+jumping distance of the door.
+
+"Duke," Lady Ormstork's sharp tone rang through the room like a defiant
+bugle-call, "this is most extraordinary, not to say unseemly, conduct
+on your part."
+
+The representative of the Saloljas was, however, far too busy in
+distributing elaborate bows and extravagant greetings all round to be
+in a position to give heed at once to the lady's challenge.  In Spain
+punctilio gives way to nothing, not even to an angry old lady's
+impatience.
+
+Presently when Messrs. Gage and Peckover had been favoured with bows
+and compliments into which they were inclined to read their death
+warrants, the duke raised the top of his coercive head the whole of his
+five feet three inches from the floor and observed blandly--
+
+"Ten million apologies, most noble lady.  I am ashamed to confess I did
+not hear the remark you did me the undeserved honour to make."
+
+In no wise disconcerted, the most noble lady repeated the remark,
+slightly strengthening the language in which it had originally been
+couched.
+
+"Ah--h!"  The duke's grimace and pantomime expressed deprecation with a
+more elaborately hideous vim than that feeling had probably ever been
+clothed with before.  "Most illustrious lady," he protested, "what
+would you have?  The state of my unworthy heart is well known to you.
+And the heart excuses everything--everything."
+
+The repetition of the last word had a sinister sound in the ears of
+Gage and Peckover.  With its dire comprehensiveness it seemed to
+include their lives in its sweeping embrace.
+
+But Lady Ormstork, with sundry material reasons to influence her
+judgment, was far from accepting the proposition.  "It does not," she
+objected stoutly.  "To force your attentions where they are distasteful
+is inexcusable."
+
+"It is," rejoined the duke, with the light of battle in his eyes,
+"clearly my duty to render acceptable the homage of my affection."
+
+"It is quite hopeless," declared Lady Ormstork curtly.
+
+"I believe not," insisted the duke with, under the circumstances, an
+admirable display of assurance.
+
+Lady Ormstork glanced with equal confidence at her _protégée_.  "Miss
+Buffkin will bear me out."
+
+"Yes.  It's no good, duke," said the young lady with discomfiting
+promptness.  "You are not my sort."
+
+The duke accepted the verdict with a shrug, and at once proceeded to
+misread it.  "The Dukes of Salolja," he said with a touch of defiant
+pomposity, "have never permitted inequality of birth to be a bar in
+affairs of the heart."
+
+Lady Ormstork had also her personal rules of life.  And one was never
+to allow herself to be bluffed out of a possible advantage.  "You
+mistake, duke," she said suavely.  "Miss Buffkin wishes delicately to
+suggest that she does not return your affection, and therefore, the
+alliance you propose is out of the question."
+
+"I can," replied the duke, in no way abashed, "afford to wait for the
+return of my affection."
+
+As he glanced significantly round at the three silent men he seemed a
+very monument of determination.
+
+"But," Lady Ormstork maintained, "we do not wish you to wait.  There
+would be no point in your waiting.  Miss Buffkin has made up her mind
+to contract a quite different alliance."
+
+"Ah?"  The duke opened his mouth wide and emitted an exclamation in
+tone and mode of utterance worthy of a surprised hyæna.  Then shutting
+his mouth and opening his eyes whose light the facial contortion had
+absorbed, he added with, to certain of the party at least, disquieting
+significance, "Our Spanish proverb says, 'He who buys ground may rest
+under it before he can repose above it.'  May I, without offence, ask
+the ever gracious Miss Buffkin whether you correctly interpret her
+sentiments and intentions?"
+
+The ever gracious Miss Buffkin looked as defiant as her questioner--and
+much less polite, as she answered, "That's right enough.  I'm going to
+marry an Englishman, for one thing."
+
+"Ah?"  Again the zoological grimace.  "Has the radiant Miss Buffkin
+honoured any particular Englishman with her much-to-be coveted
+preference?"
+
+The question, accompanied as it was, by a sweeping and minatory glance,
+had the immediate effect of making two Englishmen in the room try to
+look severely recusant and anti-matrimonial.
+
+And under the influence of that fell glance Gage took a desperate
+resolve.
+
+Lady Ormstork, who believed in coming to the point where her own
+interests were concerned, answered with bold preciseness, "Certainly.
+Miss Buffkin is going to marry Lord Quorn."
+
+At the declaration the duke made a face which raised his bristling
+moustache till his eyes glared through a fan-like screen of hair, the
+real Lord Quorn uttered an exclamation which conveyed no definite
+sentiment, Gage turned the colour of the fruit associated with his
+name, and Peckover, trying to persuade himself that the discussion did
+not touch him, whistled softly through his teeth.
+
+"Lord Quorn!" repeated the duke in a tone of bland surprise.  "No.
+That may have been.  But I fancy, most illustrious lady, you are
+mistaken.  Milord Quorn has renounced all pretentions to the lady's
+hand."
+
+"Lord Quorn has done nothing of the kind," Lady Ormstork denied stoutly.
+
+The duke turned to Gage, polite yet threatening.  "Doubtless milord
+Quorn will do me the honour to confirm what I have stated."
+
+"Lord Quorn," interrupted the old lady, "will do nothing of the sort."
+
+The duke raised himself on tip-toe and fixed the apprehensive Gage with
+his fiercest glare.  "Milord Quorn will do so--or lay himself open to
+the consequences," he insisted, with a truculent nod of command.
+
+"I--er--of course I--I have no wish to stand in the lady's light," Gage
+stammered weakly.
+
+"Light?" echoed Lady Ormstork in a high-pitched voice.  "I fancy, my
+dear Lord Quorn, we are the best judges of the quarter the light shines
+from."
+
+"It shines," observed the duke with grim imperturbability, "from Spain."
+
+"It shines," retorted the dowager with haughty insistence, "from
+Staplewick Towers."
+
+"I am deeply grieved," said the duke, "to sound a discordant note in
+the symphony of your distinguished plans.  But I declare that the
+adorable Miss Ulrica shall never marry Lord Quorn."
+
+"I say she shall," retorted Lady Ormstork defiantly.
+
+"She shall not--even if a regrettable necessity should dictate that
+there be no Lord Quorn for her to marry."
+
+Thus the duel proceeded; the passes growing hotter and keener every
+moment.  Miss Buffkin had subsided on a sofa and from her attitude
+might have been an uninterested and slightly bored spectator.  And all
+the while the three men who looked on said nothing, wisely, perhaps.
+But their interest in the encounter was not to be judged by their
+silence, as they watched their champion's efforts with mixed feelings.
+They were, all three, in love with the beautiful Miss Buffkin, but each
+was likewise consumed by an intense regard for his own safety.
+
+"It is not," said Lady Ormstork with dignity--and that aristocratic
+matrimonial agent could be very dignified when she chose--"the fashion
+among English gentlemen to indulge in absurd threats when their
+pretensions are rejected.  In this country we took leave of the Dark
+Ages long ago."
+
+"Absurd threats, eh?" the little duke repeated, with a laugh which fell
+chill and jarring on, at any rate, Gage's ear.  "We shall see.  Yes, we
+shall see--those of us"--he glanced fiercely round the room--"who are
+alive next week--how far my threats are vain."
+
+"Ridiculous nonsense!" Lady Ormstork exclaimed with a scornful and
+somewhat stagey laugh.
+
+The duke bowed.  "I have the honour, most illustrious lady, to receive
+your ultimatum, and to accept it.  It is horribly unfortunate that we
+find ourselves diametrically opposed.  But so it is; and I have no more
+to say--to you, except to bid you _au revoir_, with my most
+distinguished compliments."
+
+He bowed very low to her, then to Ulrica, after which with a kind of
+fiendish politeness to each of the three men, taking Gage with marked
+intention last.  "Milord Quorn," he said, drawing back his lips till
+his moustache stood up like two wings against his cheeks, "I regret
+that my friendly hint has not been taken.  You have called the game.  I
+shall have the honour of playing it--as," he raised his voice, "as my
+honoured and distinguished ancestors have always played it."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, duke," said Lady Ormstork sharply.
+
+The representative of the distinguished and bloodthirsty Saloljas
+raised himself abruptly from a bow he was elaborating, and faced the
+lady.  "A Salolja," he said, with as much dignity as a short stature
+coupled with a long nose is capable of, "never talks nonsense."
+
+"If you presume," she continued threateningly, "to annoy Lord Quorn----"
+
+"A Salolja," he interrupted, with a significant smile, "never annoys."
+
+"Or threaten--' pursued Lady Ormstork.
+
+"A Salolja," he returned, with a Castilian gesture of deprecation,
+"never threatens.  It is only within the last hundred and fifty years
+that he has condescended to warn."
+
+"We can warn too," retorted the lady doggedly.  "Warn the police."
+
+The duke looked quite tickled.  "Most gracious lady," he replied,
+showing his teeth in a grin from which none of his male listeners
+derived any mirth, "you make me smile.  I think the question of your
+police we have already analysed, I and the excellent Lord Quorn.  If
+your graces have no more notable argument to put forth to arrest the
+traditions of the Saloljas I will ask your gracious permission to take
+my leave--for the present."
+
+He accompanied the last three words with a glance which boded battle,
+murder and sudden death to at least one of his hearers.  Then, with a
+sweeping bow, he turned to the door.
+
+"Stop!" cried Gage in a voice resonant with fear.  "You are all making
+a mistake.  I am not Lord Quorn!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+At the startling declaration the duke swung round and eyed Gage with a
+glance that seemed capable of penetrating an inch board.  Lady
+Ormstork, surprised for a moment out of her transcendent
+self-possession, stared aghast at the object of her designs; Ulrica
+looked half astonished and half relieved; Peckover's mien was one of
+abject discomfiture; while Quorn's showed grim expectation.
+
+"Not Lord Quorn?" screamed Lady Ormstork incredulously.
+
+"So?  Not Lord Quorn?" repeated the duke, prepared to resume the
+aggressive.
+
+"No, I'm not," Gage declared stoutly.  "If I ever was, I've had enough
+of it.  But I never was by rights."
+
+"Not Lord Quorn by rights?" gasped Lady Ormstork.
+
+"Never.  At least never no more.  So you'll please to consider me out
+of this little complication."
+
+"This," observed the duke, truculently thoughtful, "is very singular."
+
+"Very," Lady Ormstork agreed.  "One would like to have some explanation
+of such an extraordinary statement."
+
+"We must know how we stand," said the duke, who had assumed the
+attitude of a stunted bravo.
+
+"I tell you," Gage maintained, "I am no more Lord Quorn than you are."
+
+There was a short silence.  Then Lady Ormstork demanded pointedly,
+"Then who, may I ask, is Lord Quorn?"
+
+Gage indicated the unwilling Peckover.  "This is Lord Quorn.  I am
+plain Peter Gage."
+
+Quorn, the real Quorn, laughed scornfully, and seemed to see light.
+
+Miss Buffkin clapped her hands.  "You Lord Quorn?  How lovely!" she
+exclaimed, beaming at Peckover.
+
+"Aha!  So you are Lord Quorn?" cried the duke transferring to that
+person his highly undesirable attention.
+
+"No, I'll be hanged if I am," protested the abnegating Peckover.
+
+"You'll be shot if you are," observed Gage half aloud, with a glance at
+the highly-stoked little Spaniard, who stood pulling his quill-like
+moustaches, and whose unswerving glance confirmed the forecast.
+
+Ulrica had jumped up.  "There, we've settled it already, dear Lady
+Ormstork," she cried.  "Isn't it lucky!"
+
+"Lucky?" echoed Lady Ormstork, rather non-plussed.
+
+"Yes," Ulrica assured her.  "We've settled it between ourselves.  I
+like him.  He's my sort."
+
+From the duke came a deep, rumbling "Oom!" as a grim commentary on the
+reshuffle of the position.
+
+"But I'm not Lord Quorn," Peckover urged vehemently, beginning to be
+seriously alarmed.
+
+"You are!" maintained Gage.
+
+"One of you must be," said the duke, as though merely anxious not to
+make a mistake in the selection of his victim.
+
+"Not me!"  To such a state of poverty was Peckover's vocabulary reduced.
+
+"Oh, Percival!" Ulrica exclaimed reproachfully.  "Don't deny it."
+
+"He can't," declared Gage, under the influence of the baleful Salolja
+eyes and moustaches which dominated the scene.
+
+"May I ask," said Lady Ormstork with dignified severity, "how you came
+to call yourself Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Well," replied Gage frankly, "I thought I'd like to see how it felt to
+be a lord.  And," he added pointedly, "I don't care much for the
+feeling."
+
+"And may I ask," continued the dowager, addressing herself to the
+bothered and daunted Peckover, "how it was you came to renounce your
+title?"
+
+"I made it worth his while," Gage explained shortly, determined to be
+off with the galling honour.
+
+The real Lord Quorn in his corner gave a long whistle of
+semi-enlightenment.
+
+"I never had it," protested the unhappy Peckover.
+
+The duke, bristling, took a step forward.  "Lord Quorn!" he snapped his
+fingers loudly and contemptuously.  "It is no matter.  You are at least
+a suitor of this lady?"
+
+Happily Lady Ormstock saved Peckover from replying to the delicate
+suggestion.  "Not unless he is Lord Quorn," she declared resolutely.
+
+"I tell you," cried Peckover desperately, "I am not Lord Quorn."
+
+"Then you are a fraud," Gage asserted roughly.
+
+"I never said I was Lord Quorn," urged Peckover.
+
+"You never said you weren't," rejoined Gage.
+
+The fiery blood of the Saloljas was beginning to weary of these
+polemics and to be impatient for its cue.  "It is no matter," he said
+with loud, painfully loud, authority.  "I take it"--to Peckover--"that
+you are Lord Quorn, and you have, for reasons inexplicable to a Spanish
+nobleman been pleased to divest yourself temporarily of your rank.  You
+have addressed yourself to this lady--as Lord Quorn or by a humbler
+name, it matters not.  I have the honour to request a few words with
+your excellency in the garden."
+
+His excellency's countenance expressed a strong disinclination to any
+such _al fresco_ conference.  Indeed, so far was he from complying with
+the duke's haughty and peremptory invitation that he sat down on a
+chair which stood handy.  "Not much," he said vernacularly.  "I'm not
+taking any just at present, thanks all the same."  He felt himself
+comparatively safe where he was.  Even a Spanish duke of vindictive and
+homicidal idiosyncrasies could scarcely have the face to murder him
+coolly in a room before four non-accessory witnesses.
+
+Whether the duke realized that the refusal contained a certain
+admixture of defiance is uncertain.  Anyhow, he took two strides with
+his short legs, and, at uncomfortably close quarters, repeated the
+invitation.
+
+But Peckover sat tight.  "I'm not Lord Quorn," he maintained doggedly,
+"and I've had as much fresh air as I want for one day."  His complexion
+was green with fear.  With the searching fire of those eyes upon him he
+felt it was as much as he could do to keep from shrivelling up; still,
+what mind panic had left him was dominated by the assurance that once
+in the garden it would be all over with his somewhat luridly chequered
+career.  The Salolja eyes held him.  He tried to glance round for
+encouragement, for a touch of companionship even, at the others in the
+room who, however, watched the scene in grim and more or less
+embarrassed silence.  But though for a moment his eyes sought them, he
+saw nothing, and next instant they were riveted again on the demon
+duke, now so near that he could feel his fiery breath.  But he kept his
+seat with a drowning man's desperation.
+
+"Will your grace come?" rang out the sharp, staccato tones.  "Or will
+it be necessary for me to drag your excellency out by the nose?"
+
+The alternative was not attractive, and its proposer looked quite
+capable of putting it into execution.
+
+"I tell you I am not Lord Quorn, and never was," yelled the wretched
+Peckover, now simply beside himself.  "If you want him, there he is."
+He pointed to the corner where stood the real peer, looking, however,
+particularly unlike one, and in a high state of doubt as to the line he
+should take.  He compromised with the question by giving, in the first
+instance, a loud, derisive laugh.
+
+"Very pretty, Mr. Gage, or whatever your alias is.  So I'm Lord Quorn,
+am I, when it suits your book?  That's a rich idea.  Ho! ho! ho!"  And
+he laughed again with offensive resonance.
+
+"Who," demanded Lady Ormstork in a tone of disgust, "is this noisy
+person?"
+
+"Lord Quorn," was Peckover's prompt reply.
+
+"What?" cried Gage in bewilderment.
+
+"Milord Quorn, eh?" said the duke, transferring his bristling attention
+to the latest participant in that questionable distinction.
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed Lady Ormstork, obviously judging by appearance,
+which certainly did not go far to suggest a member of the peerage.
+
+Quorn laughed again, less comfortably this time under the observation
+of the duke.  "Of course I'm not," he said, in a tone which lost in the
+utterance its original intention of irony.  "How can I be, except in
+these gentlemen's imagination?"  For he had a shrewd idea, as things
+were going, that, at the moment, the title carried certain unpleasant
+contingent liabilities with it.
+
+The duke pursed his face into a quizzical sneer.  "No, I do not think
+you are milord Quorn, my good fellow," he concluded, taking Lady
+Ormstork's view of the badly groomed object of his scrutiny.
+
+"He is Lord Quorn," Peckover insisted vehemently, "if anybody is."
+
+"Of course," retorted Quorn with withering point, "I am Lord Quorn when
+it is necessary."
+
+The duke, manifestly tiring of the question of identity and resolving
+(possibly Castilian fashion) to settle the point for himself, was about
+to resume his somewhat drastic argument with Peckover when Ulrica
+interrupted the genial intention.
+
+"I believe this person is Lord Quorn," she said, with pointed reference
+to the real man.  "He told me so himself just now in the garden.  He
+said the other was an imposter and advised me to have nothing to do
+with him."
+
+"My dear Ulrica!" cried Lady Ormstork, half doubtingly; then turned to
+Quorn with a face prepared to beam on the shortest notice.
+
+"What did I tell you?" exclaimed Peckover realizing it was a case of
+_sauve qui peut_.
+
+The duke, almost forgetting punctilio in his cumulative exasperation,
+turned again to Quorn, resolved to be at definite issue with somebody,
+while his jealousy was spurred by Lady Ormstork's evident readiness to
+establish as Miss Buffkin's suitor the right Quorn, if only she could
+get hold of him.
+
+"So you are Lord Quorn, my fine fellow," he exclaimed with a mock bow
+(for, as we know, Quorn was shabby).  "You are eager to pay your
+addresses to this adorable lady, and are doubtless prepared to accept
+the consequences?"
+
+Quorn, at a loss for a reply, stared stupidly at his fierce
+interrogator, while Peckover judged himself sufficiently reprieved to
+venture to wink at Gage.
+
+"I don't do anything of the sort," Quorn at length said weakly.
+
+"Oh, Lord Quorn," protested Ulrica mischievously.  "You know you said I
+was to marry the right Lord Quorn, and you were the man."
+
+"So?" cried the duke, with fell conviction that he had at last got his
+man.  "It is well.  You are Lord Quorn.  _Je l'accepte_.  May I request
+the honour of a private word with your illustrious lordship in the
+garden?"
+
+"Not exactly," was that illustrious noble's pithy reply to the
+invitation.
+
+Of the duke's Castilian stock of patience very little was left.  "It is
+necessary," he insisted with a ferocious grin.  "I am not to be denied.
+Your grace shall come--now."
+
+"You will not be so absurd as to go, Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork
+with time-serving sympathy.
+
+Quorn did not look in the least like committing the absurdity.  He set
+his teeth and glared round at the other men in a sort of forlorn hope
+of assistance.  But they, though naturally deeply interested, made no
+sign.  The conditions were, at the moment, too complex for a clear line
+of altruism.
+
+"Your excellency shall come," said the duke through his teeth.  "I am
+the Duke of Salolja, and a Grandee of Spain.  I will not be balked."
+
+But the representative of the British aristocracy still hung back.  "I
+insist," maintained the Spaniard, darting forward and seizing a
+reluctant arm.  The Englishman's counter move was to sit down on a
+chair which stood beside him.  Anticipating the move, the duke pulled
+him sharply away.  The consequence was that Quorn sat down on the
+floor.  Not quite seeing his way to conduct his adversary from that
+posture into the garden, the duke was fain, while seeking a feasible
+plan, to spurn the lowly nobleman with his foot.
+
+"For shame!" cried Lady Ormstork.
+
+"If you kick me I'll hand you over to the police," said Quorn unhappily
+and speaking at a certain disadvantage.
+
+The duke gave a crowing laugh of scorn, a favourite trick of his when
+"the force" was mentioned.  "The police!  Hah! hah!  Where are they,
+your police?"
+
+The question was answered by Bisgood, who at that juncture opened the
+door, and, subduing with difficulty all outward signs of a pardonable
+astonishment, announced--
+
+"Detective-Inspector Doutfire from Great Bunbury wishes to speak to
+your lordship."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Mr. Doutfire came in close upon Bisgood's announcement, and threw a
+severely professional eye round the company.  His manner, in fact,
+suggested, in a measure, that he was raiding a gambling den; but then
+the suspicious habit had become characteristic with him.  And indeed,
+the attitudes of the party might be said to have justified mistrust, or
+at any rate an inquisitorial curiosity on his part.  He bowed to Gage
+with a nicely adjusted balance between the homage due to a peer of the
+Realm and a due regard for the Law whose representative he was and
+which boasted itself no respecter of persons.  It is, perhaps, scarcely
+necessary to state that Peckover viewed his advent with an uneasy eye.
+
+"Beg pardon, my lord," Doutfire said in his consequential, witness-box
+manner, "sorry to intrude upon your lordship, but I considered it my
+duty to inform your lordship that a certain suspicious character has
+been noticed hanging about the grounds here, and I took it upon myself
+to just step up and warn your lordship."
+
+The somewhat tense silence which followed was broken by the duke's
+staccato tones.  "So this is milord Quorn, eh, policeman?"
+
+Mr. Doutfire looked not merely scandalized, but ready at a moment's
+notice to take the representative of the lordly Saloljas into custody.
+
+"Detective-Inspector is my rank and appellation, sir, begging your
+pardon," he said severely.  "With regard to your question, sir, I have
+every reason to believe I am right in stating that this gentleman--I
+should say nobleman--is Lord Quorn."
+
+"So?  Thank you, detective," said the duke with a bow of acknowledgment
+for the information, and a smile for the futility of the police, once
+again preparing to focus his traditional aggressiveness upon the
+unhappy Gage.
+
+But that gentleman did not propose to sit again.  "It's all a mistake,"
+he protested loudly.  "I am not Lord Quorn.  There he is, so far as I
+can make out."
+
+He pointed to the real Quorn, who had retained his seat upon the floor,
+and whom, owing to his position behind the door, Doutfire's eagle
+glance had so far not taken in.  That alert officer now, however, lost
+no time in wheeling round and fixing the lowly peer with a glare of
+more than suspicion.  "This?" he exclaimed incredulously.  "Why, this,"
+he darted his head forward and sideways with the sure air of a master
+of the art of criminal indemnification, "this is the party I have just
+mentioned to your lordship.  A suspicious character who has given us
+the slip as well as a lot of trouble.  A party known to us as Peckover."
+
+"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, turning from the sedentary nobleman with
+a face of contemptuous disgust.  "I said it was impossible he could be
+Lord Quorn."
+
+"I know him as Peckover," Mr. Doutfire maintained with authority.  "A
+party against whom a charge of being in possession of and uttering
+counterfeit coin was lately preferred, but which charge the Treasury
+has now seen fit to withdraw."
+
+"Oh!"  Peckover's face brightened at the news.  "But he is Lord Quorn,"
+he insisted.
+
+Mr. Doutfire, who had been keeping that nobleman under observation with
+a wary and scornful eye, looked as though quite unable to reconcile the
+statement with its object's position on the floor.  "Do I understand
+that he states he is Lord Quorn?" he asked severely, taking out a large
+note book with bodily contortions and ominous play with its broad
+elastic band.
+
+"On the contrary, I've said nothing of the sort," objected Quorn.  "Did
+I?" he added appealing to the company above him.
+
+Mr. Doutfire's look suggested that to his mind that assertion, even if
+correct, did not fully account for the suspect's position on the
+carpet.  "Well, bring yourself up," he commanded roughly.  "And let us
+get at the rights of the question."
+
+Thus bidden, Quorn rose, and faced the officer of the law, defiantly
+reticent.
+
+"You shall find out at once which of these gentlemen is Lord Quorn,"
+ordered the Duke of Salolja, folding his arms.
+
+"By your leave, sir----" began Doutfire in a tone of trenchant reproof.
+
+"Sir?" cried the duke, speaking very fast and staccato.  "My rank and
+appellation are the Duke of Salolja, I am, moreover, a Grandee of
+Spain."
+
+Mr. Doutfire covered the hit by a business-like action of putting the
+point of a stubby lead pencil in his mouth.  "I'll make a note of
+that," he said, to all appearances unmoved by the momentous
+announcement.  And he proceeded to do so, taking a subtle revenge by
+making the haughty Castilian spell his title, and furthermore
+suggesting that his pronounciation of the alphabet was suspiciously
+misleading.
+
+"Your grace," he observed sternly, when the elaborate entry had been
+made and deliberately revised, "may trust me to take the steps, if any,
+necessary to clear up this matter."  He turned from the fuming
+Spaniard, and addressed himself pointedly to the rest of the company.
+"Do I understand," he asked approaching the extraordinary complication
+with an absence of emotion which suggested that the tackling of such
+questions was with him an every-day occurrence, "do I understand that
+there is some doubt as to the identity of Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Precisely," replied the duke.
+
+Mr. Doutfire by an authoritative wave of his notebook enjoined the
+Castilian despot to silence.  "I ask you, sir," he said, pointedly to
+Gage, "whether you are or are not Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Not I," was the prompt and comparatively cheerful answer.
+
+Mr. Doutfire accepted it with a suggestion of reserving all comment on
+the surprising statement till a later stage.  "Perhaps, then, you will
+be good enough to tell me who is," he said.
+
+Gage pointed with his thumb to Peckover.  "If it's not this gentleman,
+I don't know who it is," he replied indifferently.
+
+"Nothing of the nobility about me," Peckover declared in answer to
+Doutfire's interrogative glance.  "I tell you that is the individual,
+over there," indicating Quorn, who was now sufficiently recovered from
+the ducal onslaught to laugh jeeringly.
+
+"I like that!" he exclaimed.  "Making me Lord Quorn when it comes
+useful."
+
+"You are Peckover?" demanded Mr. Doutfire confidently.
+
+"If you say so," was the reply.
+
+"I do say so," said Doutfire, whose reputation clearly hinged on the
+correctness of the statement.
+
+"I knew he was not Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork.
+
+"He told me he was," observed Miss Buffkin.
+
+Mr. Doutfire turned a threateningly suspicious glance on the stolid
+Quorn, then pursed his mouth with a pitying smile of non-acceptance as
+he shook his head emphatically at the young lady.  "He's Peckover all
+right, miss," he assured her.  Then glared at Quorn as though
+challenging him to deny it.
+
+And Quorn, although not overburdened with intellect, had sense enough
+to recognize that his game just then was to lie low and admit nothing
+if he could help it.
+
+"My dear Ulrica," said Lady Ormstork in her superior fashion, "how
+could you allow yourself to be taken in by such a transparent pretence?
+Does the person look in the least like Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Or any other nobleman?" supplemented Doutfire, with menacing sarcasm.
+"Of course," he added, in a more uncompromisingly professional tone,
+"if he has been defrauding any of you ladies and gentlemen, under the
+false pretence that he is Lord Quorn, I'll take him now to Bunbury
+against your preferring a charge against him."
+
+His enquiring look round meeting with no response, save a scornful
+smile from Quorn, Doutfire proceeded, eyeing the suspect malevolently,
+"I don't know how he comes to be here, in this house, but----"
+
+"He stopped my horse that was running away with me," Gage explained
+chivalrously.
+
+"Oh!"  Mr. Doutfire's face hardened, as though that in itself were a
+questionable circumstance, and made the doubtful record worse.  "Well,
+of course," he continued, not seeing his way to any active measures
+under the reprobative circumstances, "if you are satisfied, it is no
+business of mine.  I've merely done my duty."
+
+The Duke of Salolja who had endured this discussion with ill concealed
+impatience, now spoke again.
+
+"Then it is one of these gentlemen who is really Lord Quorn, eh,
+constable?"
+
+"Detective-Inspector, if your grace has no objection," was the
+withering correction.  After giving the same time to take effect, he
+addressed himself to deal with the question.  "As to which of these
+gentlemen is his lordship, I do not, in the absence of any stated
+charge or legal reason feel myself called upon to decide.  Speaking
+unofficially and without prejudice, I should, if interrogated, incline
+to the opinion that this gentleman," he indicated Gage with a passing
+and casual wave of his pocket-book on the way to its resting-place in
+his coat-tail, "would answer to the description.  But I have no _locus
+standi_ in the dispute, and therefore merely express an opinion, as a
+matter of courtesy, that if the question of identity should be gone
+into, the gentleman by the palm-stand may possibly be found to be Lord
+Quorn."  After which impressive and useful dictum he bid the party
+"Good evening," and took a somewhat abrupt departure, fearful, perhaps,
+of being led into giving an opinion which might at some future time be
+inconveniently used against him.
+
+As the door closed on him Lady Ormstork said, in a tone of repressed
+and compromising exasperation, "This is altogether a most
+extraordinary, unheard-of proceeding.  Perhaps by to-morrow more
+sensible counsels will have prevailed, and we shall know who is and who
+is not Lord Quorn.  But," she added significantly, "I do not overlook
+the fact that each one of you gentlemen, and consequently whichever of
+you bears the title, has proposed an alliance between himself and Miss
+Buffkin.  Is that not so, Ulrica, dear?"
+
+"Yes; they've all said as much," replied that young lady casually.
+
+"So?"  The Salolja growl reverberated through the room like the first
+muttering of thunder.
+
+"And," concluded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the minatory rumble, "Miss
+Buffkin will marry whichever of you turns out, when this absurd mystery
+is solved, to be Lord Quorn."
+
+"Will she?" observed the duke from the depths of his thickset throat.
+
+"Undoubtedly," was the determined and conclusive reply.  "Come, dear.
+We must be getting home."
+
+"I shall," said the duke, suddenly galvanizing himself into his native
+politeness, "do myself the distinguished honour of constituting myself
+your graces' escort.  Have I the much prized permission?"
+
+"We will give you a lift--without prejudice," replied Lady Ormstork,
+with the laudable object of drawing him off from further exercise of
+his powers of intimidation upon whichever might be the prospective
+bridegroom.
+
+The duke bowed himself into a right angle.  "Your illustrious kindness
+transcends my poor deserts.  I am overwhelmed by this distinguished
+mark of your favour."  He straightened himself, pivoted on his heels
+till he faced the three men, and bowed to them, this time stopping at
+an angle of 45°.  "Your excellencies, I shall further do myself the
+supreme honour of returning to pursue my enquiry as to which of you I
+may have the inestimable privilege of addressing without fear of
+contradiction as milord Quorn."
+
+He pivoted again till he faced the door, took a phenomenally long
+stride to it, recovered himself, flung it open, and with a ceremonial
+which had quite a mediæval flavour about it, and, indeed, had been
+probably handed down from one generation of the amiable house of
+Salolja to another, conducted the ladies to the hall, leaving the three
+men inert with gloomy anticipations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+So paralysed were they that it was not till the crunching of the
+carriage wheels on the gravel roused them from their lugubrious stupor
+that they found tongue to discuss their situation.
+
+"Nice let-in for my money and trouble," said Gage writhing in the
+Nessus shirt of that fatal peerage.
+
+"At any rate you can't blame me for this pleasing little episode,"
+returned Peckover dispiritedly.
+
+"I like your swearing you are not the rightful Quorn," said Gage
+huffily.
+
+"I'm not, whoever else may be," maintained his late confederate with a
+glance at the real man, who met it by an irresponsive glare.
+
+"I only took it for as long as I fancied," urged Gage.
+
+"A bargain's a bargain," observed Peckover.  "You can't take on a title
+and give it up as though it were a furnished house."
+
+"Can't I?" his friend rejoined vehemently.  "Anyhow, I mean to.  I've
+had too much of it.  I didn't suppose it included Spanish bullies and
+Australian bush-rangers."
+
+"You can do as you like about giving it up," retorted Peckover.  "Only
+it don't come back to me I promise you.  I didn't sell it on appro."
+
+Quorn, who had been ruminating on the events just past in glowering
+silence, looked up quickly.
+
+"Sell?" he demanded suspiciously.  "What do you mean by sell?"
+
+"Mind your own business," returned Gage snappishly.  "That's the worst
+of men like you.  You do a fellow a service and then there's no end to
+the advantage you take of it.  Thrusting yourself in and talking absurd
+rot to the girl.  If you don't keep in your place I shall have to put
+you there."
+
+"That's what I'm going to trouble you to do before you're much older,"
+retorted Quorn darkly.
+
+Gage looked puzzled.  "What was your reason," he demanded, turning to
+Peckover, "for sticking out that he was Lord Quorn?  Were you pulling
+that infernal little fire-brand's short leg, or did you mean it?"
+
+Peckover considered a moment, then replied with a nod at Quorn, "You'd
+better ask him."
+
+Gage did accordingly ask him.
+
+"Mind your own business," was the unsatisfactory answer.  "If you are
+Lord Quorn nobody else can be.  But it would be interesting to know how
+you came into the title."
+
+"What the deuce does it matter," Peckover protested.  "That conundrum
+will keep.  That little devil will be back here directly.  What we've
+got to talk about is how we are going to tackle him."
+
+The suggestion was so profoundly to the point that a depressing silence
+fell on the trio.  They all three jumped when Bisgood came in softly to
+announce that dinner had been ready half-an-hour.
+
+"Dinner?" cried Gage.  "No dinner for me.  I'm off."
+
+"Don't be silly," Peckover remonstrated.  "We'll have our dinner first.
+A bottle of champagne is the stuff to bring us into condition.  Come
+on, Jenkins, old man.  You're dining with us to-night."
+
+An exacting afternoon had left the trio in a state so low that
+sustenance was imperative, wherefore they went gloomily in to dinner.
+The meal was taken hurriedly, and, with regard to the wine, copiously.
+So by degrees they began to feel in a less abject state of panic.
+
+"Why did we let that fool of a detective talk himself off the
+premises?" said Peckover regretfully.  "Anyhow, we had better have the
+local man up here in case that nuisance of a duke tries his 'Come into
+the garden, Maud,' again with us."
+
+"What good will that chaw in uniform be against that little devil?"
+objected Gage drearily.
+
+"He's somebody," urged Peckover.  "And he's got the law behind him."
+
+"And the traditions of the Saloljas in front of him," rejoined Gage.
+
+Nevertheless, to strengthen the garrison, the local constable was sent
+for, and the three resumed their repast with a slightly enhanced
+appetite.  They had arrived at the sweets stage, and Peckover was
+wondering whether it was the last apple-tart he was destined to taste,
+when a clangorous peal at the bell followed by a thundering knock at
+the door sent the diners' hearts into their mouths.
+
+"If--if that is the Duke of Salolja," said Gage, sick with fear, to
+Bisgood, "show him into the library.  Don't let him--that is, his
+grace, come in here."
+
+"Very good, my lord," responded Bisgood, whose imperturbability--and
+immunity--he would have given a fortune to possess.
+
+None of the three men could sit quiet.  Gage, after a restless turn
+round the table, went to the door and listened.  As he did so a shade
+of relief came over his face.  "That's not the little brute's voice,"
+he declared hopefully.
+
+"Isn't it?  He has got so many," Peckover said dubiously.  They
+scuttled back to their places as the men returned.
+
+"Mr. Carnaby Leo, my lord," Bisgood announced in a tone which suggested
+a month's notice on his part.
+
+"Has he gone?"
+
+"No, my lord.  He said he must see your lordship, so I showed him into
+the library."
+
+"Miss Leo is not with him?" Quorn asked anxiously.
+
+"No, sir," answered the footman, the great Bisgood declining to notice
+the question.
+
+"Better turn the key on him," suggested Peckover.
+
+This unheard-of order Bisgood took upon himself to ignore likewise.  In
+the abnormal state of affairs the strain on his dignity was nearly at
+breaking point.
+
+A footman who looked like going to put the suggestion into practice was
+loftily, but _sotto voce_, rebuked by his superior, and abandoned his
+intention.
+
+"I'll go and do it, by Jove," exclaimed Quorn, jumping up and leaving
+the room, at which action the scandalized Bisgood made no effort to
+hide his disgust.
+
+Quorn returned.  "Got him safe," he said.
+
+"Is the library safe, though?" Peckover suggested shrewdly.
+
+"As if," remarked Gage bitterly, "we hadn't got our hands full without
+that great nuisance turning up to complicate matters.  Let's get on
+with the wine while we've got any taste left in us," he added, filling
+his own glass and sending round the decanters.
+
+As Bisgood and his satellites withdrew, eager to find vent for their
+disgust in the servants'-hall, Peckover jumped up.  "An idea!" he
+cried, brightening.  "What do you say having this beast, Leo, in, and
+passing him off to the duke as Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Not a bad idea," responded Gage, thinking it out.
+
+"Dashed good one," Peckover insisted.
+
+"How can you pass him off," objected Quorn.  "He'll say he is not
+Quorn."
+
+"We've all said that," rejoined Peckover shrewdly.  "All the same, one
+of us is that noble lord.  We'll tell the duke that he is incog. for
+certain private reasons, and let 'em fight it out between themselves."
+
+"If any one can tackle that little spit-fire it's Carnaby," said Gage.
+
+"And if any one can hustle Carnaby it's the duke," added Quorn.
+
+"Whichever way it goes we shall be gainers," observed Gage.  "But how
+about Ulrica?"
+
+"Oh, we'll work her into it all right," Peckover replied confidently.
+"Let's have the ruffian in and give him some pop."
+
+"Hark!" cried Quorn, holding up his hand.  As Gage opened the door
+there came across the hall from the library sounds suggestive of a
+domestic tornado.  Their obvious message was that Mr. Carnaby Leo had
+discovered, and was resenting, the fact that he was more or less in
+durance, and was communicating his state of feelings through the medium
+of double-soled boots to the furniture in general and to the mahogany
+door in particular.
+
+"Let's buck up, and release the brute before he wrecks the place," said
+Peckover; "or he'll have no kick left in him for that Spanish beauty."
+
+He walked boldly to the door, and threw it open.  "Anything wrong?" he
+inquired, with what was, under the circumstances, an irritating
+blandness.
+
+"Anything wrong?" roared Mr. Leo, lashing out backwards and kicking a
+chair, quite futilely, to a remote corner of the room.  "No.  But
+there's going to be.  Lock me up, will you, you pair of skunks?"  For
+Quorn had withdrawn to a somewhat obscure position.  "I'll teach
+you----!"
+
+"The lock's out of order," Peckover explained with admirable
+plausibility.  "Slips forward when the door's banged.  See?  We were
+just coming to ask you to join us over a bottle of champagne."
+
+The proposal had an immediately mollifying effect on the rampageous
+visitor.  "Lead the way, then," he responded thirstily.  "I've got a
+word or two to say to you from my sister Lalage, and I can talk better
+when the hinges of my voice-box are oiled."
+
+They returned to the dining-room, and Mr. Leo began to pay an
+unremitting attention to the lubricant which, according to his
+statement, should have conduced to unusual eloquence.  Anyhow, he
+spoke, when at last he found time, if not rhetorically, at least to the
+point.
+
+"What I've come to say to you scallywags," he began politely, in a tone
+which made his hearers look round to be sure the doors were fast shut,
+"is that we, me and my sister, splendid girl, have just about had
+enough of this shilly-shally nonsense.  We want Lord Quorn, dead or
+alive, and, what's more, we mean to have him."
+
+He banged his great fist down on the table and glanced at the three
+men.  Gage and Peckover looked politely tolerant, while Quorn regarded
+his bugbear now for the first time at close quarters, with an attention
+bordering on fright.
+
+"As," proceeded the gentle Carnaby, "I have said before, and say now
+for the last time you'll have ears to hear it, I and my beloved sister
+have not come ten thousand miles to be made fools of."
+
+Gage and Peckover made sympathetic responses, and Quorn exhibited signs
+of marked uneasiness.
+
+"The man," their amiable guest resumed, "who tries to make a fool of us
+is a goner."  He caught up a large apple from a dish.  "I take the
+skunk in hand like this.  See?"  He twisted the fruit in halves which
+he casually threw over his shoulders.  They reached the sideboard,
+where one accounted for a tray of liqueur-glasses, while the other took
+effect upon the globe and chimney of a tall lamp.
+
+"See?" he repeated, with a certain pride in the rather extravagant
+object lesson.  "See?"  He turned suddenly upon the much-impressed
+Quorn and thundered the somewhat superfluous question at him.
+
+"Ye-es, I see," he answered, jumping half out of his chair and trying
+to look amused.
+
+"Then why the blazes don't you say so?" Carnaby demanded, ignoring the
+fact that the comment he looked for was clearly unnecessary.  "Who is
+this silly mug?" he added, with evidence of a natural antipathy to
+persons who received his feats in presumably unappreciative silence.
+
+"Jenkins," answered Quorn hastily, rattling his wits together.
+
+"Jenkins?" echoed Carnaby in loud scorn.  "He looks it.  Well, now, see
+here, Jenkins Esquire, my beauty.  Just fancy yourself for the moment,
+if Jenkins is equal to the strain, fancy yourself Lord Quorn.  He's a
+skunk, so perhaps it'll come easy to you, Jenkins."
+
+Quorn could but smile uneasily at the pleasantry.
+
+"Now, I should say to you," proceeded his urbane neighbour, making the
+most of a happy stroke of innuent personification, "Look here, Quorn,
+my dasher, the man, lord or lout, or both, who makes love to my sister,
+my lovely Lalage, and engages her affections has got to marry her.
+See?"
+
+The uncomfortable personator of himself signified promptly his entire
+comprehension.
+
+"If you jib," continued the Antipodean Chesterfield, "if you kick, if
+you try to slip out,--well--you've got to settle with the strongest man
+for his weight in the continent of Australia; a man, mark you, whose
+trade is fighting, against odds for preference, and who means business.
+See?"
+
+The fascinated Quorn signed his complete grasp of the speaker's meaning.
+
+"A man, I repeat," Carnaby went on, after seeking fresh ideas in a
+further libation, "who sticks at nothing where his honour and the
+honour of his family are concerned.  Law?  What's the law to me?
+Nothing.  They know that out there.  The law where I came from gives me
+a wide berth.  It knows me.  When a slink calls himself a nobleman,
+he's got to act as a nobleman, or I'll make him act as a swab and scrub
+the place down with him.  See?"
+
+He glared round at his three auditors who were listening to his
+edifying account of himself and his proposals with rapt attention.
+
+"I've not seen the man I'm after, unless I see him before me now," Mr.
+Leo proceeded, waxing truculent.  "But I presume he has a nose."  This
+supposition remaining unchallenged, he took up a banana, and proceeded,
+"There it is."  He wrenched off the end of the fruit and tossed it in
+the air whence it came down plump into Quorn's forgotten glass of wine.
+Ignoring the episode, the pretty fellow continued, "He has, or as a
+nobleman, should have, two eyes."
+
+No one had a word to say against the computation.
+
+"Here goes," said Carnaby, accompanying the words by a graphic
+illustration (using the remaining portion of the banana for the
+purpose) of the latest and most approved method of removing the human
+eye without having recourse to a surgical operation.  Then, the
+experiment having been brought to an eminently impressive conclusion,
+the performer playfully took aim with the residue at a portrait of
+Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, and was successful in hitting that nobleman
+in the middle of his somewhat vacuous face, and rendering the likeness,
+if any, for the time unrecognizable.
+
+Emboldened by the effect produced not only on the face of the family
+portrait but on those of his living hearers, Mr. Leo became even more
+ruthlessly virulent.
+
+"Lord Quorn!" he cried in thick accents of withering scorn, "If Lord
+Quorn or any other man, noble or otherwise, plays fast and loose with
+my glorious sister, I'll just take him and twist his head off his
+shoulders.  Won't I?"
+
+He glared round as though some one had had the temerity to contradict
+him, which, however, was not the case.  His question meeting with no
+material response, he next, in pursuance of his pomological method of
+illustration, snatched up a pineapple.  "Twist his head off his
+shoulders," he repeated somewhat unnecessarily, "like this."  With a
+frantic effort he tugged and twisted the cactus-like plume till it came
+away from the fruit.
+
+"That's the style," he roared exultingly, "I'll treat any man who gets
+in my light or annoys my sister.  See?  I'll scatter his carcass to the
+four winds of heaven.  See?"
+
+Suiting the action more or less to the words he flung the fragments
+viciously into various corners of the room, where they did more or less
+damage, coming in their flight unpleasantly near his interested
+audience.  Then turning round with a ferocious action, he heaved the
+body of the pine in another direction.  This happened to be towards the
+door, which had just opened to admit an addition to the cheerful party.
+Next instant a cry of rage made it apparent that the heavy fruit had
+struck in the middle of his waistcoat no less a personage than his
+Grace the Duke of Salolja.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+The hit was greeted by an offensive laugh of exultation by the thrower,
+with a gasp of subdued rage by the receiver of the spinous missile, and
+by the rest of the company with various indications of apprehensive
+curiosity.
+
+"Now," murmured Peckover through his teeth, "we're going to see
+something."
+
+An Englishman, under the same circumstances, would probably have picked
+up the weighty fruit and returned the shot.  Not so the little
+Castilian, whose dignity was in no direct ratio to his inches.  Quickly
+recovering from the discomposing impact, and forcing his sinister
+features as far into a smile as his mental attitude would allow, he
+bowed ceremoniously, although the full effect of the salutation was
+somewhat marred by the fact that, following close on the shot, it had
+rather the appearance of a doubling-up caused by physical derangement.
+However, he presently straightened himself and regarded the party with
+comparative, if delusive, serenity.
+
+"Your excellencies are pleased to be merry to-night," he observed, in a
+tone which seemed to promise a speedy end to the merriment.
+
+The duke now addressed himself to Mr. Leo.  "Your grace is an admirable
+shot," he observed pleasantly.  "If, that is, my poor person was chosen
+as the mark for your grace's aim."  Then suddenly changing his manner
+from the courteous to the terrific, till he became five feet three of
+incarnate bristling, scintillating ferocity, he added, "I too, as I
+shall hope soon to convince your grace, am a tolerable shot, although
+not with articles of dessert."
+
+The pug-dogged look of aggressive impudence faded from Carnaby's face,
+giving way to an expression of foolish discomfiture.  Nevertheless he
+replied, with a not too convincing nod of assurance.  "All right, my
+prime bantam, I'll show you something."
+
+But for the moment all he showed his challenger was his back as he
+turned and walked to the other end of the table, where he grabbed up a
+fistful of cigars.
+
+"Who," asked the duke, suddenly polite again, "may I inquire, is this
+distinguished gentleman?"
+
+For reasons best known to himself the distinguished gentleman seemed
+inclined to let the question of his identity remain in suspense rather
+than hold further communication with the questioner.  Apparently he was
+too deeply engrossed in lighting one of his raided cigars to notice the
+query.
+
+But here the ever-alert Peckover saw and seized his opportunity.  With
+a pantomime of mystery he called the duke aside.
+
+"That's him; Lord Quorn.  The real man and no mistake," he said rapidly
+under his breath, "Calls himself Leo, for private reasons, you
+understand.  Threatens to kill us if we give him away."
+
+"Oho!  So?"  The duke turned an ominously interested eye on the latest
+idea of the interloping nobleman, his mind, meanwhile, rapidly running
+over the probabilities of the case.  Mr. Leo, having recovered from his
+late upset by the aid of a bumper of old port wine, was now lounging
+against the mantel-piece with that easy air of proprietorship which
+stature and muscle coupled with low brain power are apt to give.  He
+might, indeed, have fitted in very well just then with a foreigner's
+idea of a bucolic English milord, and as such his appearance commended
+him to the ferocious Spaniard's purpose.  The Duke glanced searchingly
+at his informant, however, as though determined to make certain before
+turning his polite attentions to the new candidate for a thrill.
+
+"Why did your excellencies one after another call yourselves milord
+Quorn?" he demanded pertinently.
+
+"We had to.  He made us," was the ready answer.  "Says he'll twist the
+neck of any man who calls him Lord Quorn."
+
+The duke received the information with a grim elevation of his thick
+eyebrows.  "So?  We shall see.  But Miss Buffkin?" he asked sharply.
+"There is nothing between them?"
+
+Peckover made a grimace which might be understood to signify amusement
+at the suggestion.  "Isn't there?" he replied, "when she is brought up
+here every day to see him.  That's why he's keeping himself dark," he
+added slyly.  "There's another lady in the question; see?  And he's all
+for Buffkin."
+
+A roar came from the fireplace.  "What are you mumping about there, you
+little rats?  Speak up, and let's hear all about it before I shake it
+out of you.  I've got my say to finish when you've done croaking."
+
+The muttered conference therefore ceased.  Peckover resumed his seat,
+and the duke turned and regarded Carnaby with an attention which was
+doubtless somewhat irritating to that sensitive gentleman.
+
+"What are you staring at, smallbones?" he demanded fiercely as though
+lashing himself into a fury to counteract the effect of the Salolja
+eye.  "When fools stare at me I scoop their eyes out to teach 'em
+better manners."
+
+The duke accepted the interesting statement with a bow.  "Yes?" he
+responded appreciatively.
+
+"Yes, I do," maintained Mr. Leo savagely.  "I'm a man, as I've been
+telling these scallywags, who stands no nonsense."
+
+Again the duke bowed.  "I applaud your grace," he said.
+
+A horrible suspicion that he was being laughed at seemed to take hold
+of the doughty Mr. Leo.  "You applaud my grace, do you?" he cried,
+forcing his voice into a sneering squeak.  "Who asked for your
+halfpenny opinion?  You keep your sauce to stew that over-grown nose in
+when I've pulled it off."
+
+For an instant, at the dire insult, there was a flash of murder in the
+duke's eyes.  Then, with an air of storing up what he had received for
+cumulative repayment he inquired softly, with his eternal bow, "I have
+the distinguished honour of addressing milord Quorn?"
+
+"You're an undersized liar," was the somewhat pointed reply.
+
+"I think not," rejoined the duke confidently, "although it will be my
+duty to remember that your grace has called me one.  Lord Quorn----"
+
+"My name's Leo!" came with a roar.
+
+"I believe not," insisted the duke.
+
+"Lord Quorn!  I'd like to catch him!" cried Carnaby.
+
+The duke smiled indulgently, yet with a homicidal preoccupation.  "I
+believe," he said coolly, "I have had the good fortune to catch him."
+
+"Where is the skunk?" demanded Mr. Leo, with a noticeable falling off
+in the volume of his tone.  It was clear that his opponent's
+steadfastness was beginning to tell.
+
+"May I ask," observed the duke, "as a favour, that your grace will not
+make so much noise, but will accord your most humble servant the
+supreme privilege of saying a few words to you?"  His voice had begun
+to come out in bursts, in the fashion which had created such a
+disagreeable effect on Gage and Peckover at the first interview.
+
+Mr. Leo, inclined to wilt, made yet a gallant effort to pull himself
+together.  "If you want to jaw," he replied with scarcely equal
+courtesy, "go into the next room and jaw your jaw off.  You won't spoil
+your beauty, for plain reasons.  I'm getting sick of you.  You spoil
+the flavour of this cigar."
+
+"I intend to," was the hardly expected retort.  "Although it is a pity,
+as it is possibly the last your grace will ever smoke."
+
+The dark eyes were now fixed on his grace with all their scorching
+ferocity.  Mr. Leo looked as though the cigar or something else had
+indeed disagreed with him.  The three spectators of the duel wanted
+only the sense of complete personal immunity to enjoy it hugely.
+
+"I have not the honour of knowing," proceeded the little Spaniard,
+holding the big bully in his best rattlesnake fashion, "whether your
+grace is aware that I am the Duke of Salolja, and a Grandee of Spain,
+the present and, alas, unworthy representative of the noble house of
+Salolja, a family which has preserved its traditions and its honour
+intact from time immemorial."
+
+The effect of the announcement on Mr. Carnaby Leo was not quite
+apparent, except that he seemed in two minds whether to crunch up his
+diminutive opponent or to give way to abject terror.  "What's all that
+to me?" he returned, in a voice that seemed to be getting rather out of
+control.
+
+The duke shrugged.  "It is customary," he explained, "in my country,
+that in affairs of honour strict punctilio should be maintained.
+Further, I wish to do myself the honour of informing your grace that my
+family, the Saloljas, have never permitted an injury or an insult to
+pass unavenged."
+
+"Same with me," responded Mr. Leo, addressing himself, however,
+possibly for convenience' sake, to the men at the table.
+
+"It is," pursued the duke, intensifying his steady glare, "a matter of
+felicitation that our sentiments agree upon the point.  But enough.  I
+come, as you British say, to business.  I have the honour to be the
+aggrieved party.  Your grace is probably aware that I purpose to ally
+myself matrimonially with Miss Ulrica Buffkin?"
+
+The apparent irrelevance of the observation prompted Mr. Leo to pluck
+up a little courage.  "No," he answered with a touch of his old manner,
+"I don't know, and I don't care."
+
+"So?"  The little man steadied his rage by tugging at his portentous
+moustache.  "Your grace refuses then to recognize my pretensions?" he
+demanded menacingly.
+
+Mr. Leo gave a stupid laugh.  "You don't," he retorted with clumsy
+humour, "expect me to take off my hat to them, do you?"
+
+The duke accepted the defiance with a bow.  "Perhaps not," he returned
+viciously.  "So we will leave that affair for the present.  It may be
+we shall never arrive so far together.  There are, happily, other
+matters which have the precedence."
+
+"What are you mumbling about?" Mr. Leo inquired with characteristic
+politeness.
+
+"As I entered the room," continued the duke, ignoring the interruption,
+"I was struck on the--breast by a pine-apple thrown by your grace.  Is
+it not so?"
+
+Mr. Leo forced a laugh.  "Didn't see you coming," he explained weakly.
+
+The duke drew back a pace with every indication of astonishment.  "Is
+it possible then," he demanded severely, "that your grace asks me to
+believe that you scatter fruit about your room for amusement?"
+
+"Sometimes," Carnaby replied uncomfortably.
+
+His tormentor waved aside the answer as frivolous.
+
+"Subsequently to that blow which only blood can efface," he resumed
+impressively, laying his hand on the spot where the shot took effect,
+"your grace was pleased to distinguish my poor self by certain
+opprobrious remarks and designations, in the hearing of these
+honourable gentlemen.  Your grace permitted yourself to allude
+disrespectfully to my stature.  Your grace will understand that the
+character and deeds of the Saloljas are not measured by inches," he
+added proudly.
+
+"Glad to hear it," Mr. Leo growled rashly.
+
+"Your grace was further led," proceeded the duke, raising his voice
+ominously, "to speak in unbecoming terms of my opinion and of my nose.
+It is a matter of regret that my judgment and my features do not meet
+with your grace's approval, but it is the judgment and it is the nose
+with which Heaven has been pleased to endow my poor self, and up to the
+present the noble house of Salolja has had no serious cause of
+complaint against Heaven in respect to its gifts."
+
+Mr. Leo tried to give sign of amusement, but the laugh stuck somewhere,
+and did not reach the surface.
+
+"Your grace," the little demon went on, "also took upon yourself to
+cast an aspersion on my veracity.  A Salolja," he continued with
+pompous dignity, "does not lie.  No Salolja has cause to lie.  Pride is
+truth.  Lying is for slaves and shopkeepers.  Now when a man insults me
+it is something to pay for, when in my person he insults the most noble
+family of Salolja it is everything.  He shall pay with the last drop of
+his blood."
+
+The somewhat one-sided conversation was evidently making for a climax.
+The interest of the three men had become breathless.  Mr. Leo,
+literally and metaphorically with his back to the wall, realized that
+his reputation was about to be put to the touch; also that he was, all
+things considered, in a somewhat parlous situation.  His dull brain
+became obsessed by a lively regret that he had addressed his diminutive
+adversary in terms which were conspicuous by their disregard for the
+noble duke's personal dignity.  Still something had now to be done.  He
+must assert himself and at once.  The instinct of the coward and the
+bully wrestled sharply within him.  But the promptings of fear were not
+to be followed, since retreat dignified or otherwise, was out of the
+question The tricks of his old trade were the only resource left him,
+and so he was forced blindly to fall back on them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+With a prodigious effort Mr. Leo pulled himself together.  "We've had
+enough of your lip," he declared in a loud voice.  "I don't jaw, I
+fight.  Look here."  He caught up the fire-irons one after another and
+went through the rather too familiar business of twisting and snapping
+them.  The duke watched the performance with folded arms and a
+sarcastic smile.  Mr. Leo, lashing himself into as much of a fine fury
+as he could attain, and losing his head in the process, took a silver
+goblet from a niche in the overmantel and with a mighty play of muscle
+squeezed it out of shape, not altogether to the silent Lord Quorn's
+satisfaction.  "That's the way I talk," he cried, with gathering
+confidence, as he tossed the shapeless cup on the floor.  "Any man who
+argues with me knows what to expect.  It's too late to apologize when
+I've snapped your legs and arms for you and dislocated your neck."
+
+The duke intimated politely to his fuming opponent his entire agreement
+with the remark.  "I am sorry," he went on suavely, "if I have spoken
+in a language which has not appealed to your grace.  Perhaps I may yet
+be so fortunate as to be able to make myself better understood."
+
+As he spoke he took a candle from the table, and, flicking off the
+shade, set it on the side-board.  Then he pivoted round and stepped ten
+paces across the room, turned, whipped out his revolver, took instant
+aim and fired.  The candle stood as before, but extinguished.  The duke
+advanced and bowed with something, it must be confessed, of the air of
+a music-hall performer.  "That," he said quietly, "is how I reply to
+your grace's remarks.  I trust I have the good fortune to make myself
+understood.  No?"
+
+Quite gratuitously imagining a negative on Mr. Leo's part, which that
+redoubtable fighter was far from expressing, the duke made a swift
+movement and tore down a rapier which hung as an ornament on the wall.
+After making a few passes, which seemed to have Mr. Leo's person for
+their ultimate destination, he spitted the shade of another candle,
+flung it aside, and drawing back, put himself in fencing attitude, and
+lunging furiously, after a grand flourish, just hit the wick and
+extinguished it likewise.  Then he favoured his impressed audience with
+a deprecating gesture intimating that his exhibition of skill was a
+matter of small account, after which, without waiting for comments or
+applause, he turned with startling ferocity upon Mr. Leo and in an
+unpleasantly resonant tone commanded him to take down the fellow weapon
+and defend himself.
+
+Mr. Leo showed no sign of falling in with his desire, but made a
+ghastly attempt to laugh the order to scorn and then to treat it with
+the contempt due to such an out-of-date proposal.  But as it is
+difficult to preserve an attitude of dignified opposition in the
+neighbourhood of an aggressive and business-like hornet, so the
+Antipodean giant found it impossible to treat the duke with the passive
+scorn which prudence dictated.  For the little Castilian had now
+arrived at a stage when he considered he might fairly let himself go,
+and let himself go he did.
+
+He simply danced like a blood-thirsty Rumpelstilzchen before the
+anxious man of muscle, making his sword cut the air as though it were a
+riding whip, and describing inconvenient circles and passes with it in
+close proximity to the more cherished portions of his unwilling
+opponent's anatomy.
+
+Mr. Leo looked very unhappy, and in the deplorable condition of a man
+who is consumed by the knowledge that he ought to be very angry and
+retaliative, and yet dares not.  As he continued to hang back with a
+suggestion in his stupid face of how much he would give to be safe at
+_The Pigeons_, the duke's aggressiveness increased to the extent of
+prodding the massive frame before him with playful sword thrusts.  This
+was more even than the abject Mr. Leo could stand.
+
+For an instant he looked dangerous; then with a roar, of rage or pain
+according to the fancy of the audience, he made a snatch at a decanter
+with the object of hurling it at his tormentor.  But before he could
+raise it for the fling the little rapier came down with a smart flash
+upon his wrist and the decanter fell shattered to the floor.
+
+"That your grace's idea of fighting a Grandee of Spain, you abominable
+great hulks?" cried the duke viciously.  "You want a lesson, milord,
+you foolish breaker of tongs.  When shall you begin to snap my legs and
+arms and to screw my neck, you quaint elephant?  You shall go down on
+your knees and apologize to me or I will run you through your absurd
+body and let the saw-dust run out.  Shall I not, eh? eh? eh?"  He
+accompanied each note of interrogation by a stinging slash of the
+flexible steel, and Mr. Leo began to look very weary and unwell.
+
+But Lord Quorn's face was beaming as though a load had been taken off
+his mind.
+
+For an instant Mr. Leo seemed to be gathering himself together for a
+bull-like rush, then the intention died away in helplessness.  "It's
+all a mistake, I tell you," he blurted out in a quavering roar.  "The
+pine was not intended for you."
+
+"Indeed?  So?" cried the duke incredulously, making the point of his
+sword whirl within two inches of the herculean thorax.  "And the
+allusions to my nose, the Salolja nose, which is historical, and to my
+stature and to my veracity--they were not intended for me?  Eh?"
+
+"If you touch me again with that beastly sword I'll have the police on
+to you, duke or no duke," Mr. Leo declared, falling back somewhat
+feebly behind the shelter of the law.
+
+It was with some consternation that he noticed that not only the duke,
+but the whole party seemed to derive genuine amusement from his threat.
+
+"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the little terrorist in his window-rattling
+tones.  "The police!  How rich!  How exquisite!  When a man insults a
+Salolja he does not call in the police, but the undertaker."
+
+Mr. Leo's bronzed face had now that greenish tinge so much the fashion
+in modern sculpture.
+
+"How are you going to send for your police?" laughed the duke,
+emphasizing his question by a playful prick in Mr. Leo's biceps.
+"Before you touch the bell or the door-handle you are a dead man."
+
+Mr. Leo looked as though he reluctantly accepted the probability.
+
+"Now, your grace will go down on your knees, won't you, you absurd
+hippopotamus, and make your humble confession and apology for having
+treated disrespectfully a Grandee of Spain and a Salolja, before you
+pay the penalty of your mistake."
+
+There was a painful flourish of the rapier, and a gentle stab on the
+lobe of Mr. Leo's large right ear.  With a howl he went down on his
+knees, with another he begged for mercy, and it was a third howl of a
+very different character which made the duke and the other men turn to
+the window, at which some one stood rattling.
+
+[Illustration: "With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another
+he begged for mercy."]
+
+The ever-alert duke opened it, as though nothing unusual were
+occurring, giving entrance to Miss Leo, who with a manly stride came in
+only to stand dumfounded before the abject spectacle of her brother's
+abasement.
+
+"Carnaby!" she cried in a voice calculated to put fire into a lump of
+wet clay.  "You great oaf!  What fool's game is this?"
+
+The duke explained.  "It is simply the result of a slight personal
+difference between his grace and my humble self."
+
+"Get up, you great booby!" Lalage commanded, naturally thinking that
+the slight personal difference between the two men should have reversed
+their positions.
+
+"Stay where you are," cried the duke in his most stentorian tones.  And
+Mr. Leo stayed.
+
+"Quorn!  At last!"  The cry came in a tone of menacing rapture from
+Lalage who had now found time to glance round the table.
+
+"Hold on!" was that nobleman's chilling response, as he rose and
+stretched out a fending hand in front of him.
+
+"My Quorn!" repeated Miss Leo with native tenacity.
+
+"Quorn?" cried the duke in a voice of puzzled exasperation, "Quorn
+again in that quarter.  I get tired of this Quorn here, Quorn there."
+
+"This is Lord Quorn," Lalage declared with an exultation which,
+considering the position her champion occupied at the moment, was
+scarcely justified.
+
+"So?  Are you sure?" the duke demanded searchingly.
+
+"Sure?  I knew him in Australia.  I have come over to marry him," was
+the convincing answer.
+
+"So?"  The fiery little Castilian turned to Quorn.  "You marry this
+lady, eh?"
+
+"No," he returned, ungallantly.  "I'm hanged if I do."
+
+"Carnaby!" cried his sister in a ringing voice.  "You hear that?"
+
+"Yes," said Carnaby impotently from the floor.
+
+"Let the poor fellow alone," recommended Quorn.  "He's a thing of the
+past."
+
+But his crow was cut short by the duke.  "So, your grace thinks to
+marry Miss Buffkin?"  No answer.  "In spite of your engagement to this
+handsome lady?"  The duke's wry face was lost in a grin.  "May I
+request once again the honour of a few words with your grace in
+private?"
+
+"You may, but you won't get it," was the dogged reply.  "I stop here."
+
+"So?  I believe not," said the duke, turning on his vindictive glare to
+the full.  "I have been long enough made a fool of with your different
+Lord Quorns.  I am sick of Lord Quorn.  I put him away, and if I make a
+mistake--ah!"
+
+He turned swiftly with the cry of an enraged tiger.  Prompted by signs
+from his sister, Carnaby had taken advantage of the duke's back being
+turned to rise from his undignified position and stealthily approach
+his little adversary with the idea of taking him unawares from behind
+and trying what muscle would do.  But the Spaniard, whose energies and
+faculties were concentrated in a small space, was too wide awake for
+him.  With the turn he sprang back and whipping round his rapier
+brought it with a swift cut across Carnaby's ample countenance.  As Mr.
+Leo roared and danced with pain, and Lalage, throwing her arms round
+the duke's, shouted to the three to help her, if they were men, in
+disarming the wriggling Grandee, the door was thrown open and Mr.
+Doutfire came quickly in, followed by the local constable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Mr. Doutfire with professional promptitude at once proceeded to adapt
+himself to the situation.  He planted himself in business-like fashion
+before the wriggling duke, and with a wave of both hands, suggested to
+his captor that she should release him.
+
+"Let go, ma'am," he said reassuringly.  "It's all right now.  I'll rake
+the fire out."
+
+Thus bidden Miss Leo relaxed her clasp, not however, before Mr.
+Doutfire had, with a practised twist, wrenched the sword from the ducal
+grasp.
+
+"Now, then," he demanded in a tone of stern reproof, "what's this all
+about?  What's the trouble now?"
+
+"You shall not interfere," foamed the duke.  "You are not wanted,
+policeman."
+
+"Detective-Inspector is my rank," Mr. Doutfire reminded him with a
+touch of severity.  "Looks as though I was wanted," he added with a
+curl of the lip and a confident glance round the company.
+
+"You are not," insisted the duke in his fiercest tone and with his most
+appalling glare.  "I am the Duke of Salolja, and I tell you you are to
+go."
+
+He might as well have glared at the spattered portrait of Everard,
+ninth Baron Quorn, on the wall for any effect his eyes produced on the
+uncompromising and unimaginative official.
+
+"I should like that corroborated," was all the response he got from Mr.
+Doutfire.
+
+"No, don't go!" cried Mr. Leo with a subdued and, painful roar.  "He
+has assaulted me, stabbed me, threatened to shoot me.  I give him in
+charge.  Take him.  I----"
+
+"Has he got firearms on him?" enquired Mr. Doutfire severely.
+
+For answer the duke whipped out his revolver.  But swift as the action
+was, Mr. Doutfire's counter move was quicker.
+
+With practised skill he clutched the dangerous wrist and with a
+business-like jerk held it in the air with the revolver pointing to the
+ceiling.
+
+"That'll do, my lord duke," he said with playful insistence.  "Better
+let me take care of that.  It's a dangerous plaything."
+
+But the duke's characteristic under-estimation of the power of the
+British police system prompted him to resist and to struggle violently
+to release his hand.  Mr. Doutfire gave a well-understood nod to his
+subordinate, and that functionary smartly acting upon it, came behind
+the duke and pinioned his arms.  Next moment the revolver was detached
+by a knowing professional trick, and was in Mr. Doutfire's pocket.
+"You can let go, Tugby," he said with calm authority, and the raging
+noble was free to dance and gesticulate in a very tornado of rage.
+
+He was understood to intimate that the insult put upon him, a Duke of
+Salolja and a Grandee of Spain, by a mere paltry English policeman, in
+not allowing him free vent for his display of _force majeure_ and
+homicidal proclivities was one which would not only be the cause of
+private and personal bloodshed, but would in all human probability
+result in a devastating war between the two Powers, from which the
+least unpleasant outcome England could expect would be the loss of
+Gibraltar and the bulk of the British fleet.  Mr. Doutfire received the
+intelligence with a tolerant stolidity.  Custom had made him impervious
+to threats and sceptical of the practical value of vindictive
+utterances.  His scornful and unmoved attitude had the effect of
+raising to a still higher pitch the rage of the Spanish fire-eater, who
+seemed now to have lost all that self-control which before had been so
+telling.  He had, in fact, become inebriated with wrath and excitement.
+
+"Scoundrel, villain!" he cried, shaking both fists in the air before
+the imperturbable Doutfire.  "You lay your ignoble hands on the Duke of
+Salolja!  I will have your life."
+
+"Steady!  Steady!" responded Mr. Doutfire in a tone of gentle warning.
+
+"I shall not steady," roared the duke, whose face had now assumed the
+look of the false nose, eyes and moustache of a carnival mask.  "You
+shall not defy me.  You shall go this moment, or I will run you through
+your wretched body."
+
+With a sudden dart he snatched up the sword from the floor and began a
+series of flourishes which threatened seriously to embarrass Mr.
+Doutfire.  "Steady, now," commanded that gentleman, but instead of
+complying, the duke seemed to be ferociously bent on selecting a
+suitable point of impact in the detective's thick-set figure.
+
+"Lay hold, Tugby."
+
+The duke comprehending the order, jumped round swiftly, bringing the
+sword point in opposition to Mr. Tugby's advancing tunic.  But the
+diversion was enough for Mr. Doutfire's purpose.  He seized the
+Spaniard's flourishing arms from behind, then planting his knee in the
+small of the ducal back, by way of purchase, he held the heir of all
+the Saloljas trussed.
+
+"Take the sword away from him," he ordered his subordinate.  "Now,"
+when that was, after a short but fierce struggle, accomplished, "you
+had better slip on the bracelets."
+
+Accordingly, with some difficulty and much explosive language the hands
+of a Grandee of Spain were, it is sad to relate, for the first time on
+record, fastened behind his back by a pair of vulgar English handcuffs,
+and the traditions of the Saloljas were, for the moment, rendered a
+negligible quantity.
+
+In his violent struggles the duke had stumbled backwards into a low and
+deep-seated armchair.  From this he was, from the fact that his hands
+were fastened behind him, unable to rise or regain his balance.  All he
+could do was to kick furiously and to make loud use of expletives
+which, although couched in the Spanish language, were obviously of an
+exceedingly florid, even ensanguined, character.  To quiet him and to
+prevent possible mischief, Mr. Doutfire and his underling, approaching
+the job on either side from behind, each seized a ducal leg, and tucked
+it in comparative harmlessness under his arm.  It may be doubted
+whether in the long and blood-stained annals of the house of Salolja
+any member of that distinguished and ruthless family had ever occupied
+quite so undignified a position before.
+
+"Dangerous party to deal with, my lord," remarked the panting Mr.
+Doutfire jerkily, owing to the convulsions of the Salolja leg,
+addressing himself impartially to the three men, any one of whom might
+be Lord Quorn.  "I'm afraid we shall have to see him safe to Bunbury
+and give him a night in the cells, in default of bail."
+
+The prisoner laughed in the very impotence of his rage.  "You shall
+have your absurd Great Bunbury pulled down about your ears if you do
+not instantly release me," he spluttered through his teeth.
+
+"All right, my lord duke," Doutfire returned, with a wink at the
+company.  "We'll keep in the middle of the street in case the buildings
+should come down on our hats.  Now, when you're ready, sir, we'll make
+a move as it's getting late.  Sorry to have to put the bracelets on a
+gentleman of your position, but I take the responsibility.  In this
+country even dukes have got to behave themselves, and we don't allow
+tricks with these dangerous playthings."
+
+He pulled the duke up and set him on his feet, then took up the rapier
+and revolver and handed them to his subordinate.
+
+"You shall release me at once," hissed the duke through his wolfish
+teeth, "or it will be the worse for you."
+
+"All right.  We'll see about that," replied Mr. Doutfire in the tone he
+might use to a naughty child.  "I understand the prisoner threatened
+and assaulted you, Mr.----?" he added to Carnaby, producing his note
+book.
+
+"Yes," affirmed that valiant gentleman.  "I'm cut and stabbed all over."
+
+"Tut!" cried the prisoner explosively.  "The fellow is a great coward.
+He cries if you prick him."
+
+"You will," continued Mr. Doutfire, unheeding the interruption, "charge
+the prisoner, I presume, with feloniously cutting and wounding?"
+
+"That's it," replied Mr. Leo, regaining confidence.
+
+"Carnaby, you great fool, why didn't you wring his neck and fling the
+little brute into the dust-hole?"
+
+Carnaby failed to impart into his expression any regret that he had not
+endeavoured to forestall the suggestion.
+
+"Good job he didn't try it on, ma'am," observed Mr. Doutfire dryly.
+"Whether he succeeded or not, in either case it might have been awkward
+for him.  You'll attend at 10.30 a.m. to-morrow at the Court House,
+Great Bunbury," he added.  "And some of you gentlemen had better be on
+hand to give evidence if required."
+
+He nodded to Tugby, and each taking an arm of the speechless duke they
+conducted him, with certain indications of unwillingness on his part,
+to the door.  This the representative of the Saloljas favoured with a
+mighty kick, by way of protest and also doubtless of letting off some
+of his compressed rage.  Mr. Doutfire pulled him unceremoniously back,
+then, as Tugby opened the door, shot him forwards, and in such
+humiliating fashion did the manacled Grandee disappear from the scene
+of his brief triumph.
+
+Those who remained were now at liberty to take more precise and less
+preoccupied notice of one another.
+
+"So I've got you at last, Lord Quorn," observed Miss Leo with somewhat
+menacing satisfaction.
+
+"No, you haven't," objected that person, coolly lighting a fresh cigar."
+
+"Oh, haven't I?" the lady rejoined.  "You hear that, Carnaby dear?"
+
+"Don't worry dear Carnaby," put in Peckover.  "He has got a headache."
+
+Mr. Leo's stony stare of discomfiture did not relax to traverse the
+statement.  Mechanically he put forth a great hand and poured himself
+out, as in a dream, an overflowing glass of port wine.  He then, still
+in a state of mental apathy, sought, with cowed and lacklustre eye, the
+cigar-box and absently helped himself--to more of the contents than he
+could smoke at once.  But he made no other and more relevant answer to
+the bugle-call of his sister's question.  It was felt by the three men
+that the legend of his doughty deeds was a myth; as a terrorist he
+belonged to ancient history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+The hour of 10.30 next morning saw the depository of the Salolja
+traditions, a defiant and fretful Castilian porcupine with quills
+erect, standing in the dock of an occasional court, composed of one
+alderman of Great Bunbury (incidentally a family grocer), one
+public-spirited local doctor, and a couple of fussy half-pay colonels,
+to answer the serious charges of threatening to murder divers of His
+Majesty's subjects, and also with feloniously stabbing and wounding
+another, to wit, one Carnaby Leo, described somewhat vaguely as of
+Australia.
+
+Mr. Doutfire here saw an opportunity for more than regaining some loss
+of prestige which he had lately incurred, of course through no fault of
+his, but of a cheese-paring Treasury; and moreover for handing his name
+down with undying fame in the criminal annals of Great Bunbury.
+
+The Duke of Salolja insisted upon regarding the whole business as
+beneath his serious notice.  His line of defence was to maintain a
+haughty and contemptuous silence, at the same time to shrivel up his
+very common-place judges by focussing upon them in turn his most
+ferociously fascinating glare.  Alas!  He misjudged the stuff of which
+British parochial authority is composed.  Even if he had succeeded in
+terrifying the retired colonels, there was still the florid general
+practitioner to reduce to a quite improbable state of collapse, and it
+is well known that a family grocer fears nothing in this world--except
+another family grocer.
+
+Evidence sufficient to justify a remand was taken, and the prisoner,
+who seemed to emit sparks of indignation was told that he would
+eventually be sent to Quarter Sessions.  Then in pursuance of a plan
+which Peckover had concocted overnight, Gage and Lord Quorn offered
+themselves as bail for the duke.  This was, after some demur and
+difference of opinion, accepted, the two colonels being dead against
+allowing a foreigner of homicidal tendencies to be at large, while the
+doctor and the grocer took a higher position and declared themselves in
+favour of doing no act that should endanger the _entente cordiale_
+between Great Britain and Spain.  So finally, bail was accepted for the
+duke's appearance on the following Saturday.
+
+Upon his release from durance his sureties and Peckover sought an
+interview with the irate nobleman, and, ignoring certain dark and
+direful threats, gently but convincingly hinted to him that the only
+way to avoid a considerable term of imprisonment with its incidental
+tarnish on the scutcheon of the Saloljas was to lose no time in putting
+the English Channel and the republic of France, to say nothing of the
+Pyrenees, between himself and the Great Bunbury Bench.  At first the
+duke, pulsating with a sense of injury, declared that sooner than run
+away from a handful of English shopkeepers, he would put the whole of
+the inhabitants of Great Bunbury, as given in the last census return,
+to the edge of the sword.  On its being pointed out to him, however,
+that his plan, attractive in itself, was deficient in certain elements
+of feasibility, he consented to meet the objection by reducing the
+number of his intended victims, and intimated that his thirst for blood
+might be satisfied by the immolation of the mayor and corporation, the
+heads of the fire brigade and the police force, the town clerk, town
+crier, the station master and a picked half-dozen of the principal
+tradesmen on the altar of his vengeance.
+
+When he was made aware of certain practical objections which stood in
+the way of the town of Great Bunbury falling in with this modified
+suggestion, the noble Castilian proposed as a last alternative that he
+should meet a selected dozen men of the township's best blood in a
+suitable arena, and should engage these representatives one after the
+other in a duel _à outrance_.  On this proposal being ruled out of
+order owing to the deplorably faulty state of the English law, the
+duke, glaring and bristling with suppressed vindictiveness, declared
+that he must do something to remove the stain that had been cast upon
+him and his house; whereupon Peckover suggested that the best thing he
+could do to prevent the said stain from spreading would be to disguise
+himself as the representative of a firm of Spanish claret merchants,
+and take the 1.15 train on the way to Dover.
+
+This plan did not, however, commend itself to the representative of a
+Spanish house, whose trade appeared to be, not the bottling, but the
+spilling, of claret of a very different type.  "It is very amusing,
+very clever of you, gentlemen," he objected in withering scorn.  "You
+wish to get me out of the way that you may pay court to Miss Buffkin.
+I am not an idiot."
+
+"You'll be a convict this day fortnight if you don't clear out,"
+remarked Peckover.  "Great Bunbury is not to be trifled with."
+
+The duke laughed discordantly.  "Great Bunbury!  It makes me laugh."
+
+"You'll have plenty of time for laughing," observed Peckover, "in jail.
+You can do a lot of smiling in twelve calendar months if you stick to
+it."
+
+The duke snapped his fingers, but he looked uneasy, and the snap wanted
+tone.  Perhaps the fingers were clammy.  "I shall not go," he
+maintained, "till I have killed some one in Great Bunbury."
+
+"Not good enough," argued Peckover.  "If you kill anybody here you'll
+be hanged.  And you couldn't kill anybody worth a duke's being hanged
+for.  Why, the best man you could select for the purpose in the town
+wouldn't rise above an auctioneer or a brewer.  It wouldn't be a fair
+deal."
+
+Still the duke was obstinate.  "I marry the adorable Buffkin," he
+declared, "in spite of Great Bunbury."
+
+"All right.  Here she is," said Gage, pointing to an open carriage
+which was approaching.
+
+A portmanteau shared the box with the driver.  Inside were three
+people, Lady Ormstork, Miss Buffkin and a middle-aged man with
+greyish-red hair and a face which partook curiously of the
+characteristics of the fox and the sheep.  He was a common-looking
+person, and, as such, had the air of being out of place in that company.
+
+Lady Ormstork stopped the carriage and hailed the group on the
+pavement.  "My dear Lord Quorn, this is fortunate," she exclaimed,
+addressing her remark to the three possible holders of that title, with
+a leaning towards Gage.  "What absurd goings on at Staplewick!  How
+d'you do, duke?  I always said your wilful ignorance of our English
+ideas would land you in trouble.  Well, and how has the ridiculous
+business at the Court House gone off?  Laughed out of court, I presume."
+
+As the duke seemed inclined to impart no more precise information than
+could be gathered from a bow and a scowl, Peckover answered the
+question.  "Remanded on bail."
+
+Lady Ormstork threw up her hands in amused horror.  "A Salolja, a
+Grandee of Spain, remanded on bail by a bench of provincial
+cheese-mongers!" she cried.  "Really, it is the very acme of the
+ridiculous.  It is only fit for a burlesque.  My dearest Ulrica, do
+think of it!  Oh, dear me, it is too absurd for comment."  And she went
+off in a fit of rather stagey laughter.
+
+"It is no laughing matter--for somebody," hissed the duke darkly.
+
+Lady Ormstork's burst ended with an abruptness which suggested a doubt
+as to its genuineness.  "It is really so diverting," she said, "that I
+am forgetting to introduce Mr. Buffkin, dear Ulrica's father, to Lord
+Quorn."
+
+The inference to be drawn from Mr. Buffkin's demeanour was that he was
+not in the habit of being suddenly presented to peers of the realm.
+Lord Quorn, however, relieved his embarrassment by seizing his hand
+with a cordial grip.  "Glad you've come down," he remarked, with his
+eyes on Mr. Buffkin's daughter.
+
+"Pleased to meet your lordship," responded Mr. Buffkin.
+
+Lady Ormstork raised her eye-glasses in diplomatic caution.  "You don't
+mean to say you are Lord Quorn, after all?" she asked with a hedging
+smile.
+
+"I'm nobody else," was the confident reply.
+
+"He's Lord Quorn right enough," corroborated Peckover, with a chastened
+confession of a truth which could no longer be kept in the well.
+
+"How singular," murmured Lady Ormstork, only half convinced and
+wondering how, if it turned out to be true, she would stand.
+
+A professional-looking elderly man with a brief bag in his hand who had
+been regarding the group with some attention now came forward.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" he said, addressing the peer.
+
+Quorn jumped round.  "What, Powler!" he cried.  "Just the man, in the
+nick of time.  Here, you can tell this lady whether I'm Lord Quorn or
+not.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is Mr. Powler, my lawyer, of the firm
+of Powler, Gaze and Powler, Lincoln's Inn.  Come down to see me, eh?"
+
+"Getting no reply to our letters since your lordship left town, I
+thought I would just run down to Staplewick and see how things were
+getting on," Mr. Powler explained.  "Yes," he continued, "I am quite
+prepared to vouch for the identity of this gentleman as Lord Quorn."
+
+"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, "I always said so.  What a splendid
+practical joke, though, to try to take us all in.  How well you played
+the part," she said guilefully to Gage.  "Dear Lord Quorn," she
+continued gushingly, "this is all most interesting.  May we come up
+this afternoon us usual?  Mr. Buffkin is so anxious to see beautiful
+Staplewick."
+
+"Come as soon as you like," said Quorn promptly.
+
+"How sweet of you," murmured Lady Ormstork.  "Dear Ulrica would be
+sorry to miss her daily ramble in the lovely park.  Wouldn't you, dear?"
+
+"I dare say I should," responded Miss Buffkin indifferently, with a
+half grimace at Peckover.
+
+"I have," the duke suddenly burst out, "a word to say to Miss Ulrica.
+I do myself the honour of following your distinguished carriage to The
+Cracknels."
+
+"Please don't," both ladies protested.  "I fear," the elder continued.
+"I cannot, after this _esclandre_, undertake to receive you."
+
+The duke gave a mingled shrug, scowl and bow.  "It plunges me into
+despair," he said, with just a suspicion of sarcasm, "to be deprived of
+the supreme happiness of milady Ormstork's coveted society.  Perhaps,
+though, I may be humbly permitted an interview with the distinguished
+Mr. Buffkin?"
+
+Mr. Buffkin, whose distinction required the penetrating eye of the
+Spaniard to notice it, and whose conversational powers did not seem to
+be of a high order, looked aggressively uncomfortable.  "Is this," he
+inquired bluntly, "the Spanish gentleman who has been pestering
+Barbara--I mean Ulrica--with his attentions?"
+
+The duke made a prancing step on the pavement.  "Pestering?" he
+repeated hoarsely, pulling his moustache with nervous fury.
+
+"That," replied Lady Ormstork uncompromisingly, "is the person; the
+Duke of Salolja."
+
+"I have," said the duke, with a flourish, "the honour to desire a
+matrimonial alliance with your gracious and adorable daughter."
+
+"No, thank you."  Mr. Buffkin's voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky,
+and quite common.  "We don't desire any foreign alliance."
+
+"As Duchesse de Salolja"--began the duke.
+
+"No good," interrupted Mr. Buffkin, with a decisive shake of his very
+commercial-looking head.  "Spanish titles are not a line I care to
+handle.  I've told Bar--Ulrica she can marry whom she likes, but if
+it's a foreigner, duke or fiddler, she'll have to do it on three
+hundred a year."
+
+The Salolja lip curled.  "His excellency jests.  The renowned
+millionaire Buffkin allows his daughter, the Duchesse de Salolja, three
+hundred pounds a year!  It is rich!"
+
+Mr. Buffkin looked particularly irresponsive.  "Who says I am a
+millionaire?" he demanded shrilly.  The duke bowed and indicated Lady
+Ormstork.  "A _façon de parler_," that lady explained.  "Anyhow, a very
+rich man."
+
+"Divide it by ten," said Mr. Buffkin with a twinkle.
+
+The duke looked suddenly chastened, not to say depressed.  "The
+glorious Miss Ulrica," he said with an obvious effort, "would be an
+inestimable prize without a penny of dowry."
+
+"That's about what she'll have if she marries you," returned Mr.
+Buffkin, whose eloquence, if not exactly copious, was considerably to
+the point.
+
+"Shall we drive on?" suggested Lady Ormstork.  "_Au revoir_, Lord
+Quorn," she gushed.  "Till this afternoon, then.  _Au revoir_, Mr.
+Gage."  Not knowing Peckover's name, since the reshuffle, she
+discreetly left him out.
+
+But Ulrica's parting nod was for him alone.
+
+As the carriage rolled away up the High Street the duke was the first
+to speak.
+
+"What time does that infernal train leave your unsavoury town of Great
+Bunbury?" he inquired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+Sharnbrook had called at Staplewick for an authoritative version of
+certain blood-curdling rumours which had reached him, and he stayed to
+luncheon.
+
+"Wish I'd known you were having such a thrilling time," he said
+regretfully.  "I'd have come up and helped.  Well, I say, with this new
+twist of the Quorn title our fair friends at the Moat will get a nasty
+shake, eh?  I'm ever so grateful for the way you fellows have relieved
+the pressure of the fair dodgers; they've eased off wonderfully of
+late, and I've got my wind again."
+
+"Glad to hear it," observed Peckover.  "Always willing to oblige a
+sportsman."
+
+"Ah," said Sharnbrook in a gratified tone, "if I'd only known you were
+having fits with that little Spanish bantam, I'd have brought along a
+rare good bull-dog that would have reduced him to fragments and pulp
+inside three minutes.  A nailing beast, knows his business from A to Z
+and quite a picture when he's----"
+
+"The little devil of a duke would have put a bullet through him," said
+Gage, "and that would have been a pity."
+
+"Yes," Sharnbrook agreed, "that wouldn't have suited me.  I've only had
+the beggar a month, and have just got fond of him."
+
+"Even a Spanish bluffer has his uses," observed Gage.  "He has knocked
+the stuffing out of Quorn's bush-ranger."
+
+"Yes," said Quorn, "that brute has no more terrors for me; I suppose,
+though, I shall have him and Lalage hanging about the place till I can
+afford to send them back."
+
+"Better keep the fire-irons out of the way," remarked Peckover.
+
+"I'll send the precious pair back home for you, if you don't get the
+Buffkin money," said Gage magnanimously.  "After all, I owe you
+something.  I can't say I've had much fun out of your title, and hope
+you'll do better with it.  But it has been an experience, and I
+certainly shan't hanker after the peerage again."
+
+Quorn thanked him.  "Hope you'll stay on here as long as you fancy," he
+said.
+
+Gage shook his head.  "No thanks.  I'm off to-morrow.  Too much Hemyock
+about for me.  But I'll run down later and see what you're making of
+it."
+
+"What's going to become of you?" he asked Peckover.  "Got anything more
+to sell that doesn't belong to you?"
+
+"You can't blame me," Peckover protested.  "I kept to my part of the
+bargain as long as you had any use for it.  And I couldn't help it.  If
+you hadn't made a bid for the title I should have had to take it on
+myself."
+
+"Right you are," responded Gage good-humouredly.  "Well, you had better
+come with me and show me round.  You can draw £300 a year as my
+secretary."
+
+"I'm your man," said Peckover with alacrity.  "What I don't show you
+won't be worth seeing."
+
+Lady Ormstork with Mr. and Miss Buffkin was announced.
+
+The dowager was full of gush.  "Dear Lord Quorn!  What an amusing
+incognito!  Quite like the lord of Burleigh.  One can quite understand
+your wishing to put people's real affection to the test."
+
+"We won't inquire how the article stood it," Quorn replied bluntly.
+
+"Quite romantic, as dear Ulrica was saying," the lady proceeded, quite
+unabashed.  "May we, before going out, look round the picture gallery?
+Mr. Buffkin would so like to see the interesting family portraits and
+wonderful old armour."
+
+If Mr. Buffkin's expression was meant to be corroborative it was a
+distinct failure.  Whatever sentiment might have been read in his
+commercial face, a yearning for the satisfying of an artistic curiosity
+was not there.
+
+No objection to the proposal being made, the party proceeded to what
+Peckover called the ancestral showroom.
+
+"Won't you look after dear Ulrica and show her round?" Lady Ormstork
+said pointedly to Quorn when the somewhat dreary gallery was reached.
+
+Quorn, nothing loath, attached himself forthwith to Miss Buffkin, who
+had somehow gravitated to the now negligible Peckover.  "Now, Mr.
+Peckover," he said bluffly, "you ought to know all about these fifth of
+November Johnnies.  Give us a bit of the showman.  Take us round the
+effigies, and don't be too long about it."
+
+On account, perhaps, of Miss Buffkin's obvious preference, Peckover was
+in higher spirits than his lot seemed to warrant.
+
+"All right," he responded, pulling a ramrod from an ancient gun for use
+as a showman's wand.  "Here goes!  Lord Quorn, ladies and gentlemen:
+with a view to combining instruction with amusement, I propose to give
+you some points concerning these noble effigies with which the spacious
+apartment is lined.  True, it is only the outer crusts of these
+distinguished warriors and sportsmen that I am able to bring to your
+notice.  The kernels are all gone, and the shells are--hem!--left
+tenantless.  But, as in these days the tailor makes the man, so we may
+say that in olden times the blacksmith made him, from which we may
+conclude that we have the best part," he tapped a suit of armour with
+his wand, "of the noble house of Quorn remaining with us to this day."
+
+"Hear!  hear!" cried Sharnbrook, with more appreciation than tact,
+while Miss Buffkin laughed sympathetically.
+
+"The clockwork has long since run down," continued Peckover finding the
+vocabulary of his former vocation coming in usefully; "the striking
+gear is out of order, on account of the dust getting into it.  The
+hands can point no longer, and the faces have lost their enamel.  But
+we have still the cases--some plain, like this,"--he tapped a suit of
+plate armour--"some engine turned, like that," pointing to an inlaid
+suit, "some with open faces, like this yawner," he rattled his wand in
+the cavity of a vizorless helmet, "some hunters, like this prancer,"
+indicating an equestrian portrait.  "To begin at the beginning."  He
+held up a dilapidated helmet in one hand and in the other a fragment of
+armour.  "Sir Guy de Quorn, founder of the family."
+
+There was a laugh from everybody, although Lady Ormstork's was rather
+belated, that astute dowager's sense of humour being outweighed by her
+concern at seeing that Ulrica was paying more attention to the flippant
+little showman than to the more solid worth of Lord Quorn.
+
+"Not much of him remaining," Peckover went on.  "Ladies and gentlemen
+of vivid powers of imagination may reconstruct in their minds from
+these scanty materials the noble mien, the imposing figure, of this
+doughty warrior.  Pass on to Sir Nicholas de Quorn," he pointed to the
+suit of armour that stood next, "in a high state of preservation.  A
+mighty man of valour, who had the advantage of living in times when he
+could knock a man out for sneezing in his presence without being liable
+to forty shillings or a month.  Sir Nicholas spent a useful life in
+trying his muscle and weight on other people, and was getting his name
+up nicely, when unfortunately setting out to attack the castle of an
+absent neighbour in a thunderstorm, his lance acted as a lightning
+conductor, and he was prematurely cremated.  Notice the aperture
+through which the electric fluid tunnelled its way to his knightly
+vitals, and the look of blank astonishment with a dash of 'uffiness on
+the champion's visage."
+
+The said visage being indeed a blank, this fancy seemed to tickle even
+the unimaginative Mr. Buffkin.  Peckover now directed attention to a
+weird-looking portrait.  "Sir Penning de Quorn, surnamed the Feckless.
+He never did anything distinguished, and only escaped being made
+Commander-in-Chief through one of the Royal Family fancying himself in
+a cocked hat."  He passed to another canvas.  "Sir Brian de
+Quorn--sometimes called the Buffer, as nothing made any impression on
+him.  He married four wives, three of whom survived him."
+
+Sharnbrook guffawed, and Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.
+
+"Sir Walter the Willing," proceeded Peckover, working up the showman
+business, as he pointed to the next portrait, "a distinguished
+advertising politician.  He pushed his way to the front and became a
+Cabinet Minister by his imitations of popular jesters, and by dyeing
+his raven locks crimson with a secret wash which he purchased from a
+bald Crusader who had no further use for it.  When at length the supply
+failed and the substitutes he tried to manufacture turned his hair
+green, and by their offensive odour left him alone on the Treasury
+Bench he was soon sent to the Upper House, becoming first Baron Quorn."
+
+Mr. Buffkin, for an out-of-place, commercial Philistine seemed, to
+Peckover's gratification, to be taking in the lecture with genuine
+amusement.
+
+Thus stimulated, the showman proceeded, "Harboro' de Quorn," he tapped
+a sporting portrait, "second Baron Quorn, and inventor of the Quorn
+Hunt.  He induced the noble Normans to abandon the shooting of foxes
+which they consented to, owing to gunpowder being in its infancy, guns
+taking a quarter of an hour to load and fire, and the wily animal being
+hard to hit with a bow and arrow.  He was the first M.F.H., and having
+an impediment in his speech he originated the expression, Yoicks!
+which, being interpreted, was his bovrilized way of cursing people who
+rode over the hounds."
+
+"Good man," ejaculated Sharnbrook.
+
+Peckover, encouraged by Ulrica's animated interest, went on with his
+lecture in spite of Lady Ormstork's obvious impatience.  His next
+object was a big suit of armour on which he irreverently rattled his
+wand.  "We now come to the third Baron, Marmaduke, surnamed the Masher.
+His fatal gift of beauty was the cause of some anxiety--to the married
+nobility, clergy and gentry of his acquaintance.  He was, as you will
+observe, very particular about the cut of his armour and the shape of
+his helmet, which was constructed with an extra-size pigeon-hole, in
+order that the full extent of his handsome physiognomy might be
+utilized to dazzle the doting damsels.  His end, ladies and gentlemen,
+was, I regret to say, a somewhat melancholy and unusual one.  While
+drinking a stirrup-cup, and trying at the same time to wink over the
+brim of the goblet at the young lady behind the bar, a portion of the
+pick-me-up went down the wrong way; to correct which mistake his
+faithful squire seized a spade and smote him therewith on the back.
+The clang of the blow on his armour startled his horse, which took to
+bucking, and at the first attempt laid the coughing nobleman in the
+ditch.  He never wunk again.  Notice the rectangular impression of the
+shovel between the shoulders, also the extra-sized sliding kissing-trap
+of the helmet so contrived for the purpose of simplifying the process
+of osculation to which he was addicted."
+
+A marked diversion was here created by the entrance at the farther end
+of the gallery of Bisgood ushering in the entire Hemyock family.  Their
+arrival was not greeted with that cordiality which is usually desirable
+and customary; it was, indeed, anything but welcome to any except two
+of the party.  As Quorn, followed by the rest, went forward to receive
+the visitors, Peckover and Miss Buffkin lingered behind together.
+
+"Like to see the view from the Tower?" he suggested with a grin.
+Ulrica laughed and they slipped unnoticed through a covered door.  From
+an octagonal chamber a winding stairway led up to the tower.  "Come
+along," said Peckover elatedly.
+
+Ulrica with a mischievous laugh followed, and they soon emerged at the
+top where floated a tattered flag from a tall staff.
+
+"How lovely," Miss Buffkin exclaimed.
+
+"Never mind the view," said Peckover desperately.  "How do you like the
+new Lord Quorn?"
+
+Ulrica pouted.  "I don't see myself Lady Quorn," she answered with a
+certain amount of decision.
+
+"No," Peckover agreed with conviction.  "He's not a bad sort, but he
+wouldn't be my fancy if I were a pretty girl."
+
+"He's too glumpy for me," Ulrica declared.  "And what's more I'm not
+going to have him."
+
+"What'll the guv'nor say?" Peckover asked dubiously.
+
+Miss Buffkin laughed.  "Oh, father won't mind.  You see," she went on
+confidentially, "this coronet racket isn't his idea at all.  Not it."
+
+"Yours?"
+
+"Not likely.  It is old Ormstork's.  We ran across her at the Grand
+Oceanic at Harrogate.  She hung on to us like a stoat on a rabbit.  We
+couldn't make her game out, till one day she asked father what odds he
+would lay her that I didn't marry a peer.  And she has been dragging me
+about the country ever since, till it has fairly come to pall."
+
+"I should think so," observed Peckover sympathetically.
+
+"I don't know," she continued, "how many noble heads I've been thrown
+at.  But somehow I've always managed to rebound, and sometimes hit the
+old lady in the eye.  You see, I like a live man, not a stuffed peer,
+with about as much soul as a gramaphone."
+
+"I wish I was a peer," he said ruefully.  "I'm alive all right."
+
+"So you are," she agreed, gazing round the depressing park.
+
+"Yes," he said with a wistful touch, "you said you liked me once, when
+you thought I was something else."
+
+"What was that?" she inquired naively.
+
+"A rich chap; a millionaire."
+
+"Well, aren't you?" she demanded.
+
+"Not exactly," he answered rather lugubriously.  "That dream's over.
+We've been playing a queer game, but it has come to an end sooner than
+I expected.  I'm a poor devil again now, and there's all about it."
+
+For a moment Ulrica's violet eyes rested on him sympathetically.  Then
+they looked away and seemed to be interested in the distant figure of
+Mr. Treacher who was slouching across the landscape.
+
+"If people are poor," she said presently in a low voice from which all
+feeling was rigidly excluded, "it doesn't make any difference with me,
+when I like them."
+
+Peckover jumped up.  He could do no less.  "Ulrica," he said and his
+voice trembled, "you like me?  Yes, you said you did once.  But I can't
+hold you to that for I was a regular fraud when I got you to say it."
+
+Miss Buffkin gave a little sigh, and with a lingering glance at the
+uninteresting Mr. Treacher, turned towards the stairway.  "All right,"
+she said with an affectation of indifference.  "I think I hear some one
+climbing after us."
+
+The steps were steep and awkward.  He had to take her hand, and at the
+touch his resolution (more honourable than many a better-bred man would
+have formed) gave way.  "Ulrica," he said with a diffident tremor, "you
+couldn't care for a little nobody like me?"
+
+She was gathering up her skirts for the descent.  "I always rather
+liked you," she confessed.
+
+"You wouldn't marry me?"
+
+"What would Lady Ormstork say?" she objected archly.
+
+"Ulrica, you are not fooling me?"
+
+"Not much," she answered.  "By the way, my real name is Barbara.  Only
+the old lady thought Ulrica more classy, and so it had to be Ulrica."
+
+In an instant he had sprung to the top step and his arms were round
+her.  "Barbara, my darling."
+
+"Hark!" she protested struggling.
+
+From below came Lady Ormstork's insistent call.
+
+"Barbara, quick!  Is it to be?"
+
+"Poor old Ormstork."
+
+"Bother her.  It's your father."
+
+"I think he likes you.  You're rather his sort, and Q. isn't," she said
+over her shoulder as she went down the winding stairs.
+
+At the bottom stood Lady Ormstork looking properly scandalized.  Apart
+from her charge's escapade, her meeting with Lady Agatha had not been
+conducive to serenity.
+
+"My dearest Ulrica," she said sourly, "how absurd of you to hide
+yourself away up in that horrid tower.  Lord Quorn is hunting for you
+everywhere."
+
+"I'm so glad he hasn't found me yet," was the not very soothing reply.
+
+"Are you mad, girl?" cried the dowager.
+
+"Not yet.  If I marry Quorn you may inquire again."
+
+Lady Ormstork's indignation was so great that she could only glare,
+first at Ulrica, then at Peckover.  "Is this," she demanded in her most
+withering tones, "the sort of person you prefer to Lord Quorn?"
+
+"All things considered, it is," answered Ulrica boldly.
+
+"You hear that?" screamed the irate dowager to Mr. Buffkin, who had
+just appeared in his flight from the embarrassing position of a target
+for the shafts of the Hemyock family.  "Your daughter actually refuses
+the ennobling alliance which I have been at such pains to arrange for
+her."
+
+"I'm not exactly surprised to hear it," was the unsympathetic reply.
+
+"Perhaps you will be to learn that your daughter has the unheard-of
+wrongheadedness to prefer a person of this most equivocal description,"
+Lady Ormstork indicated Peckover with a contemptuous wave of her
+glasses, "to Lord Quorn."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness.  "I dare say she
+prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her."
+
+"But--but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture,
+"do you call this person a good match?"
+
+"I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless
+reply.
+
+"That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin.
+
+Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery,
+the others following at a safe distance.
+
+
+The enlightenment of the Hemyock family as to the identity of the real
+Lord Quorn had been, for obvious reasons, delayed by the parties most
+interested in keeping them in the dark.  But now that the new-found
+peer was not to fall to Lady Ormstork's bag, that spiteful dowager
+determined to let the cat out of it.
+
+"May I order my carriage, Lord Quorn?" she said in her most distinct
+and penetrating tones.  "It is getting late."
+
+As Quorn rose in his lumbering fashion and rang the bell, the Hemyock
+girls who had been gaily chattering to Gage became abruptly silent, and
+Lady Agatha looked stonily nonplussed.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" she said, with a brave attempt at a successful smile.
+"Surely this is not Lord Quorn?"
+
+"I'm nobody else," Quorn assured her bluffly.
+
+"How very singular," said Lady Ormstork icily, "that you should not
+have known it."
+
+"Not at all," rejoined Lady Agatha promptly.  "We have for weeks past
+understood this gentleman was Lord Quorn."
+
+"I didn't like to contradict you," said Gage on being indicated.
+
+Lady Agatha, for once too dumfounded for speech, could only give a
+significant look of appeal to her daughters.  And at the look John
+Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, who had taken the precaution to get near the
+door, opened it quietly and slipped out.
+
+Meanwhile the brown eyes of Miss Ethel and the black orbs of Miss
+Dagmar were fastened searchingly on Lord Quorn, and they transmitted to
+their owners the impression that he was not an attractive personage.
+In truth there was yet a good deal of the Jenkins about him.  His
+clothes looked as though he had been in the habit of going to bed in
+them, and his hair cried out for the barber.  For the moment, at any
+rate, he was not to be jumped at, and with that conviction the original
+impulse to spring was stilled.  Lady Agatha rose, with a lofty ignoring
+of Lady Ormstork's exultant smile.
+
+"If," she said to Gage, "you are not Lord Quorn, as you have all along
+thought proper to pretend to be, may one ask who you are?"
+
+"I am Peter Gage," he answered with a touch of amusement.
+
+The eyes of Lady Agatha and her daughters met, and all that could be
+read in them was an indignant perplexity.
+
+"It is all very extraordinary."  Colonel Hemyock's thin voice sounded
+through the room, but his family heeded it not.  Their minds were busy
+with the enigma of the position which was too complicated, not to say
+suspicious, to be comprehended at once.  Only one thing in all the
+business seemed safe, and their minds jumped together to it.  They
+recoiled, as by a single impulse, from the unattractive personality of
+Lord Quorn, from the doubtful individualities of Gage and Peckover, and
+their eyes by common consent sought the spot where their sheet-anchor
+had lately rested.
+
+"Sharnbrook!"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+They ran a dead heat to the door, charged through it, and so out into
+the garden.  But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook's start served him well, and
+he was at that moment sprinting homewards down the drive with a canny
+smile on his simple face.
+
+
+
+
+Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+THE MASTER SPIRIT
+
+_Liverpool Post_ says:--"The study of the prostrate man giving the best
+of his brains to the assistance of Herriard is beyond all praise.  It
+is one more variant of the 'double' theory, but it is one of the best
+achievements of its kind."
+
+_The Tribune_ says:--"It must be admitted that Sir Wm. Magnay knows
+London life better than many novelists, that his men talk like
+gentlemen, and that his pictures of society are clever and truthful."
+
+_The Manchester City News_ says:--"This well written and attractive
+story outlines a true picture of the vanities and insincerities of
+fashionable society in London."
+
+_The Road_ says:--"Few plots in even the best up-to-date novels of
+to-day are as strongly drawn as this one, which has all the freshness
+of absolute novelty to recommend it."
+
+_The Court Journal_ says:--"The intensely interesting situation is
+developed with much ingenuity and power.  It is a capital story, told
+with far more literary skill than is usual.  A really fascinating
+story."
+
+
+
+FAUCONBERG
+
+_The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"Good and well written, readable from
+opening chapter to finish."
+
+_The Illustrated Mail_ says:--"The story teems with incident, moves
+briskly and as a narrative is very readable."
+
+_The Field_ says:--"The ultimate fate of Fauconberg is always in doubt
+from the beginning to the unexpected ending.  The book has grip and
+should be a success."
+
+_The Aberdeen Journal_ says:--"From start to finish the story is full
+of striking situations and Fauconberg will unfailingly appeal to all
+who love a vigorously told narrative."
+
+
+
+THE RED CHANCELLOR
+
+_Lloyd's News_ says:--"One of the most readable novels of the adventure
+type that we have taken up.  A story full of action with its characters
+strongly drawn.  Adventures and hair-breadth escapes abound, the style
+is refreshingly crisp, and the book altogether is one that can be most
+heartily recommended."
+
+_The King_ says:--"A romance of stirring adventure.  Excitingly
+narrated, and the book in every way ought to prove one of the best
+reading romances of the season."
+
+_The Swansea Gazette_ says:--"A very thrilling and interesting book,
+and commands in every page the reader's attention."
+
+_The Irish Times_ says:--"A most thrilling story, well written and
+cleverly put together, the romance is a fascinating one."
+
+_Public Opinion_ says:--"It positively bristles with adventure.  A
+capital book, wildly exciting."
+
+_The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"A story which is distinctly good."
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF THE UNICORN
+
+An absorbing romance of modern life, depending for its interest quite
+as much on its vivid pictures of society as on its more sensational
+incidents.  Mr. E. F. Benson and Mr. Robert Hichens have more than once
+achieved the same effect in the weaving of stories of tense dramatic
+interest, and the present book is a strong and clever specimen of its
+class.  Without sacrificing the probabilities the author realizes with
+great skill the element of strangeness which often carries the
+circumstances of modern life even to the verge of fantasy.  It is an
+engrossing story, cleverly set forth.
+
+
+
+A PRINCE OF LOVERS
+
+_The World_ says:--"This story is delightful; full of life and
+movement, genuine human nature, and the stir of love and grief, good
+fortune and evil with so much reality in the persons on the stage that
+they enlist sympathy or excite animosity as fully as the author needs
+to desire.  The stars which Sir William Magnay has selected and set
+shining for us in an atmosphere well suited for their radiance are very
+bright and particular indeed."
+
+_The Dundee Courier_ says:--"We commend this book to any one on the
+look out for a thrilling, fascinating, and skilfully narrated tale.
+Each chapter abounds in exciting situations and daring deeds, one's
+anxiety to know what comes next increasing as the story unfolds."
+
+_The Portsmouth Times_ says:--"A brilliant romance crowded with
+stirring incident and is never for a moment dull."
+
+_The Morning Leader_ says:--"The story is spirited and exciting and may
+be read with pleasure by all who enjoy a stirring romance."
+
+_The Scotsman_ says:--"The story is full of exciting adventures
+skilfully narrated.  Swords are whirling in every page and so thrilling
+are the incidents that each chapter breeds anxiety to know the events
+of the next."
+
+_The Athenæum_ says:--"Sir Wm. Magnay wafts us away to the realms of
+pure romance, where the hard facts of a prosaic century are forgotten
+in the Hercynian Forest of two hundred years ago.  The princess is
+loveliest of the lovely, the villains craftiest of the crafty; gallant
+deeds are done and gallant words are spoken, and the whole flows
+smoothly on to a happy conclusion, leaving the reader under a debt of
+gratitude for a pleasing entertainment."
+
+_The Birmingham Post_ says:--"The reader's enjoyment will be enhanced
+by delightful touches of humour which the author has interspersed among
+the many exciting and dramatic scenes of a stirring chronicle."
+
+_The Liverpool Post_ says:--"A book that maintains interest at a high
+pitch from start to finish, and should command immediate success."
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF THE HOUR
+
+_The Aberdeen Free Press_ says:--"Abounds in striking situations and is
+dominated throughout by strong dramatic power."
+
+_The Court Journal_ says:--"It is certainly one of the books of the
+hour, very interesting and distinctly clever."
+
+_The Dundee Courier_ says:--"The story is admirably constructed and
+highly dramatic."
+
+_Vanity Fair_ says:--"A very remarkably good story, told with much
+force and lightened by some very humorous observations of life and
+people."
+
+
+
+COUNT ZARKA
+
+_The Bristol Mercury_ says:--"A magnificent tribute to the author's
+power of imagination.  It is well written; the author keeping his
+characters in hand with marvellous skill, and works out an intricate
+plot to a dramatic conclusion."
+
+_The Yorkshire Herald_ says:--"Full of excitement.  The plot hangs upon
+the disappearance of a Prince who has been kidnapped by Count Zarka,
+his foe, who condemns him to cruel torture, and imprisons him in a
+cunningly devised room in his castle.  The story of the discovery of
+the Prince and of the final defeat of Zarka is a stirring one, and
+there is a strong love interest throughout the romance, which is
+heightened in the scene where the heroine is induced to fight a duel
+with swords by Zarka's jealous mistress."
+
+_The World says_:--"Sir William Magnay's novel _Count Zarka_ is a
+clever and entertaining story; it affords us glimpses of forest scenery
+which we like, and one remarkable departure from beaten tracks, a
+woman's duel in earnest."
+
+_The Dundee Courier_ says:--"The story is brightly and thrillingly
+told, and holds one through all its three hundred odd pages."
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poached Peerage, by William Magnay
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
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+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+<TITLE>
+The Project Gutenberg E-text of A Poached Peerage, by Sir William Magnay
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 10%;
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+       font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;
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+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poached Peerage, by William Magnay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Poached Peerage
+
+Author: William Magnay
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2010 [EBook #34088]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POACHED PEERAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="&quot;'I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage,' said Lalage, with calm determination.&quot; (Page 171.)" BORDER="2" WIDTH="463" HEIGHT="746">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 463px">
+&quot;'I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage,' said Lalage, with calm determination.&quot; (Page 171.)
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+A POACHED PEERAGE
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY, BART.
+</H3>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+AUTHOR OF<BR>
+"FAUCONBERG," "THE RED CHANCELLOR,"<BR>
+"A PRINCE OF LOVERS," ETC.<BR>
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+"There is a third party to all our bargains"
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+<I>ILLUSTRATED</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+LONDON
+<BR>
+WARD, LOCK &amp; CO., LIMITED
+<BR>
+1909
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%">
+<A HREF="#chap01">CHAPTER I</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap02">CHAPTER II</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap03">CHAPTER III</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap04">CHAPTER IV</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap05">CHAPTER V</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap06">CHAPTER VI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap07">CHAPTER VII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap09">CHAPTER IX</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap10">CHAPTER X</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap11">CHAPTER XI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap12">CHAPTER XII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap15">CHAPTER XV</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap20">CHAPTER XX</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap38">CHAPTER XXXVIII</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap39">CHAPTER XXXIX</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap40">CHAPTER XL</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap41">CHAPTER XLI</A><BR>
+<A HREF="#chap42">CHAPTER XLII</A><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+A pretty girl looked out of the low-silled coffee-room window of the
+<I>Quorn Arms</I> at Great Bunbury, and threw a glance of roguish invitation
+at a watchful young man who was pretending to be busy in the courtyard.
+Then she disappeared.  The young man lost no time in throwing down his
+broom, and, with a manifestly assumed air of indifference, approached
+the window.  He looked in warily, then glanced round behind him, and
+next moment had thrown his leg over the sill and was in the room.  The
+girl, with her back to the window, was polishing a brass candlestick
+with a vigour which suggested that the occupation left no room for less
+material thoughts.  Also that she was, for a smart young woman,
+strangely unobservant of the fact that a man had entered by the window,
+until an arm round her waist brought the fact to her notice.  Even then
+she did not start or cry out, merely disengaging herself from the
+expected caress by a self-possessed and apparently well practised twist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't stop a moment, Tom," she remarked coolly; "only I saw you
+outside.  Father's in the bar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I've been hanging about a good half-hour to see you, Mercy," her
+swain declared impressively.  "I say, as time's short, don't let's
+waste it.  Give us a kiss."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For answer Miss Mercy Popkiss turned her head aside at a right angle as
+though suddenly attracted by something in the street.  An attitude of
+preoccupation does not, however, necessarily imply refusal; under
+certain circumstances it even stands for an invitation.  As such Mr.
+Thomas Sparrow unhesitatingly regarded it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One more," he pleaded coaxingly, as Miss Popkiss bent away from his
+somewhat ravenous embrace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait a bit," she said.  "I've something to tell you.  I'm going to
+leave here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, leave the <I>Quorn Arms</I>?" exclaimed Mr. Sparrow blankly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, truly.  I'm going to be still-room maid at the Towers.  You see,"
+she went on to explain cheerfully, "father doesn't like my being here,
+having to wait on the riff-raff as well as the gentry.  He says it is
+not the best training for a young lady; and when father says a thing,
+that thing's settled.  They are all swells at the Towers; lords and
+ladies and toffs from London.  It will be fine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mr. Sparrow was far from sharing her jubilation.  "The Towers!" he
+exclaimed disconsolately.  "Why, they be four mile off, or more.
+You'll forget me, Mercy, among all them fine folk; lords, flunkeys and
+valets and butlers and swells like that, with their dashin' London
+ways."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't you look so silly," the girl remonstrated archly.  "Noblemen
+and butlers and all that sort aren't anything particular to me.  If
+you'd smarten yourself up a bit instead of looking like a ploughman,
+you might get a place there too.  Especially now the new Lord Quorn is
+coming home and Colonel Hemyock will have to turn out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Sparrow perked up a little.  "Ah," he observed with an air of
+indifferentism to the warmer subject, "Lord Quorn; he that has been
+found in Australy.  I suppose when her ladyship turns out you'll be off
+to London with her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Time enough to think about that when she goes," Miss Popkiss returned
+evasively.  "Lordship or no lordship, he can't turn her out before her
+time's up.  And then it might suit me to stay on with him.  I wonder
+what he'll be like," she added, with a significant touch of feminine
+interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Sparrow's prosaic face grew dark.  "Oh, Mercy," he cried, gloomily
+wrathful, "if I was to see another man, lord or lout, making love to
+you, I'd smash him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her words having produced what was precisely the desired effect, Miss
+Popkiss proceeded to tone it down with a provocative smile.  "You can
+think of smashing when you see it, Tom.  And, I say&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, dear?" said Tom, inwardly despising himself for being so easily
+mollified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I hear father in the bar," she suggested significantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Sparrow took the hint and another kiss.  Perhaps his ruffled
+feelings were responsible for its being a louder osculation than
+prudence dictated.  Anyhow an approaching voice croaked&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mercy!  Mercy!  What are you after?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quick, Tom," the girl directed in a hurried whisper, "slip out of the
+window."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Sparrow was already there, with a foot over the sill.  Its passage
+to the ground was, however, prevented by the substantial back of some
+one who was crouching outside the window.  The disconcerted Philander
+swiftly drew his leg back again as though it had been stung, and made a
+slinking rush for the table under which he crept just as Popkiss
+<I>père</I>, his rotund face coruscating with suspicion, filled the doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you up to, I ask you?" he demanded of his daughter with what
+seemed unnecessary vehemence as his small eyes roved in puffy cunning
+round the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Polishing the candlesticks, father," she answered coolly.  "Is there
+anything else you would prefer me to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not being ready with a suggestion, Mr. Popkiss merely fell back upon a
+snort of sagacity, and turned his portly person preparatory to waddling
+back to the bar.  "Come here, I want you," he commanded vaguely by an
+after-thought, in the hope that by the time he had reached his beery
+citadel a task might suggest itself to his sluggish invention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, father," Miss Popkiss replied cheerily, as with more
+clatter than was absolutely necessary, she replaced the candlestick on
+its shelf.  Then she took a round-about route to the door, preferring
+it possibly on account of the variety its closer view of the courtyard
+afforded.  As she was about to pause at the window the man crouching
+outside suddenly raised himself and looked in with a knowing grin.
+Miss Popkiss, suppressing a start, deftly changed the amorous look she
+had prepared into one of haughty displeasure, and swept in a fine
+carriage of scorn from the room.  Whereupon the man surmounted the sill
+and entered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was a curiously nondescript sort of person, with a short, round
+face, a short nose, short hair, short beard, short arms, short fingers
+and short legs.  His manner also was short, even jerky.  He looked
+round the room with a sharpness and vigilance which seemed quite thrown
+away upon its commonplace and unsuspicious contents, and absolutely
+futile in that they failed to detect Mr. Sparrow who lay snug
+underneath the table.  But then self-constituted keenness is usually
+ignorant of what is going on under its nose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No stranger about," the man muttered.  Then he took a telegram from
+the side pocket of his light overcoat, where it had lain as though
+ready to his hand for consultation.  "My wire from the Yard is
+explicit.  Yet," he mused, as he methodically folded the telegram and
+dropped it back into his pocket, "if he left the train at Faxfleet he
+ought to be here by this.  It might take him an hour and a half, or two
+hours.  I must find out."  He walked softly towards the door.  "Better
+not let old Popkiss see me," he murmured, "he talks too much.  But," he
+chuckled knowingly, "there's the pretty daughter, if I can catch her
+that's the dodge; I don't know what Sarah would say, but it's all in
+the way of business."  From which observation it is plain that æsthetic
+shortcomings do not necessarily prevent a man from fancying himself
+irresistible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peeping cautiously through the doorway he saw Miss Mercy alone in the
+bar, perfunctorily at work upon a task of supererogation which the
+paternal wisdom had set her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hist!" he signalled, and when she looked up in disdain he beckoned
+mysteriously and withdrew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Popkiss, in no amiable humour, was forced as a matter of business
+to follow him.  "What is your order, sir?" she inquired, with a toss of
+the head.  But the man signed to her to come nearer still with such an
+air of mysterious importance that she was forced to drop something of
+her haughty manner.  "I did not see you come in, sir," she remarked
+casually, as a first step toward affability.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For reply the man gave a knowing jerk of the head and indicated the
+window with his thumb.  "Hope you are well this morning, my dear," he
+observed inconsequentially.  "It is quite a pleasure to see any one
+looking so pretty and blooming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ignoring the incongruity between the guest's mysterious prelude and his
+crudely outspoken appreciation of her charms, Miss Popkiss was not
+above accepting the tribute to her good looks.  "Oh, sir," she said
+with a touch of protest just sufficient to maintain her propriety; and
+so waited for the order to which the compliment would have been a
+natural preamble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guest pursed his lips and kept his small eyes on her with
+business-like admiration.  "Very busy, eh?" he suggested, absurdly
+enough, since he appeared to be the only customer in the house.  "Any
+one fresh staying here?" he asked with an obvious affectation of
+indifference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, we've had no one fresh to-day, sir," Miss Popkiss answered,
+beginning to lose interest in the colloquy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," said the man, blinking his eyes suspiciously.  "Are you quite
+sure?  No one been here to-day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His manner was so exaggerated in its significance that Miss Popkiss,
+with Mr. Sparrow's clandestine visit fresh in her mind, grew uneasy
+under it.  "No, sir," she answered, a trifle unconvincingly.  "Who
+should there have been?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A triumphant gleam shot through her questioner's eyes.  He dropped his
+cross-examiner's manner and said confidentially, "I thought I saw some
+one come in just now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it was Tom.  Miss Popkiss flushed a little guiltily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the door?" she suggested evasively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or by the window," he hazarded, with noncommittal sagacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Popkiss concluded that further equivocation was futile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, sir, and if you did, what about it?" she demanded defiantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her cross-examiner saw that he had made a lucky hit.  "Oh," he
+answered, assuming a careless manner "I only looked in to warn you, in
+case he has been making up to you, that he is a bad lot, a wrong 'un
+altogether; so don't you have anything to do with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Had the speaker's searching little eyes not been attracted elsewhere
+they must have noticed a peculiar agitation of the table-cloth greater
+than the draught would account for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, you don't mean to say he makes love to any one else," Miss
+Popkiss asked, between wrath and jealousy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dozens, dozens," the visitor replied cheerfully.  "Every girl he
+meets.  All that sort do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two can play at that game," the lady commented resentfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he agreed waggishly: "it takes two to play it properly.  Now,
+look here, my dear," he added with an abrupt return to business; "I'll
+talk to him.  You just tell me where he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, sir," Miss Popkiss returned resolutely; "you just leave him to
+me.  I'll do the talking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But her interviewer did not seem content, for reasons of his own, that
+the matter should be taken out of his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now just let me see him, there's a dear," he urged coaxingly.  "Do,
+there's a little darling," he pleaded, becoming somewhat unreasonably
+affectionate.  "I'll put some salt on his tail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please, no; I'd rather you didn't, sir," returned Miss Popkiss with
+decision, as though feeling quite competent to perform the condimentary
+operation herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All in the way of business," the visitor persisted, rubbing his stubby
+hands together with anticipatory gusto.  Then, before the young lady
+could realize it, one of the stumpy arms had stolen round her waist.
+"Give me a kiss and tell me where to find him, and I'll knock the
+stuffing out of the rascal," he whispered insinuatingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Miss Popkiss was not so easily got round.  "Don't, sir!  What would
+father say?" she protested with a vigour which was likewise included in
+the action with which she released herself; an action performed with
+such adroitness as to give the impression that this was owed to its
+being frequently called for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is he, my sweetie?" persisted the curious one, in no wise
+abashed by his repulse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next moment the question was answered by a crash, as the table was
+overturned, and there rose, struggling with the hampering folds of its
+cover, the irate form of Mr. Thomas Sparrow.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+With a vicious kick at the encumbering and undignified table-cover, Mr.
+Sparrow, green with passion, advanced upon his supposed traducer, who
+backed away in a composite attitude of protest, authority, and
+apprehension.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Tom!" cried Miss Popkiss ruefully, but Mr. Sparrow had no eyes for
+her just then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Scoundrel, am I?  Rascal, am I?" he hissed at the retreating stranger.
+"I'll show you.  I'll give you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other man had backed, by an oversight, into the corner and stood at
+bay, with an ugly look in his eyes and a thick-set hand stretched out
+in front of him.  "Don't you touch me," he exclaimed warningly, "an
+officer of the law in the execution of his duty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words had a certain effect on Mr. Sparrow, since his threatening
+fist remained in the air.  "What do you want wi' me?" he demanded, with
+a quiver in his voice which was, perhaps, not altogether the result of
+righteous anger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are Percy Peckover?" the man suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are a liar!" was the ready retort.  "I am Thomas Sparrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," corroborated Miss Popkiss, with a remorseful sob; "he is my Tom
+Sparrow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other man began to look doubtful; then he pulled the telegram from
+his pocket and unfolded it with legal deliberation.  "Stop a bit," he
+said brusquely.  "Five foot seven," he glanced up uncompromisingly at
+the ruffled Sparrow&mdash;"You're five foot nine&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And a half," put in the person under review.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other took no notice of the correction, but proceeded with his
+comparison.  "Pale&mdash;you are brick-dust; oval face&mdash;yours is round
+enough; dark moustache"; he moved his head quizzingly from side to side
+as though looking for something not easily distinguishable: "yours is
+sandy&mdash;what there is of it&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Popkiss gave an hysterical giggle, and Mr. Sparrow, words
+evidently failing him, merely gurgled and showed his teeth in a
+discomfited grin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Flash dress," read on the detective, outwardly ignoring the effect of
+his blunt differentiation, "yours is agricultural and shabby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shabby?" Sparrow cried furiously.  It was early closing day, and he
+had been at pains to smarten himself up in his best; added to which he
+would at any time have deprecated personal criticism in the presence of
+Miss Popkiss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But all the apology he got from his tormentor was the terse summing up,
+as the telegram was refolded, "Description don't tally.  You can go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gathering that it was no half-forgotten peccadillo that had risen
+against him, Mr. Sparrow resumed his boldness and eased the curb upon
+his wrath.  "Go?" he cried witheringly.  "How about the stuffing?  I'll
+go for you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He proceeded to do so in such unmistakable fashion that the arm of the
+law (being in this case one that was at a disadvantage in the essential
+of reach) found itself inadequate for its own protection, and was fain
+to invoke lay assistance which forthwith appeared in the portly form of
+Host Popkiss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hullo! hullo!" cried that worthy, his high-pitched croak sounding
+above the scuffle.  "What's the matter?  I won't have no row on my
+licensed premises," he protested in fussy indignation, proceeding to
+separate the combatants with a vigour which made up in authority what
+it lacked in physique.  "Why, Mr. Doutfire!" he exclaimed in horrified
+amazement as he recognised Sparrow's victim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, me, Mr. Popkiss," gasped that gentleman, keeping a vicious eye on
+his late assailant.  "Will you deal with this party, or shall I?"  As
+he spoke he produced and exhibited with a significance which was not
+lost upon Mr. Sparrow, a pair of highly-polished handcuffs, of a more
+elegant make than the usual vulgar "darbies" which festoon the
+blankness of a police-station wall; in effect these were of a pattern
+<I>de luxe</I>.  None the less had they the immediate effect of calming the
+aggressive Sparrow; to whom, with the severity of the outraged licensee
+of a highly respectable house of entertainment, Mr. Popkiss now
+addressed himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What have you come in here for?  In my coffee-room?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did not come for to be insulted," answered Mr. Sparrow sullenly, as
+preferring a negative handling of an awkward question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mr. Popkiss held on to the positive.  "I ask you what you did come
+for," he insisted, his severe eye suggesting how much more weight his
+tone might have carried had his bones carried less.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He was under the table."  Mr. Doutfire made the statement without
+heat, as though content to let the bare and damning fact speak for
+itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Most irregular," said Popkiss weakly, at a loss exactly what to do,
+and wishing, but for the slur on his house, that the law's
+representative would take the matter out of his hands.  "Look here," he
+went on, with an ill-timed and coldly received wink at the detective,
+"if you want to play under the table, stop at home and play under your
+own; if I catch you under mine or anywhere on my premises where there
+is no call for you to be, I'll pull your wing feathers out, Mr.
+Sparrow.  Now, hop off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under other circumstances Mr. Sparrow might have been ready with a more
+or less pertinent rejoinder to the stout inn-keeper's <I>brutum fulmen</I>;
+as it was, with the glittering symbols of durance dangling before his
+fascinated eyes, he was glad enough to find himself in a position to
+depart even with his repartee unspoken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mercy," commanded her father, dropping the jocular element in his
+severity; "go into the bar, I'll talk to you presently."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Miss Popkiss, with the uneasy conviction that she had made a fool
+of herself, was glad to obey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Mr. D., what gives us the pleasure of seeing you here to-day?"
+inquired the host, lapsing without an effort into affability.  "I
+didn't notice you come in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," replied Doutfire, as he dropped the minatory tokens of his office
+into his pocket; "I made free of the window&mdash;just in the way of
+business, you understand.  Fact is," he continued in a more
+confidential tone and with a quite unnecessary repetition of his trick
+of glancing round the room in search of impossible eavesdroppers, "I've
+had a wire from town.  You are likely to have a queer customer to-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fat face of Mr. Popkiss showed no tangible sign of the effect the
+news had on him.  "What, coming here, to this house?" he asked
+futilely.  "For Bunbury Races to-morrow, I suppose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe," Mr. Doutfire agreed, in the tone of one who could say more if
+he chose, "young swell-mob, I reckon.  Travelled by nine-thirty train
+from Waterloo, alighted at Faxfleet and inquired the way here.  I was
+ten minutes late at the station and got a lift on here, calculating to
+overtake him.  He must have gone by the fields."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What has he done, Mr. D.?" Popkiss inquired huskily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Serious case; counterfeit coin," Mr. Doutfire answered with
+importance.  "One of a flash gang.  Now look here," he said with a
+touch of authority, "The party I want is sure to turn up soon.  Don't
+you allow yourself to do anything calculated to rouse that party's
+suspicions: serve him with what he calls for, and leave the rest to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd better leave the bill to you as he pays in wrong money, eh?"
+suggested Mr. Popkiss, with true trade waggishness, and becoming purple
+with enjoyment of his own joke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire permitted himself no more than a faint smile.  "Treasury
+won't see you out of pocket, Mr. Popkiss," he declared with importance,
+as one fully competent to answer for the liberality of that notoriously
+niggardly office.  Then, as having settled the point, he thrust his
+hand into his trouser pockets and strutted complacently to the window.
+"I hope to make a neat job of it this time," he announced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, you're a cute one, you are, Mr. D.," said Popkiss knowingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," assented Doutfire, still looking out of the window and rattling
+the money in his pockets, "I flatter myself I have done a few pretty
+things in my time.  Yes," he continued introspectively, "I've got a
+good bit of the fox in me&mdash;natural and acquired in the profession"&mdash;he
+turned suddenly on his heel, confronting Mr. Popkiss&mdash;"only in the way
+of business, mind you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sudden <I>volte face</I> so startled the worthy host that all he could
+put forward by way of comment was the trite formula, "You'll have a
+glass of me, Mr. D.?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Possibly Mr. Doutfire took the offer as a tribute to his professional
+sagacity; all the same, he declined it.  "No, thank you.  Must keep my
+head clear.  Can't drink."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, not in the way of business?" chuckled Mr. Popkiss with another
+sub-apoplectic seizure.  "One glass," he urged, perhaps wishing, in the
+ticklish position of proprietor of licensed premises to stand well with
+the representatives of the law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, just a small one," Mr. Doutfire consented, in a tone which
+suggested that the blandishments of all the publicans in England should
+not persuade him to exceed his modicum or his duty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they turned towards the bar, Mercy met them.  "Father," she said
+breathlessly, "the carriage from the Towers has just driven into the
+yard.  Colonel Hemyock is asking for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh?  All right," exclaimed Popkiss, turning down his cuffs in a
+flurry.  "Here, Mercy,"&mdash;he ran back&mdash;"draw Mr. Doutfire a glass of
+anything he fancies."  And so he bustled out, a quivering jelly of
+importance and servility, into the courtyard.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Colonel Hemyock, the temporary tenant of Staplewick Towers, was a
+somewhat blatant specimen of a retired military man with an unbounded
+sense of his personal dignity and importance, which sense he derived
+from an aristocratic wife.  Never in this world was there anybody more
+starchily dignified than the gallant Colonel looked as he sat bolt
+upright in his phaeton; a tall, thin, thread-paper of a man, with his
+sharp aquiline nose, and brushed out white whiskers, whiskers of which
+not a hair was ever seen out of line.  But that was all.  For the rest
+he might have been a figure from Madame Tussaud's with a phonograph
+inside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As behind the horseman is said to be invariably seated Black Care, so
+behind the gallant driver of that phaeton were sitting the Colonel's
+two-fold cares, his two daughters.  People who affected to know
+everything&mdash;and such are occasionally met with in the country&mdash;asserted
+that it was with a view to getting her daughters off that the scheming
+Lady Agatha Hemyock had insisted on the family's taking up its abode at
+the missing Lord Quorn's somewhat derelict place.  And the policy had
+not been entirely without result.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now with the discovery of the new peer the tenancy came to an end.
+It was simply left for the Hemyocks to close it pleasantly, and, some
+critics said, designingly, by entertaining the new owner for a few
+days, introducing him to his property, such as it was, and the Misses
+Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, such as they were, and then leaving him to
+his own devices, and the result of theirs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;ah, Popkiss," Colonel Hemyock said in his high, thin voice,
+acknowledging the bustling innkeeper's salute with a limited flourish
+of his whip.  "I just looked in to say that&mdash;ah&mdash;Lord Quorn" (he spoke
+the name with absurd emphasis, shaping his mouth into an O twice as he
+pronounced it) "is expected to arrive here this afternoon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So impressed was Mr. Popkiss by the stiff and immaculate Colonel's
+pomposity that all he could ejaculate was, "Dear me, Colonel!  Lord
+Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," responded the Colonel freezingly, as he stared straight in front
+of him over his horses' ears; "his lordship has just arrived from
+Australia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have heard something of it, Colonel," said Mr. Popkiss, regaining
+his composure; perhaps because his noble visitor suggested by his
+attitude that he admitted him to no more human fellowship than the
+mounting block in the yard.  "The late peer's cousin, is he not,
+Colonel?  I trust you will not be giving up the Towers?" he added
+hypocritically, since the Hemyock establishment could hardly be said to
+bring two-and-sixpence per annum into the coffers of the <I>Quorn Arms
+Hotel</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;ah, don't know," the buckram personage answered, still staring
+foolishly over his horses' heads.  "Anyhow, his lordship will stay at
+the Towers for some time as my guest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curious; in his own house, Colonel," fatuously remarked Mr. Popkiss,
+as feeling called to make some comment on the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is my place as long as I pay for it," snapped the Colonel loftily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly, Colonel; no doubt, Colonel; I beg pardon, Colonel," Popkiss
+protested abjectly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few heavy drops suddenly came pattering down on the glass roof of the
+yard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is going to rain," Colonel Hemyock observed in a tone of irritated
+surprise at the outrage.  "We shan't get over to Babbleton this
+afternoon."  This to his daughters, who looked, in anticipation of harm
+to their finery, more discontented, if possible, than before.  "We had
+better put up till Quorn arrives.  You can wait here and I will look in
+at the club."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a waiting-room adjoining the archway for the accommodation of
+the county people who put up their carriages at the <I>Quorn Arms</I> while
+they shopped in the town.  Shown in, with much obsequiousness, by Host
+Popkiss, the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock here proposed to spend a
+tedious and highly uninteresting half-hour.  The prospect did not tend
+to lessen the grievance they entertained against the world in general
+and certain unappreciative persons of the male sex in particular.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder," observed Ethel, taking up and throwing down again the
+current number of the <I>Bunbury Bulletin</I>, "if father finds Sharnbrook
+at the club, whether he will have the sense to let him know we are
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It strikes me ignorance is bliss in Sharnbrook's case," replied Dagmar
+cuttingly, as she stood at the window, peevishly regarding the rain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, shut up, Dagmar," her sister returned, with a surprising lack of
+dignity in one so highly born.  "If it clears up we might take him over
+to Babbleton with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he'll come," said Dagmar sarcastically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He must come," Ethel declared emphatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has fought shy of us since he proposed to you," Dagmar remarked
+maliciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And was accepted," put in Ethel decisively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Trust you," sneered her sister.  "He has the bad taste to put down the
+proposal to the champagne.  Mrs. Wyrley-Byrde told mother so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," snapped Ethel.  "Not even father's champagne ever made any
+man propose to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A man," retorted Dagmar pointedly, "requires to be in his sober senses
+to appreciate me.  And if he proposed under the influence of Heidsieck,
+I should not accept him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, wouldn't you?" returned Ethel with somewhat over-emphasized
+incredulity.  "Anyhow, I am not going to let John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook
+slip through my fingers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Trust you," Dagmar laughed scornfully.  "You'll hold him as tight as
+he was when he proposed to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As he says he was," Ethel corrected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As he must have been," Dagmar maintained unfeelingly.  "After all,"
+the amiable young lady continued, with a yawn, "who is John Arbuthnot
+Sharnbrook that he should be exempt from matrimony?  Better men than he
+have submitted to it.  Julius Caesar was married&mdash;and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Alexander the Great," Ethel supplied as her sister paused for
+another notable victim of the marriage tie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I think he was," pursued Dagmar indifferently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If he wasn't, he&mdash;&mdash;" she yawned again.  "And Maryborough, and Edward
+the Black Prince were married men."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So was Henry the Eighth," observed Ethel sententiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly.  And Napoleon, and pretty well everybody worth mentioning,
+and heaps not worth it.  And who, pray, is John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook
+that he should cry off and plead Mumm?  Nobody!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has four thousand a year," Ethel remarked in mitigation of her
+recalcitrant suitor's total extinction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And a pretty taste in fox terriers," supplemented Dagmar, with an air
+of making every possible point in the unhappy Sharnbrook's favour.  "If
+he jilts you&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Impossible," Ethel cried heroically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fish have been known to wriggle back into the water after they were
+hooked, played and landed," Dagmar observed sagaciously.  She turned to
+the window.  "Here he comes," she remarked coolly.  "I advise you to
+fling him a little farther from the bank."  She raised her voice to
+greet the half-hearted Philander.  "Here we are, Mr. Sharnbrook.  Come
+in!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Sharnbrook thereupon came in, somewhat with an air of looking as
+though he would much rather not.  He was a florid young man, of no
+strikingly apparent intellectual powers: he had straw-coloured hair
+parted in the middle, and a downy moustache to match.  Apart from an
+aggressive riding suit his appearance was diffident to the verge of
+chronic apology.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Left off raining," he remarked, in a vain desire to meet his enemies
+in the open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has it?" replied Dagmar, indifferently doubtful.  "Fancy your finding
+us here," she added disingenuously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite a surprise," he observed, with equal dissimulation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A pleasant surprise, I should hope.  Aren't you going to speak to
+Ethel?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus prompted, Mr. Sharnbrook was fain to advance and greet the lady
+whom for the last week he had been dodging.  "How do you do?" he said
+with timid cordiality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How awfully gushing," laughed the voluble Miss Dagmar.  "Of course,
+I'm in the way," she added significantly.  "All right; I'll look out of
+the window."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, not at all," protested the miserable Sharnbrook.  "Please don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but I shall," she insisted.  "I am interested in that delightful
+old market woman who has just driven in.  Tell me when I may turn
+round."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Sharnbrook, desperately bold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dagmar, don't be absurd," protested her sister, with a provocative
+glance at her jibbing lover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't see behind me," Dagmar observed casually.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None of your tricks, Dagmar," said Ethel, facing the wretched young
+man, and then turning her head as though to look at her sister, which
+manoeuvre had the intended effect of giving John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook a
+magnificent oscillatory opportunity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But though the way was plain the will was absent.  "No, no," protested
+the gentleman, hanging off; "I'm up to her game.  You won't catch me,
+Miss Dagmar.  She has only got to turn her head," he pointed out
+confidentially to Ethel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she won't&mdash;just yet," the lady murmured softly.  "She had better
+not," she added, with a meaning smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We had better not," suggested the harried Sharnbrook at his wits' end,
+desperately determined not to compromise himself before a witness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, just as you please," returned Miss Ethel, with a disgusted toss of
+her head.  "If you are so frightened."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well," he urged feebly; "I don't want to make a fool of myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it is not necessary," the disappointed maiden returned with scorn.
+"You may look, Dagmar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't see anything," remarked that lady, with a malicious twinkle
+in her sharp eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," said Sharnbrook, manifestly relieved; "I don't see how you could.
+So the new Lord Quorn is coming down to the Towers," he added, eager to
+change the subject.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," replied Dagmar glibly, wickedly rejoicing at Ethel's
+discomfiture.  "We are expecting him now.  Of course we haven't an idea
+what he is like.  Frightfully colonial, no doubt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've heard nothing of Lady Quorn," remarked Ethel, determined not to
+be behindhand in chatter, and so show her indifference to the love
+passage that did not come off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sharnbrook gave a smile of superior knowledge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no Lady Quorn," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The effect of his announcement was startling.  "No Lady Quorn?" the
+eager sisters cried in chorus, their expressions indicating design
+tempered with incredulity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quorn's a bachelor," Sharnbrook maintained, beginning to see light
+behind the dark cloud which for the past fortnight had hung over him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Ethel turned to her sister with indignant reproach.  "Dagmar!  You
+said he was married."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I understood father to say he was," that disingenuous young lady
+replied unblushingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel, well acquainted with her sister's resourcefulness, turned from
+her in evident disgust.  "Are you quite sure, Mr. Sharnbrook?" she
+inquired with purposeful determination to clutch the truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw it in the paper," the now brightening youth answered.  "There
+certainly was a report that he was married, or engaged, or something of
+that sort; but it turns out to be a mistake.  He's a young chap, about
+thirty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How interesting!" Ethel murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he good-looking?" Dagmar inquired, with a suggestion of
+appropriating the new-found peer if he should be fortunate enough to
+touch her standard of beauty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't say," Sharnbrook smirked.  "Sure to be if he's a lord," he
+added, with cheap sarcasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar crossed to Ethel and slapped her on the shoulder.  "My chance,
+my dear; you're booked," she said in a determined undertone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel gave a repudiatory "Pooh!" and pushed her away.  Dagmar walked
+serenely to the window.  "I wonder if that is his lordship coming up
+the street?" she exclaimed suddenly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel ran to the window.  "Where?  Which?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no one in view at the moment who could be supposed by any
+stretch of imagination to come up to even an unconventional idea of a
+peer of the realm, nevertheless the sanguine Dagmar pushed her sister
+away.  The first sight of the waiting coronet was for her alone.
+"Never you mind, Ethel," she said roughly, "I am quite competent to
+look out for him.  You amuse yourself with Mr. Sharnbrook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Sharnbrook meanwhile was experiencing some difficulty in arranging
+a decent veil over his satisfaction.  "By Jove, they've jumped at
+Quorn," he told himself gleefully.  "If only&mdash;I say, Ethel," he said
+with sudden affection, to test the new phase of the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel pushed away the arm which had recklessly found its way round her,
+until lately inviting, waist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be absurd, Mr. Sharnbrook," she protested snappishly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shouldn't have been absurd just now," he retorted pointedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't take your chance, and you've lost it."  The fact that she
+turned haughtily away prevented her seeing an uncomplimentary look of
+joyful relief in her recalcitrant lover's face.  If only this Lord
+Quorn were a decent fellow and would back him up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a time father is at that stupid club," Dagmar exclaimed
+impatiently.  "And we have got to go to Babbleton.  We've no excuse for
+not going now the rain has so provokingly stopped."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's go and rout father out, and get back soon," Ethel suggested, not
+a whit behind her in eagerness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come along, then, dear," said Dagmar, giving a preparatory look at
+herself in the glass.  "Aren't you going to take your young man with
+us?" she added with a view to her sister's annoyance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you don't want to come, do you, Mr. Sharnbrook?" Ethel said with a
+somewhat obvious lack of cordiality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To Babbleton?  Not exactly," replied the wary Sharnbrook with so much
+fervour that Dagmar laughed unpleasantly.  His principal desire now was
+to get into the middle of a ten-acre field and sing a pæan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come on, then, Dagmar," his <I>soi-disante fiancée</I> said with a toss of
+the head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar drew back, however.  "Say good-bye to your dear Jack," she
+suggested with ill-timed humour.  "I won't look."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel's face, under the fun, made Sharnbrook rejoice more than ever at
+the chance which, properly worked, might obviate any claim on his part
+to that ungratifying physiognomy.  "Dagmar!  How absurd you are; Mr.
+Sharnbrook does not appreciate the joke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed!" her sister retorted in a voice which might, without violating
+the fitness of things, have been pitched somewhat lower.  "I thought he
+was the only person who tried to see a joke in your engagement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ethel!"  He called her back mischievously, secure in his good fortune.
+"I was going to Carter's about a ring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," she replied with a not very gracious nod, "that can wait.  Catch
+me," she said to herself as she hurried after Dagmar, "catch me wearing
+an engagement ring while there is a bachelor peer in the house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quorn's the man to save me," Sharnbrook murmured jubilantly as he
+strolled into the yard to see the designing fair ones off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mercy ran in to have a sight of her new mistresses from the window.  A
+groom with a gold band round a weather-beaten hat, who looked as though
+he occasionally sought distraction from the monotony of stable-work in
+the more Arcadian occupation of gardening, came by, touching his hat to
+the ladies, then signing more familiarly to the landlord's daughter
+that he had a communication for her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Miss Popkiss," he said, as she opened the window.  "Mrs. Dixon
+will be glad if you will come to the Towers to-morrow, as the other
+young lady is leaving to-night.  One of our chaps will be in town and
+he'll drive you over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well, Mr. Tootal," she said archly.  "I'll be ready."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Tootal glanced round and dropped from an official to a confidential
+tone.  "I think you'll like us," he ventured to predict.  "Our people
+are rather frauds, and stiff as boot-tops, but Lord Quorn is coming to
+stay, and we've hopes we shall wake up.  Well, I mustn't keep old
+Wax-work waiting.  O revoire."  With a wink and an amorous flourish
+suggestive of future blandishments, Mr. Tootal ran off, while Miss
+Popkiss turned to the glass and contemplated her charms with much
+satisfaction.  The magnificent possibilities of a life in a novel
+sphere were before her, and she meant to make the most of her chances.
+And, after all, as she told herself with her head held critically on
+one side, there is no knowing what a pretty girl may do if only she
+sets her mind to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So engrossed was she in the contemplation of her face and its probable
+effect upon the denizens of Staplewick Towers that she did not hear her
+father's approach.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you hear, Mercy?" he cried in a tone of testy importance.  "We are
+to have a distinguished visitor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A distinguished visitor?" she repeated rather disdainfully.  "Mr.
+Gillions, the big commercial, I suppose.  It is about his time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So far as an expansively fat face can express anything, that of Host
+Popkiss indicated withering scorn at such a suggestion.  "Gillions!
+Commercial!" he repeated, in croaking contempt of even that potentate
+of the road.  "I tell you the new Lord Quorn is going to stop here on
+his way to the Towers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Popkiss at once became interested.  "When is he coming?" she asked
+with all the animation her father could desire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-day," he spluttered,&mdash;"any minute.  So just get things a bit smart,
+and let's show his lordship our best face," and he bustled off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn!  Our best face!"  Miss Popkiss, with the nearest approach
+to a flutter of which her free and easy nature was capable, yet found
+time for another glance in the mirror.  The result was clearly
+encouraging.  "It's the only one I've got," she observed knowingly;
+"but I guess it will do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not being, however, quite satisfied in her mind as to the rival effects
+of pink ribbons in her cap, or blue, she ran off to her room to
+institute a comparison, thereby just failing to notice the entrance of
+a strange guest.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The man who, avoiding the bar, made his way straight into the
+coffee-room, entered with an air in which jauntiness and limpness were
+curiously combined.  His get-up showed that curious caricature of the
+prevailing fashion which dressy young men of depraved, or at least
+untutored, judgment are prone to affect, and was, from his patent
+leather boots to his aggressive diamond tie-pin, in singular contrast
+to his dusty and rather forlorn appearance.  His clothes, in spite of
+their over-smart cut, had the stale, creased look of garments that have
+been worn for several days continuously.  They were, indeed, in keeping
+with the wearer's hunted look, resembling in character the coat of a
+fox after a stiff run.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a half yawn, half sigh of exhaustion, the man dropped into a
+wooden armchair, and flicked with his partridge cane a bell on the
+table by him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Heigho!  My last fling.  Now for a good one," he muttered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Popkiss, more than usually on the alert, and postponing for the
+moment the respective claims of blue and pink, lost no time in
+presenting herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, my dear, what have you got in the house?" the man inquired,
+pulling himself together and speaking jauntily, partly from policy,
+partly from the natural instinct ever roused by the propinquity of a
+pretty girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nice cold sirloin, sir," Mercy answered mechanically, regarding the
+new guest with expectant eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beef?  Is that the best you can do?" he asked, with a dissatisfied
+laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fowl, sir," Miss Popkiss suggested in a preoccupied tone, trying to
+adjust the customer's appearance and manner with her preconceived ideas
+of the peerage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fowl; that's better.  No game?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Game's not in season, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He gave a loud mirthless laugh to cover his mistake.  "No, I suppose
+not in the country," he retorted with cockney wit.  "Now, look here, my
+dear," he went on, impressively tapping her arm with the crook of his
+stick; "to cut it short, I want the best dinner you can serve me;
+regardless of expense, several courses&mdash;as many as you like&mdash;you
+understand?  Tell cook to do her best, and to hurry up with it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir," responded Miss Popkiss, having now little doubt as to the
+guest's identity.  "Will you take anything to drink, sir?" she asked,
+lingeringly, calculating the social advantage to be derived from being
+the first in the place to see the long-lost and newly-found Lord Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will I take anything to drink?"  He whistled scornfully at the
+suggestion of a doubt in the matter.  "Where's your wine-list?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Popkiss roused herself from her contemplation, and brought it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guest ran his fingers quickly down the column devoted not to the
+brands but to their prices.  "Look here.  A bottle of number eleven and
+a bottle of twenty-four pop."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The oldest port-wine and the most expensive champagne.  The order
+settled any lingering doubt in Miss Popkiss' mind.  "Anything else,
+sir?" she asked with an excess of assiduity as she took back the list.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The half-admiring attention with which she was observing him could not
+fail by this to have its effect upon the visitor.  "Well," he answered,
+with a leer, which was evidently intended to be killing.  "I shouldn't
+mind a sip of something&mdash;just to keep me going."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If his words were equivocal, his manner left their meaning
+unmistakable.  Nevertheless Miss Popkiss made a spirited attempt to
+ignore it.  "I suppose you mean a bitters, sir?" she suggested
+disingenuously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guest went through an exaggerated pantomime of scrutinizing the
+lady's tempting lips.  "No; they look anything but bitter," he
+returned, waggishly amorous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A glass of dry sherry, sir?  What number would you like?"  Miss
+Popkiss hastily ran to where she had replaced the wine-list, and with
+the same movement took the opportunity of looking out of the window.
+Mr. Thomas Sparrow was not in evidence: in fact, the yard seemed empty.
+Satisfied of this she took the list demurely to the still leering guest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Number four," he said, with a world of cheap blandishment in his
+winking eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Number four?"  Miss Popkiss nearly succeeded in a look of
+mystification.  "Number four is a claret, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's more like the colour," he replied significantly.  "Here!"  He
+took a step to her, disregarding her feeble attempt to hold the
+wine-list as a barrier between them.  "Don't you know what make four?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, sir?" she asked with a giggle now; preferring his working out of
+the arithmetical problem as likely to be more racy than her own.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why"&mdash;taking the obnoxious wine-list with one hand, and slipping the
+other round her waist&mdash;"four is two and two together, like this."  And
+he followed up the proposition by oscular demonstration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, my lord!  Don't do so, my lord!" Miss Popkiss affected to protest,
+without, however, raising her voice to a pitch that would reach the
+bar, or making more than the most perfunctory efforts to release
+herself from the encircling arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a good sample," he grinned amorously.  "I should like a dozen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no doubt about him, Miss Popkiss concluded, the episode
+entirely falling in with her preconception of aristocratic ways.  "Oh,"
+she giggled, "you are a naughty nobleman."  Then, releasing herself,
+this time by a business-like effort, she ran off, doubtless with the
+idea, after the manner of her kind, of doling out her favours and
+spreading the lordly caresses over as long a period as circumstances
+permitted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps it was as well; for, scarcely had she turned her back on the
+dusty Philander when the lips which had just been pressed to hers
+opened wide in a very unromantic yawn.  Then their owner threw himself
+wearily back into the chair and laughed languidly.  "Nobleman!" he
+murmured, with a puff of amused scorn at the provincial greenness.
+"And she called me my lord when I kissed her."  The idea seemed to
+tickle him in spite of his weariness.  "She knows their ways," he
+commented languidly as he took out a silver cigarette-case, flashily
+enamelled with a spirited representation of men's three popular vices
+in combination, and lighted up.  "Is it my appearance, or the swagger
+dinner I have ordered, or both?" he murmured, dropping now to a rueful
+tone.  Opposite to him, filling up the space between the windows, was a
+long mirror.  With what was evidently characteristic conceit, the young
+man put himself into a photographic attitude, with the cigarette held
+effectively after the fashion he had noted in certain royal and
+theatrical portraits, and regarded himself with rueful complacency.
+"Percy Peckover, my boy," he murmured, "you are going to deprive the
+world of an ornament.  There is plenty of fun in the world, but not for
+you; so the sooner you are out of it the better.  Ah!" he continued
+with a shudder, "that young woman little thinks that the warm lips just
+pressed to hers will soon be cold."  With a quick, almost despairing
+action, he put the cigarette in his mouth and then drew a small phial
+from his pocket.  "Yes," he said under his breath; "this will do the
+business in a jiffy."  He shivered, and, as though to pull himself
+together, puffed vigorously at the cigarette.  "By George, I should
+hope so," he muttered grimly.  "Ekin would not play me a trick.  Yes,"
+he rambled on reminiscently, "I said&mdash;didn't I?&mdash;now, mind, no pain,
+Ekin, old man.  None of your strychnines or antimonies.  You've got the
+whole shop to choose from; let me just go off to sleep and wake no
+more.  Yes, there were tears in poor old Tom's eyes; he was so upset he
+could hardly give me the bottle, telling me to rely on his professional
+skill.  Let's see; he said, 'mix it in a glass of anything you like,
+and you'll drop off as comfortable as an Archbishop.'"  He took out the
+stopper and sniffed at the phial.  "It smells like Westminster Abbey,"
+he said with the irrepressible jocularity of his type.  "Well, it's
+better than&mdash;&mdash;" he shuddered at the unspoken alternative.  "It only
+wants a little courage; just five seconds' pluck," he told himself, as
+he slipped the phial back into his waistcoat pocket.  "The champagne
+will give me that.  'Ang the future, let me fair enjoy myself for the
+few moments that are left me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He lighted a fresh cigarette, got up and stood admiringly before the
+mirror, pulled down his soiled cuffs, settled his necktie, setting the
+diamond pin straight, smoothed his hair with a hand that seemed to
+tremble, then turned away with an exclamation of impatience, and stood
+looking vacantly out of the window.  The feeble humours of the inn-yard
+seemed to amuse him: anyhow, he did not notice Mr. and Miss Popkiss who
+had come to the door and stayed there regarding him with intense
+curiosity and satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"There he is, father; I'm sure it is Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps it was the recollection of the procedure which had led her to
+that conclusion that surprised her into the laugh, not so low but that
+it reached the object of their attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned quickly, suspiciously, and, seeing the two interested faces,
+in an instant had assumed his air of jaunty swagger.  "Well, landlord;
+is my dinner coming to-day, or are you waiting for the chicken to
+hatch?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Popkiss advanced, purple and radiant, laughing his best laugh at the
+lordly joke.  Mr. Popkiss, as became an innkeeper who knew his
+business, had a series of nicely graduated tokens of appreciation, from
+the superior half smile with which he discounted the poor wit of the
+yokel who was good but for a pint of small beer and took a whole
+evening to discuss it, through the qualified guffaw with which he
+stamped with his approval the heavy jokes of his regular market-day
+customers, up to the apoplectic and wheezy roar with which he would
+greet the sallies of a really important guest, whose bill bade fair to
+overrun the shilling column.  Twice in one short hour had he, Samuel
+Popkiss, been on speaking terms with different members of the upper
+classes; small wonder was it that all thought of Mr. Doutfire's
+expected "party" had been centrifugally dispersed by the whirl in which
+he found his brain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ha! ha!" he chuckled, rubbing his hands as he advanced with his best
+reception manner.  "No, sir, that is to say, my lord, dinner is just
+ready, and I think we shall please you," he suggested unctuously.  "You
+will want something to keep you up for the last part of your journey
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words sounded full of ominous significance; Mr. Peckover went a
+shade paler, while his swagger for an instant sagged visibly, as he
+wondered whether his host could have seen him sniffing at the
+euthanasia now lying snug in his waistcoat pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Popkiss was busy laying the cloth in a style most effective both
+as to the decoration of the table and the showing off of certain
+personal graces.  For that young lady's methods of laying a table when
+alone and when being&mdash;as she hoped&mdash;watched during the operation were
+widely contrasted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After so much buffetting about, as I may say," observed Popkiss
+genially, as he panted round the table, laying unnecessary forks in
+places where their usefulness was not obvious, "you will be glad to
+settle down comfortable yonder."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pointed with a fat hand vaguely and tentatively in the direction of
+Staplewick Towers, being perhaps anxious to put beyond doubt the
+question of his guest's identity.  Peckover, with, doubtless, the idea
+of a somewhat different stronghold in his mind looked quickly towards
+the point indicated.  His glance, however, travelled no farther than
+the church tower; anyhow, it could hardly have reached the other
+landmark which was five miles off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the church which shut in his view was enough.  The cigarette
+slipped from the lips that parted convulsively with the dropping jaw.
+The churchyard!  "Glad he has arranged it," he muttered shakily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you may be sure of a warm welcome from the old gentleman," Popkiss
+added, stopping to beam upon his guest in the midst of his superfluous
+bustle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The devil!" Peckover exclaimed aghast, scrutinizing the expansive face
+for a sign of "kidding."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," maintained Popkiss, proud of the office of herald of welcome
+between two august personages; "he has been here already to look for
+you, and very anxious he is to carry you off to the place which,
+begging pardon, is yours by rights."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was too much for Peckover, who stood staring at his obese
+tormentor utterly bereft of speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," continued Popkiss with a mitigating chuckle, "he can't
+help showing the cloven hoof sometimes, they say; but he's not so black
+as he is painted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, I'm glad of that," ejaculated Peckover, wide-eyed and staggered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," the landlord observed, as rounding off the subject, "we must, as
+I always say, give the devil his due; and as you are going so soon to
+make his acquaintance, you will be able to judge for yourself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover turned away from what he could only consider as a corpulent
+and highly objectionable jester, and passed a shaking hand across his
+clammy brow.  "I must stop these funniments," he told himself, "if I
+want any appetite for my last dinner."  With a supreme effort he pulled
+himself together, and faced the fatuously grinning host with a dash of
+his native impudence.  "Don't let me keep you, landlord," he said with
+a wave of condescension.  "Nothing suits me so well as a pretty girl
+waiting on me.  That's the relish for this customer, it beats all your
+Worcesters and Harveys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Popkiss rubbed his puffy hands appreciatively.  "My daughter, sir, that
+is, my lord; she shall look after your lordship."  Then in a tone of
+deferential confidence, he added, "She will follow later on where you
+are going to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The deuce she will!" cried the guest, now fairly bewildered.  "What
+has she been up to?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The rotund landlord, not quite seeing the appropriateness of the
+inquiry, and perhaps feeling that it was a form of snubbing for undue
+familiarity, abruptly changed the subject.  "I hope you'll like your
+dinner, my lord," he said with unctuous confidence as he waddled
+towards the door.  "I know one thing," he chuckled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's that?" Peckover asked half apprehensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your lordship won't want any supper."  With which parting and
+equivocal witticism the expansive joker vanished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whew!  There he goes again," gasped Peckover, dropping limply into the
+nearest chair.  "He has made me tremble all over."  He gave a wild
+glance at the grey church tower looming&mdash;frowning, it seemed&mdash;cold and
+depressing.  "George!  I've a good mind to stop alive and risk it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The entrance of Miss Popkiss with an array of dishes which might have
+elucidated the landlord's parting remark, and with a new bow in her
+hair, brought the guest up to attention again.  Hungry, tired and
+especially thirsty, he lost no time in falling to, and so intent was he
+upon the good cheer before him that for a time the Hebe became
+aggrieved at the thought that the extra attention to her personal
+appearance had been thrown away, and the aid of curling tongs and smart
+ribbon been invoked to no purpose.  However, with the second glass of
+champagne, the guest manifestly began to take more interest in things
+in general and of the expectant handmaiden in particular.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" he exclaimed with a lengthy expiration of quasi-content, as Miss
+Popkiss deftly and with a flourish of the bangle on the wrist that was
+more in evidence, removed the fish and set the fowl before him.  "I'm
+beginning to feel better."  He tossed off another glass of champagne.
+"I say, my dear, your father is a cheerful person.  His conversation is
+enough to make a boiled cod-fish shiver."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir&mdash;my lord," responded Miss Popkiss, abandoning the discussion
+of the parental characteristics in favour of a subject of more
+immediate interest, namely, herself; "it is a bit dullish here.  That's
+why I am leaving."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you are leaving?" remarked Peckover, taking as polite an interest
+in the statement as was consistent with having his mouth full.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she informed him.  "I am going to the place you are bound for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bubbling glass was half-way to his eager lips, but he set it down
+again.  "The devil you are?" he exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It must at least be as lively as this," Miss Popkiss hazarded, with a
+pretty affectation of ennui.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A good deal more so," the guest declared, pausing in his eating to
+stare blankly in front of him in utter mystification.  The result of
+his hazy cogitation was that if the people of the inn were labouring
+under some absurd delusion it would be as well not to disturb it.
+"Well, there's no accounting for tastes," he remarked, falling back on
+that non-committal, if unoriginal aphorism, and redirecting his
+attention to the roast chicken.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some folks," gossiped Miss Popkiss, by way of a running conversational
+accompaniment to the dinner, "who don't fancy the place, would say it
+was out of the frying pan into the fire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Number twenty-four had steadied the guest's nerves.  "Yes," he agreed
+grimly, "most people would say that.  Now," he muttered, "she's at it.
+What's that?" he inquired, pointing with his knife to a side dish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Curry, sir&mdash;my lord," the waitress answered, moving the dish towards
+him.  "Curried goose, my lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He gave her a suspicious glance, and then pushed the dish away.  There
+seemed too much of the personal and anticipatory element in the pungent
+dainty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it's not very hot," she protested, with the ready word for the
+credit of the cuisine.  "Nothing like what you may find it elsewhere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These jokes, it seemed to the guest, if jokes they were, grew
+monotonous, while their bad taste was undeniable.  As a cockney
+sybarite in a cheap way, he liked to have a good-looking waitress to
+chatter to while dining, as he liked to chaff a barmaid over a "small
+scotch and polly", or a gin and ginger beer; but this was not the sort
+of thing the occasion seemed to call for.  Accordingly he proceeded to
+eat and drink in silence.  After all, the one solid tangible
+fact&mdash;presumably the last&mdash;that the world held for him, was the
+first-class dinner he was recklessly enjoying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Piqued by her failure to maintain the interest she had so auspiciously
+begun to excite in the distinguished guest, Miss Popkiss turned in a
+huff to the window, and affected a melancholy interest in the heavy
+shower which had come on, to be roused suddenly from her air of
+indifference to things in general and the preoccupied gourmandizer in
+particular by catching sight of the adventurous Mr. Thomas Sparrow
+sheltering under a lean-to a few feet from the window.  Evidently on
+the watch, he came quickly to the window, heedless of the downpour.
+Miss Popkiss, with a guilty conscience, received him graciously; put
+her finger to her lip and pointed with an air of importance to the
+still voracious Peckover.  Sparrow looked, and his damp face clouded
+with jealous doubt.  "Lord Quorn," whispered Miss Popkiss behind her
+hand.  Even if Mr. Sparrow had seen that affectionate passage he could
+scarcely expect his sweetheart to withhold an occasional kiss from a
+real, if newly discovered, peer of the realm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whatever attraction a noble <I>bon-vivant</I> might have had for Mr. Sparrow
+at any other time, he was just then in too close proximity to a
+gutter-spout and a tempting pair of lips to devote more than a critical
+glance and a nod of surprised comprehension to the person indicated.
+Then, eager to catch the fleeting opportunity, he put forth a moist
+hand, pulled Miss Popkiss a thought nearer to him, and so steadying her
+for the operation and obviating a possible retreat, he kissed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether caused by the unusual electricity in the air or the eager hurry
+with which it was performed, the osculation created more noise than is
+considered desirable by well-bred lovers.  Peckover, dining steadily,
+silently, jumped round, uncertain for the moment whether the report was
+that of a drawn cork, or some trick of the neglected waitress to
+attract his attention.  He was alert enough and man of the world enough
+to comprehend the situation; indeed, had he been aware that a man was
+so near it would never have been in question.  As it was he turned just
+in time to see Mr. Sparrow's gratified countenance drawing back into
+the unsympathetic rain.  The sight gave him an uneasy thrill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hullo!" he cried sharply.  "Who was that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only a friend of mine," answered Miss Popkiss, with an air of showing
+herself not dependent for amatory attentions upon casual customers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her manner scarcely reassured the visitor.  "It wasn't&mdash;I mean&mdash;" he
+stammered uneasily, "he looked like a policeman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, sir; how could you think so, sir!" Miss Popkiss protested with
+a touch of offended dignity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought I heard a kiss," Peckover suggested, still unsatisfied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Other people can kiss besides the police," Miss Popkiss declared, with
+a toss of the head, too exasperated by the banal suggestion to deny the
+act.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover began to think it was all right.  "So they can, my poppet, so
+they can," he exclaimed more cheerfully, regarding the young lady with
+a leer which owed much of its <I>empressement</I> to the champagne.  As it
+occurred to him that a little philandering might form a not unpleasing
+diversion between the courses, he rose with the leer intensified and
+approached Miss Popkiss with the recognizable intent of sharing with
+Mr. Sparrow the charmer's osculatory liberality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the young lady was astute enough to realize the unseasonableness of
+what at another time she would have welcomed.  Accordingly she
+retreated before Peckover's advance, taking care to keep to that side
+of the room least visible from the window.  "Oh, sir, no, sir; I'd
+rather you didn't, my lord," she protested, in quite a virtuous fluster.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peckover's knowledge of human character did not incline him to
+believe in the coyness that will sometimes try to stiffen the market
+for notoriously cheap kisses.  He manoeuvred Miss Popkiss into a corner
+and then pounced upon her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether it was that Mr. Thomas Sparrow, waiting discontentedly in the
+rain, had had his suspicions aroused as to the real sentiments existing
+at the moment between his lady-love and the noble customer, or whether
+he was merely anxious, now that the intervening attraction was removed,
+to take a more curious and leisurely survey of the interesting addition
+to the peerage, anyhow, he again, in a lull of the storm, sidled to the
+window and looked in.  Not seeing the guest where he expected to find
+him, he boldly put his head in the window and glanced round the room.
+To observe in a corner, Miss Popkiss, coyly&mdash;or as it seemed to him,
+invitingly&mdash;protestant, at bay before Peckover, who was making a
+playful feint attack upon her with his serviette preparatory to getting
+to close quarters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whatever effect the sight had upon Mr. Sparrow, words utterly failed
+him to give adequate expression to it.  All he could emit was a choked
+half-cry, half-growl of rage and warning.  At the sound Peckover gave a
+great jump and for the moment stood scared and paralysed.  Miss
+Popkiss, profiting by the respite, gave a scream just loud enough to
+justify herself and preserve her character for fidelity without
+arousing her father, and fled from the room, possibly to avoid awkward
+explanations.  Peckover stood, staring blankly at the wrathful Sparrow,
+who, emboldened by his rival's limp attitude, shook his fist at him
+viciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, my lord!  Wait till I get at you, my lord!" he foamed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His air was so menacing that when Peckover found his voice the first
+use he put it to was to call, "Landlord!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Throughout the vocabulary he could not have chosen a word which would
+have had a more immediate and electric effect on the qualified
+aggressiveness of Mr. Sparrow.  That love-sick functionary seemed
+instantly to collapse and recede from the window which had been the
+frame round a picture of rustic fury.  Only with his retreat, certain
+words, like Parthian arrows, floated in from the storm to Peckover's
+hypersensitized ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait till you come outside, my noble lord.  I'll teach you to dance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll be very clever if you do," their object commented grimly as
+with a sigh of relief he turned to the smilingly inquisitive face of
+the landlord who had now appeared.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Did you call, my lord?" was, considering the tone of the summons, Host
+Popkiss' unnecessary enquiry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My lord!" repeated Peckover irritably.  "How you country fellows do a
+joke to death.  Yes; I did call.  Who was that absurd person intruding
+through the window?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Popkiss went to the window with what promptness his bulk would
+allow and looked blankly out into the rain-swept courtyard.  "I don't
+see any one," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't eat my dinner with a Jack-in-the-box fooling behind me,"
+Peckover complained suspiciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, certainly not," the host agreed with professional severity.  "It
+must have been Doutfire."  Satisfied with the conjecture he went up
+confidentially to his guest.  "I'll tell you, my lord.  It might have
+been Mr. Doutfire, our detective from Long Rixon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover with an effort arrested his jaw in the act of falling, and
+snapped it to with a rattle of the teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"De&mdash;detective?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," Popkiss explained, with a touch of importance, as one who, in
+his responsible calling, is permitted to share the Treasury secrets;
+"he is expecting a chap down here that is wanted by the London police.
+He missed him at Faxfleet railway station, and has now gone back to
+Rixon, but if he don't hear of him there he is coming back here again.
+He is a clever man, is our Mr. Doutfire," he proceeded, warming with
+local pride and at the same time justifying any eccentric methods to
+which the eminent officer of the law might have thought proper to
+descend; "cleverest man in these parts by a long chalk, and we are a
+bit proud of him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So full of admiration and pride was Host Popkiss that he failed to take
+notice of his guest's ghastly face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, that will do," said Peckover hurriedly, with an effort to
+appear loftily satisfied.  "If it is only the detective, I don't mind."
+His one and feverish desire now was to be left alone.  The crisis was
+at hand, and it must be faced without witnesses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Popkiss with corpulent strut left the room, somewhat disgusted at
+having failed to excite interest in the artful Doutfire, Peckover went
+hastily to the door and shut it upon the retreating mass of licensed
+importance.  Then he turned, almost in a state of collapse.  The
+champagne bottle caught his eye; he staggered to the table, poured out
+a glass blindly, and swallowed it.  "It's all up," he muttered in a
+hoarse whisper.  "It has come to amen.  That was not the detective, but
+he's not far off.  Clever man: back directly."  He laughed miserably,
+then subsided limply into the chair, and sat with his head resting on
+his clammy hands.  He was caught.  If the local police, headed by the
+nailing Mr. Doutfire, had got wind of his presence in the neighbourhood
+there was clearly no escape but one.  "Ugh!"  He shuddered as in
+imagination he heard handcuffs click and felt the cold embrace of the
+steel round his wrists.  He sat there with head erect now, his hands
+pressed against his cheeks, his eyes staring fascinated by the scenes
+which his imagination, coloured by the study of police reports,
+pictured before him: he saw the magistrate committing him; then himself
+in the dock at the Old Bailey; the Treasury counsel unfolding a black
+case against him, his flash pals, the real culprits, grinning at his
+misery from the gallery; the jury shaking their uncompromising heads in
+all a small tradesman's Pharisaical virtuousness; he heard the verdict,
+guilty; he saw the judge, unrelenting and terrible in scarlet and
+ermine, mouthing at him before coming to the point&mdash;five years, ten,
+fifteen!  He started up trembling, with beads standing on his forehead
+and with despairing eyes.  "I couldn't stand it!" he moaned.  "I'll
+never go through it.  They shan't take me alive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Feverishly he felt for his pocket, in his agitation missing the opening
+more than once.  He took out the phial, gave an apprehensive glance
+round at the window, emptied the contents into the glass and filled it
+up with champagne.  Then, with the means of escape ready to his hand,
+he seemed to steady himself.  "Now," he said, with a grim smile; "five
+seconds' courage, and I can snap my fingers at 'em all.  It's only like
+a sleeping draught."  He raised the glass to his lips, held it there
+for two or three seconds, and then set it down.  Perhaps there was no
+hurry for five minutes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, I'm going off," he soliloquized dreamily.  "I wish I'd had a
+fairer fling while I was at it.  It has been a poor, middle-class
+rollick after all," he continued ruefully.  "It's too late now.  But I
+should like to have done the real swell, if only for a week; gone in
+for thousands instead of a few paltry pounds; Belgravia instead of
+Camden Town; Monte Carlo instead of Herne Bay and Yarmouth;
+high-steppers; Hurlingham; Henley; a real lady or two mashed on me
+instead of&mdash;ah, well, she wasn't so bad; it wasn't her fault she wasn't
+class: she'll be the only one to be sorry.  Champagne," he took up the
+glass, "I might have had this sort all along if I'd had the nerve."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly recollecting, he set down the glass hastily.  "I forgot."
+Curiously he seemed to shudder at his narrow escape.  Then, as though
+impatient with his temporizing, "Bah! let me get it over," he muttered,
+and lifted the glass again, only to set it down once more.  "I wonder,"
+he said, as making an excuse for delay, "what the bill for this little
+dinner comes to.  Poor Fatty will have to apply to my executors.
+Wonder if he will see a joke there."  He laughed at his touch of
+Cockneyfied humour.  Then relapsed into the morbid state.  "Will the
+pretty little daughter be sorry?  Perhaps.  Not she; no one will.  The
+sooner I'm off the hooks the better.  Here goes for the last time."  He
+took up the glass.  "I'll count three, and then toss it off."  He shut
+his eyes, hesitated a moment, then began.  "One, two, thr&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The glass was but waiting for the last word to leave his lips when the
+door opened with an impatient, unceremonious burst, and a man came in,
+flinging it to behind him.  Another dusty, worn-out man, who stared for
+a moment at Peckover, and then, turning a chair from the table, just
+let himself fall into it.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Peckover, arrested in his intent, had opened his eyes, and now stood
+staring half dazed at the new-comer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hullo!" yawned that person genially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh?" ejaculated Peckover hazily, eyeing him with suspicion, and not
+quite able to realize the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Excuse me if I disturb you," said the man, with another tremendous
+yawn.  "If I don't sit down somewhere I shall drop on the floor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover told himself that this was scarcely the detective, and even if
+he were his condition gave colour to a wild hope of escape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tired?"  The superfluous question was put tentatively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You bet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dry?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Always."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have a glass of fizz?"  In Peckover's situation even that unusual
+hospitality was a matter of indifference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," answered the man, smothering a third yawn in recognition of
+his fellow-guest's civility.  "You are a brick.  Got more than you care
+to drink there?" he added to qualify his somewhat grabbing acceptance
+of the offer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," answered Peckover with grim significance.  Then checking himself
+as he was about to offer the drugged glass to the stranger, he
+exclaimed hastily, "Oh, that won't do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Short of glasses?" said the other accommodatingly.  "I don't mind a
+tumbler to save time."  He spun one across to Peckover who emptied the
+remains of the bottle into it.  The stranger poured the wine down his
+throat without the action of swallowing.  "Ah, that's better!" he
+declared with a great sigh of enjoyment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Walked too far?" Peckover suggested listlessly.  "Not used to it,
+p'raps?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Got out of the way of it," the man explained.  "Three months aboard
+ship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Australia?" Peckover suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger nodded.  "That's it.  Come from London this morning.  Got
+out at Faxfleet to walk over here.  Lost my way in the woods."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Didn't come straight, then?"  Peckover had an indistinct recollection
+of having seen this fellow at the station, but had been too much
+flurried to take more than passing notice of him.  Were they companions
+in bad luck, he wondered.  "Have a glass of port," he said, warming
+towards his fellow-guest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your wine?  Thanks.  Good chap.  Crime to refuse old crusted, eh?"  He
+emptied the glass which Peckover promptly refilled.  Then put on a
+mysteriously significant look.  "No, I didn't come straight here, and
+for a good reason."  He sank his voice.  "Fact is, I'm dodging a
+bush-ranger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" exclaimed Peckover, disinclined to take the statement seriously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger pulled his chair close up to his companion, and tapped him
+with his forefinger on the knee.  "Look here," he said confidently.
+"You don't belong to these parts?  Nothing of the chawbacon about you.
+Town man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Slightly," answered Peckover, with a chastened pride in the
+undisputable claim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other grasped his hand.  "I can trust you?"  Peckover, recovering
+from the cold thrill which the somewhat demonstrative clasp occasioned,
+nodded impressively.  "You are a smart Londoner," the stranger
+continued, "I'll tell you my situation, and get your advice.  Mind,
+though, it's a dead secret."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It soon will be with me," thought Peckover miserably, as he assured
+his companion on the point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Host Popkiss, glancing in at the door, saw the two in close confidence,
+and with the cocksureness usual with men of limited sagacity concluded
+that the "party" wanted by Mr. Doutfire had arrived and was trying the
+confidence trick on the new-fledged member of the peerage.  And having
+so settled it, he strolled out to keep a watchful eye for the detective.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's downright romantic," the thirsty stranger was saying with an
+apologetic smile.  "Now, you wouldn't think it to look at me, but I'm a
+peer of the realm."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jehoshaphat!" commented Peckover, more frank than polite.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just the remark I made when I heard I was Lord Quorn," said the other
+pleasantly.  "Been sheep-farming in New South Wales for the last twelve
+years.  Not much luck of any sort, though, till the other day.  Got a
+letter to say distant cousin dead, and I had succeeded to the title.
+Not much trimming with it, they tell me.  Bit of tumble-down family
+property near here, Staplewick Towers, let to some grand lady."  He
+pulled out a letter and looked at the signature.  "Lady Agatha Hemyock,
+that's it," he said, exhibiting the letter as documentary evidence of
+his veracity.  "So I have just trotted down to take stock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And where does the bush-ranger come in?" was Peckover's not unnatural
+inquiry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Quorn wagged his head knowingly, and drank off another glass of
+port-wine without apology, as though the privilege of being made the
+recipient of a peer's confidences was in itself ample payment for the
+refreshment in question.  "Out there," the vague wave of his hand was
+understood to be towards New South Wales, "I used up my spare time
+flirting with a fine woman who had a figure and a will of her own.  She
+would not have me, though; refused me more than once: but hearing one
+fine day that she had said no to a real live lord she felt pretty sick.
+However, I wasn't going to give her another chance; not likely, seeing
+that, besides being somewhat off her, I knew I could have my pick over
+here.  Thereupon she accuses me of playing the giddy deceiver, and
+threatens to bring me to book for breach of promise.  Well, I smiled at
+that, but it rather sent me up a tree when she trotted out her brother,
+the bush-ranger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My eye!" observed Peckover, interested in spite of himself.  "Fighting
+man, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Quorn nodded seriously.  "I saw him for the first time over here
+with her last night.  A desperate chap, I tell you," he went on
+anxiously, "who will stick at nothing&mdash;except your favourite vital part
+with a bowie knife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His auditor made a wry face to evince his sympathetic attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He keeps on show," Quorn continued, growing more and more dismally in
+earnest, "fire-irons he has snapped, gun-barrels he has tied in knots,
+crown pieces he has bitten through, eyes he has gouged out, preserved
+in spirits of wine, and pickled ears he has wrung off just for fun.
+I'm not exactly a coward, but what can you do against a man whose
+favourite pastime is twisting bullocks' heads off, and squeezing
+cannonballs out of shape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover drew down the corners of his mouth and shook his head, finding
+himself fully in accord with the other's policy of non-resistance.
+"Awkward customer to tackle," was all the encouragement he could
+suggest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Awkward!" repeated Lord Quorn in impatient contempt for the inadequate
+adjective, "You'd be the one to feel awkward with your nose divided in
+two, and your left ear in a piccalilli bottle on an amateur
+bush-ranger's mantelpiece.  Oh, I know," he continued in an exasperated
+tone, anticipating a trite and obvious piece of advice, "I could have
+the law of him, but there is precious small satisfaction in seeing a
+man go to prison out of your one remaining eye, and to know that when
+he comes out it will come out too.  Got any more liquor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His apprehensive indignation left no room for the common courtesies of
+even coffee-room life, he was seething with the angry sense of
+impotence before this critical and grievous position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover emptied the bottle into his glass.  "The last," he said, in a
+tone of sympathetic gloom; "and you're quite welcome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good Samaritan!" was Lord Quorn's casual acknowledgment as he tossed
+it off.  "Fact is," he proceeded to explain by way of tardy apology,
+"though I'm a swell and all that I am cleared out just now.  Drew a
+tidy sum for my travelling exes, but spent a few days in London, and a
+few pounds&mdash;you know what that means?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover nodded a rakish appreciation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," Quorn resumed darkly, "who should I clap eyes on last night at
+the play but my Australian girl and her infernal brother.  Followed me
+over, and on my track like an insurance agent.  Luckily she didn't see
+me, and he doesn't know me by sight.  Thinks I, best thing to do is to
+make a bolt down here and lie low till that bush-whacking nuisance eats
+his head off in London and has to go back to his happy hunting grounds.
+So, first thing to-day, sent a wire to Lady What's-her-name, and then
+found only just enough cash left in my pocket for third class to
+Faxfleet.  So I've tramped over.  That's the chronicle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've given your friends the slip?" Peckover suggested encouragingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hope so," replied Quorn, doubtfully.  "But they'll track me like
+kangaroo hunters.  A woman has a fine scent for a title; a coronet is
+like a red herring.  But I say," he broke off, as though a trifle
+ashamed of having monopolized the interest of the colloquy; "what does
+a smart chap like you want in this dead-alive hole?  You are not in a
+mess?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover's expression swiftly changed from altruistic interest to
+lugubrious self-pity.  "I am, though," he replied.  "Got Scotland Yard
+after me.  Don't be afraid," he protested hastily, as Lord Quorn's eyes
+opened wide with suspicion and he gave himself a slight, but
+significant, set-back in his chair; "I'm only half a criminal: the
+victim of circumstances.  Look here, confidence for confidence.  I'll
+tell you all about it."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"You may rely on my keeping my mouth shut," said Lord Quorn, giving a
+tremendous yawn which for the moment seemed to cast a doubt upon his
+ability in that direction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It doesn't much matter," Peckover responded mournfully.  "Well," he
+proceeded, with a touch of chastened self-glorification, "you must know
+I've been flinging myself about in London."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Painting the town red, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Painting myself black, more like it," he retorted.  "Very pleasant,
+though, while it lasted.  You see," he explained conceitedly, "I always
+had ideas above my position, and some time back I thought I'd emerge
+from the grub state and do a bit of butterflying."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn nodded; so far in sympathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," continued Peckover, "to be a butterfly in town you want a lot of
+dust on your wings; and when it comes to dressing a bit toffish,
+treating your friends, especially the ladies&mdash;and they've been my
+ruin"&mdash;he interjected with complacent self-reproach&mdash;"doing the Halls
+regular, and tooling your best girl out to Richmond or the Welsh Harp
+of a Sunday, why, five-and-thirty bob a week don't go far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Quorn shook his head sleepily, as being in complete, if drowsy,
+accord with the estimate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That figure," Peckover declared impressively, "was my blessed screw
+at&mdash;well, at an eminent firm of auctioneers.  Things were looking a bit
+bluish, a writ or two out against me, my tailor showed me no mercy, but
+his patience got shorter even than his thirteen bob trousers, in which,
+though too tight, as usual, I was ready to skip, when Jimmy Cutbush, a
+friend of mine in the racing world, put me on to a good thing which
+came off.  Jimmy drew my winnings and paid them over to me, promising
+plenty more tips of the same sort, till I began to understand how
+Rothschild feels; but, what do you think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Quorn was obviously not thinking anything worth mentioning just
+then, but, roused by the intensity with which the question was put, he
+rattled his ideas together and replied, "Ah, what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cutbush drew good money," said Peckover, knitting his brows, and
+throwing into the statement all the impressiveness which a
+five-and-thirty shilling clerk and voluptuary has at command, "and paid
+me in bad; and there was I, swaggering about and paying my way, with a
+lot of wrong 'uns in my pocket.  That was pretty steep, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Words failed Lord Quorn, in his present condition, adequately to
+characterize the situation; he contented himself by receiving it with
+an absurd grimace which was intended as an effective substitute for
+verbal comment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," pursued his companion, accepting the distortion of feature in
+the spirit in which it was produced, "day before yesterday I drove down
+to Kempton to round proper on my pal, having likewise backed Cockalorum
+for the Great Comet Stakes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did that come off?" Quorn inquired with an effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but his jockey did, and landed me in a nice hole.  Then when I
+tackled Cutbush, all he had to say was to call me a Juggins, and ask me
+what I took him for.  'Well,' I says naturally, 'I've won this oof, and
+can't spend it'; 'well,' he says,'buy a moneybox and save it.'  Then,
+as if that wasn't enough, as I was driving home, rather down in my
+luck, I had the misfortune to run over a noble duke in Piccadilly.  His
+Grace was in the middle of the road, looking for his balance, but of
+course the police took his side&mdash;a duke is never drunk, only deaf.
+Having left them my name and address, as well as my blessing, I drove
+on, when suddenly my beast of a horse took it into his head to say his
+prayers; result, both knees damaged.  When I left the stables, after a
+little friction with the proprietor, my landlady meets me and says I
+had better not go home, as the police have been waiting for me all day.
+Now you know why I am here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Inspirited by realizing that his companion's personal narrative had
+come to an end, Lord Quorn was able to rouse himself.  "Hanged if you
+aren't worse off than I am," he declared with a yawn.  "Don't think I'd
+change place with you.  Rather run the risk of being chawed up by that
+bush-devil.  Well, what are you going to do?" he asked, with lethargic
+sympathy.  "Slip across the water?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment Peckover debated with himself whether he should declare
+his expedient.  To conclude that it would serve no practical end.  "Oh,
+I've got a proper way out of my troubles," he answered enigmatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glad to hear it," Quorn replied indifferently.  "They are rather
+unkind to people who enter into competition with the Mint, aren't they?
+Well," he concluded, taken with a fresh access of yawning, "I hope
+you'll give 'em the slip.  Wish I could help you, but," he added
+waggishly, as giving a cheerful wind-up to the somewhat depressing
+mutual confidences; "you see it is more than I can do at present to
+help myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To drive home his double meaning he reversed the empty bottle, and then
+began sleepily to fill his pipe, humming a comic song the while.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's cut out for a lord," was Peckover's mental comment as he sat
+watching his companion with some contempt.  He was perhaps a little
+disgusted and disappointed that the story of his chapter of ill-luck
+and present critical position should have had no deeper or more lasting
+effect upon the man who had been so glad of his hospitality.  Peer or
+no peer, he might know better than to sing "Peculiar Julia" by way of
+dirge for one whose minutes of life, or at any rate, liberty, was
+numbered.  So he sat in disgust, watching the drowsy nobleman strike a
+match, and being too sleepy to apply it to his pipe, hold it, nodding,
+till the flame touched his fingers and brought him to with a start and
+a smothered word of objurgation.  "A pretty addition to the peerage,"
+he muttered with a sneer.  "Lord Quorn, indeed!  A fellow who hadn't
+the sense to keep awake when he had a lighted match in his hand.  And
+here was Percy Peckover&mdash;"  Suddenly a circumstance which the
+companionship had driven out of his mind recurred to him.  Both the
+landlord and his daughter had called him my lord.  It had seemed a
+feeble provincial joke, but it was now in a flash made intelligible.
+"Of course," he exclaimed under his breath as he started up at the
+thought, "I understand now.  They have been taking me for him.  That's
+what they meant by their silly my-lording.  And if that's the case, why
+shouldn't they go on taking him for me!  If they only would till I can
+get clear out of this, I might give that precious detective the slip
+and get clean away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With eyes full of the hopeful project he stood looking at the noble
+slumberer, then suddenly turned and tip-toed to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quiet as it was, the movement half roused Quorn.  "Jul-i-ah, Jul-i-ah!
+Why are you so very pecu-li-ah?" he sang sleepily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover stopped and looked back.  "I'll try it," he muttered.  "It's a
+bold stroke, but&mdash;where's that mug of a landlord?"  He opened the door
+softly, and stole out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sudden gust caught the window, and the rattle woke Quorn with a
+start.  He sat up, staring round stupidly, and found himself alone and
+thirsty with a full glass of champagne on the table before him.  He
+stared at it, then round the room again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gone?" he exclaimed.  "Flash little coiner chap gone?  Sin to waste
+good liquor."  With the word he took up the wine and tossed it off;
+then set down the glass with a wry face.  "Queer brand!" he ejaculated.
+"Faugh!  Filthy stuff&mdash;or else&mdash;&mdash;"  He got up with a shiver of
+disgust, and faced the doorway just in time to see his late companion
+peep in.  "I say, Mr. Ooff-merchant!" he called out, pointing to the
+empty glass, "What's the matter with this stuff?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Occupied with the strange chance of escape, Peckover had for the moment
+forgotten all about his drugged wine.  As his eye followed Quorn's
+unsteady finger, he went cold, and his knees knocked together.  In a
+flash he saw his effective way of escape cut off and&mdash;what was
+worse&mdash;his own predicament intensified a thousand-fold.  "You've never
+drunk that?" he gasped, when his dry tongue could articulate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have though," Quorn replied, regarding him with fearful suspicion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover clasped his head and staggered forward.  "You're a dead man,"
+he exclaimed hoarsely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Scott!  What do you mean?" cried Quorn, going pale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was&mdash;doctored," stammered the other, hardly knowing what he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poison?" demanded Quorn in a horrified tone, clutching fiercely at
+Peckover who dodged, as frightened as he.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he gave a laugh of desperation.  "Well, yes, if you like to call
+it so.  It's as good as murder," he assured himself in a woeful
+whisper.  "What am I to do?"  He ran to the window, but was arrested by
+a cry from his companion, and turned to see him collapse in a chair.
+"Here, wake up!  Stand up!  You'll be all right," he cried, desperately
+shaking him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I do feel queer," muttered Quorn.  The irises of his eyes seemed
+to turn up into his head, and he fell forward on the table insensible,
+with his too liberal entertainer standing over him aghast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What was he to do?  If he called for help, everything would come out,
+and he would be taken red-handed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's done for, poor fellow," he told himself in a terrified whisper,
+trembling in every joint.  "He's a dead man.  I'd better follow him."
+He caught up the fatal glass, but it was empty.  "Not a drop left.  Ah,
+there will be another sort of drop for me," he whispered through his
+chattering teeth.  "What shall I do?"  Then his face sensibly
+brightened as the idea of his desperate expedient, which had been
+frightened away, came back to him.  "Ah, that's it!" he muttered.
+"That's my only chance.  They think I'm Lord Quorn.  Now is my real tip
+to be Lord Quorn.  No one here knows him, and he's not so very unlike
+Percy Peckover.  Quick!"  He ran to the window and pulled the curtains
+across; then hurried back and began feverishly searching the lifeless
+man's pockets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any papers to identify him?  Ah!"  He pulled out a packet of letters,
+and transferred them to his own pocket, replacing them by some bills
+and a writ.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-060"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-060.jpg" ALT="&quot;He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them to his own pocket.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="474" HEIGHT="748">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 474px">
+&quot;He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them to his own pocket.&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"That's it," he muttered.  "They're of no use to him now, and may save
+an innocent man from the gallows."  He set the empty phial into Quorn's
+limp hand.  "There!" he exclaimed, as with a long drawn sigh of
+desperate relief he surveyed the position.  "Percy Peckover is dead.
+Long live Lord Quorn!  It's a fair desperate shift; but I can't be
+worse off than I was, and I may be better."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The shuffling of feet sounded outside the door, and Peckover had just
+time to throw himself into a chair at some distance from Lord Quorn and
+snatch up a newspaper when the landlord came in accompanied by Mr.
+Doutfire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a well simulated yawn, Peckover threw down the paper wearily and
+nodded at Popkiss.  "Any one from the Towers yet, landlord?" he asked
+in his best off-hand style.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet, my lord," the host answered, ceremoniously important, to
+impress Mr. Doutfire and to show that official that he was not the only
+eminent personage of his acquaintance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover yawned again, and affected to consult his Waterbury with as
+much flourish as was consistent with the necessity for concealing the
+fact that it was not a hundred guinea repeater.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beg pardon, my lord," observed Popkiss, indicating the renowned
+representative of the law who already had a severe and suspicious eye
+upon the collapsed form at the farther end of the room; "this is the
+gentleman I spoke to you about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, ah, good evening," Peckover said, acknowledging the interesting
+introduction as airily as the critical nature of the situation
+permitted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Having dealt with the social side of the detective's presence, Mr.
+Popkiss' fat face became stern as he proceeded to justify it from a
+business point of view.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that your man?" he observed, somewhat superfluously, indicating
+Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alert Doutfire already within pouncing distance of his quarry was
+unfolding the telegram.  "Five foot seven."  Quorn's doubled-up
+attitude made an accurate estimate of his inches somewhat difficult and
+untrustworthy.  Mr. Doutfire, glanced under the table, taking in his
+legs, allowed for turnings and swiftly added the measurement to the
+body and head, mentally straightened out for the purpose.  The total
+was evidently not inconsistent with the official dimension, since he
+passed on.  "Dark hair," he nodded, availing himself of a certain
+latitude which the somewhat vague adjective allowed.  "Slight
+moustache," Quorn's was clipped like to a toothbrush, and the
+description held.  "Flash dress."  For a moment Mr. Doutfire looked
+doubtful.  With all a true police official's desire to make description
+tally, it was plain that a very considerable point would have to be
+stretched before that Colonial get-up could be classed as flashy.  In
+search of some hidden evidence of the toff in apparel, Mr. Doutfire
+drew aside the lappel of Quorn's coat.  Some papers sticking half-way
+out of the breast pocket were thus disclosed.  Deftly Mr. Doutfire
+whipped them out, glanced at them, and a gleam of satisfaction shot
+across his face.  "My man," he announced, with a touch of pardonable
+triumph which thrillingly communicated itself to Peckover, whose
+principal employment during the process of identification had been to
+keep his teeth from chattering.  "Here!  Wake up, my man!" the
+detective cried, roughly shaking the irresponsive form.  "Wake up,
+Peckover, you're wanted."  Then suddenly as he turned the limp body
+over, his face fell from complacency to blank disappointment.  "Why,
+burn me, Popkiss," he exclaimed savagely, "if I don't think he has
+given me the slip."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" cried that worthy, as resenting his implied complicity in the
+fiasco.  "Not dead?" he added, with as much awe as a quadruple chin can
+express.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or next door," replied Doutfire, clinging to the shadow of a hope
+which experience belied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Next door," echoed Popkiss, losing the man in the innkeeper.  "I wish
+he was.  I don't want no suicide in my respectable house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you've got it, Popkiss," retorted Doutfire, as he picked up and
+sniffed at the phial which had fallen from the lifeless hand.  "Poison,
+if I know anything.  Send for a doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The exigency of the situation roused Mr. Popkiss' sluggish faculties
+into prompt action.  "Here, Mercy!" he bawled.  "Mercy!  Quick!  Run
+for Dr. Barton directly.  Gentleman taken bad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now Mr. D.," he proceeded, puffing with excitement, when Miss Mercy,
+in a state of disgust at the contingencies to which licensed premises
+are liable, had gone off through the rain with such haste as was
+compatible with due care for her personal appearance, "if you don't
+want to ruin me, for heaven's sake keep this unfortunate business as
+quiet as you can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly, Mr. Popkiss," the detective replied, assuming at once the
+mastery of the situation, "certainly, so far, that is, as is compatible
+with the due requirements of the law."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't you take him out of here?" Peckover suggested, as he began to
+feel the strain on his nerves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, we might do that, Mr. D., with your permission," the landlord
+begged submissively.  All his importance was gone now; the last five
+minutes had turned him into a fat, abject slave, ready to grovel at any
+man's feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't care to move him till the doctor arrives," objected Doutfire,
+less by way of conforming with legal procedure than of asserting his
+authority.  Mr. Popkiss had thrown open an inner door.  "Only just
+through here, Mr. D.," he whined spasmodically.  "Nice snug little
+room; better for the doctor and&mdash;and all parties," he urged.
+"Gentleman, I mean nobleman there," he sank his wheezy voice and jerked
+his head towards Peckover; "Lord Quorn, on his way to the Towers.  Very
+distressing for his lordship as it is for me.  You'll oblige an old
+friend, Mr. D.!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The appeal was so abject that Mr. Doutfire felt he was losing nothing
+of his importance by yielding.  "Lend a hand, then," he said, having
+first judicially inspected the room in question.  Between them, with
+much puffing and wheezy mutterings, they carried out the limp form, and
+as the door closed upon them Peckover's air of lofty indifference fell
+from him as a garment, and resting his elbows on his knees and bowing
+his head on his hands he collapsed into a state of utter fear and
+misery.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+From this flaccid condition he was roused by a somewhat obstreperous
+knocking and whistling in the passage dividing the coffee-room from the
+bar.  In a moment he had sprung up and run to the window, which he
+threw open, and stood there ready to bolt through it if necessary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What ho!  Anybody alive here?" a voice called out.  "Hi, yi!  Where do
+I come in?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the invocation and inquiry seemed reassuring.  Peckover turned back
+into the room as the door opened and a man in a dripping mackintosh
+appeared looking in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hullo!" he exclaimed.  "I can't find anybody worth mentioning.  Bar
+empty as a mortuary chapel.  Young lady in the cellar hiding from the
+thunderstorm, eh?  You don't happen to be the proprietor of the
+establishment?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly," Peckover answered, wondering what kind of customer he
+had come across now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's near enough," said the man in the mackintosh.  "You're alive at
+any rate.  Well, somebody has looked after you all right," he remarked,
+eyeing the remains of Peckover's last dinner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I've dined," Peckover replied loftily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You bet.  Like a lord," assented the stranger cheerfully.  "By the
+way"&mdash;he scrutinized him curiously, much to that gentleman's
+uneasiness&mdash;"by the way, you don't by any chance happen to be a lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something in the man's manner suggested a reason for the inquiry other
+than mere chaff.  "Suppose I am?" returned Peckover, with his best
+attempt at an enigmatical smile.  The newcomer stared at him as though
+unable to make up his mind to risk a question, and as he hesitated, the
+dripping mackintosh made a circle of water round him.  "Well, if you
+are&mdash;&mdash;" he stopped, and abruptly changed the subject.  "Staying here?"
+he asked; "or just waiting till the rain stops?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it," Peckover answered, scarcely knowing how to take the fellow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Far to go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Few miles, I'm waiting for the carriage," said Peckover casually,
+remembering what Quorn had told him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"H'm!"  The man looked at him as though stoked to blowing-off point
+with curiosity.  "Not going Staplewick Towers way?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The problem as to whether it were better to say yes or no was too
+complex for Peckover's present state of mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's my way," he declared, and chanced it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger's face brightened with anticipation.  "Going to the
+Towers, perhaps?" he asked with hopeful persistence.  Peckover nodded
+in as non-committal a fashion as he could command.  "Why," cried the
+other, "I do believe I'm in luck after all.  You hinted just now you
+might be a lord.  You don't tell me you are Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've guessed it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With another word the stranger turned and walked energetically to some
+pegs at the end of the room, unbuttoned the humid mackintosh and hung
+it up; also his hat.  Then, with business-like action, he came back and
+favoured the astonished Peckover with a long stare of gratified
+curiosity.  "Excuse me," he said, "but it's more than curious that the
+man I have been hunting all the week should run across me like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instantly Peckover remembered Quorn's amateur bush-ranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're from New South Wales?" he faltered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wrong," the other declared cheerfully.  "You're not quite as good at
+guessing as yours truly.  I'm from Tasmania, I'm proud and happy to
+say."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It struck Peckover that the dapper, well-knit man with the keen
+hustler's face set in straight black hair could hardly be Quorn's
+bully.  He could not quite imagine the man before him spending even his
+leisure time in trying feats of strength on his long-suffering
+neighbours who chanced to displease him, to say nothing of cattle and
+fire-irons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just then Mr. Popkiss appeared, and approached Peckover with a mien of
+deferential apology.  "Beg pardon, my lord," he said confidentially,
+"but I'm glad to say that Dr. Barton has had that unfortunate mishap
+removed to his surgery, which is a great relief to me, and I must
+apologize to your lordship for the unpleasantness occurring on my
+respectable premises.  We've never had anything of the kind occur
+before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you couldn't help it," Peckover replied graciously, his wits more
+keenly about him.  "He ought to have known better, but people, I
+believe, are very careless about these matters.  I didn't see what the
+poor fellow was up to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, my lord; naturally, my lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, landlord, since you've seen fit to come to light, bring us a
+bottle of your best champagne," directed the stranger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Popkiss, who had been inclined to disregard the new customer, at
+once became exceedingly attentive and bustled off on his errand, since
+a hungry guest is worth twenty full ones.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No sooner was he gone than the man drew his chair up to Peckover's and
+said quietly: "Now that I know I'm really right and you are Lord Quorn,
+I've got a proposal, a genuine business proposition to make to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you?" replied Peckover, wondering what in the world was coming,
+and cursing Popkiss who came in just then with the wine and so delayed
+the explanation of the mystery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger's quick eye had caught the similarity of the labels on the
+bottles.  "Why you've been having one of the best too," he remarked.
+Then added in an undertone as the fussy Popkiss left them, "I thought
+in your case the title didn't carry exactly a million with it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not exactly," Peckover replied equivocally.  "But I don't see what
+business that is of yours," he added by an afterthought, to maintain
+his dignity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will directly, though," the other retorted.  "Till then I beg to
+apologize.  Now look here," he touched glasses with his companion,
+"luck; and may we both get what we want, which is assured if we come to
+terms."  They emptied their glasses, and the stranger, refilling them,
+leant forward to whispering distance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No time to lose, if this matter is to go through," he said in a
+business-like undertone.  "So I won't beat about the bush.  This fat
+publican"&mdash;he jerked his head backwards towards the bar&mdash;"knows you are
+Lord Quorn.  Does any one else know it in these parts?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The question was put so purposefully that Peckover had no hesitation in
+answering it frankly.  "No one but the barmaid.  I've not been here
+more than two hours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right.  Now for my proposition."  He drew up yet an inch or
+two closer to Peckover.  "First of all it is necessary for me to state
+I am a rich man; well, practically a millionaire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover pushed back his own chair.  "I say; no room for the confidence
+trick here, old man," he exclaimed suspiciously.  "Try next door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pouf!" the stranger contemptuously blew away the suggestion.
+"'Confidence trick?'  It's the other way on.  It is I who am going to
+place the confidence in your lordship.  Now, look.  Here is my proposal
+in a word.  You're a poor man, or at least a poor peer; I'm a rich man.
+We are both of us practically unknown over here.  I want you to sell me
+your title."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" cried Peckover in amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't make a noise," said the other quietly.  "If this transaction is
+to go through, as, if you are not a fool, it will, the less attention
+we call to ourselves for the moment the better.  Just hear what I've
+got to say.  My name is Gage.  Come into property down under from my
+father.  Now I'm, as I say, a millionaire.  But the devil of being a
+millionaire is, when you are nobody in particular but a millionaire,
+that you don't and can't get value for your money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!"  Peckover nodded sagaciously as he began to comprehend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," pursued Mr. Gage, "an ordinary person would imagine that a man
+with an income nearer forty than thirty thousand could have for the
+asking&mdash;and the paying for&mdash;the best of everything this world has to
+offer.  All rot.  An outsider like myself with the income I have
+mentioned doesn't have nearly such a good time as a smart young sprig
+of good family, who's been born and bred in the swim, can get with a
+beggarly fifteen hundred a year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's right enough," Peckover assented with an air of endorsing from
+experience that profound truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Gage took out a coin and laid it on the table.  "There's a
+sovereign," he said, tapping it impressively, while his companion eyed
+it covetously.  "There it is.  Coin of the realm.  Value fixed and
+accepted all the world over, you'd say.  Yet it's a strange thing, as
+society is constituted, that, according to the value to be got out of
+it, to one man it will be worth, say, five and thirty shillings, and to
+another about six and sixpence.  You follow me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Peckover intimated by a knowing nod that not only did he follow the
+argument, but that, as a member of the aristocracy, he was prepared to
+back it by getting the enhanced value from the coin in question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The reason is," continued Mr. Gage, "that when you are what what's
+called an outsider you have to pay, and pay double and treble for
+everything.  And when you've paid, and paid till you're sick of
+shelling out, you find you haven't got half what, if you'd only been
+'class,' you'd have got gratis for nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's so," Peckover assented dogmatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The millionaire business has been overdone," Gage proceeded, warming
+feelingly as he got into the swing of his grievance.  "Men like myself
+have been in too much of a hurry to buy up all the cake in the
+universe, consequently the price has gone up for it, and now, instead
+of a good substantial slice for a reasonable sum, we get only a few
+crumbs at famine prices."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No doubt," Peckover agreed, getting impatient of the preamble and
+anxious to come to the gist of the offer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The fact is," Gage went on, hammering one fist on the other
+emphatically, "money by itself is a delusion and a daily eye-opener.
+Money with a title like yours is quite another pair of shoes.  If you
+reckon its purchasing power, and that's what justifies its existence,
+the golden sovereign in a millionaire's pocket dwindles to the size of
+a threepenny bit, and in a peer's it expands to the size of this."  He
+held up a dinner plate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Inconveniently bulky," observed Peckover with a grin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's merely my illustration of the fact," said Gage severely, as
+deprecating cheap witticism in business discussions.  "Anyhow, I am
+content to put up with the inconvenience.  I want to have a good time.
+Fate has given me money with one hand and with the other prevents my
+getting value for it.  I don't want to waste time in building up a
+social position for myself; I want one ready-made, now; when I can
+enjoy it.  You want to have a good time, a better time than you'll get
+living on an empty title which means starving at Staplewick Towers.
+You're just the man I have been looking out for.  When I heard of your
+being found in Australia, I determined to do business with you if I
+could catch you soon enough, before you got known."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what do you propose?" Peckover asked, a vista of escape and the
+enjoyment of a snatched opulence opening before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I propose," Gage replied impressively, "that you should allow me to
+assume the title, the identity and privileges of Lord Quorn.  After
+all, you did not expect to come into it; you are a backblocksman, like
+myself; only my father made it pay, and you hadn't begun to when you
+were sent for to join the House of Lords.  So far as any one outside
+our two skins is concerned it doesn't matter a rush whether you are
+Lord Quorn, or I.  So far as the British constitution goes there's no
+divine right about you, visible at least to the naked eye, that I don't
+possess.  You don't feel anything like it inside, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't say I do," answered Peckover, with more instant conviction than
+the other could possibly give him credit for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," resumed Gage; "we are of the same make, I guess; and if it suits
+us to make a fair exchange, why nobody's hurt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just so," assented Peckover.  "Well, what's your offer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Four thousand a year, paid monthly, as long as you let me hold the
+title undisputed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Four thousand a year!  It was as much as the
+thirty-five-shillings-a-week clerk could do to refrain from an
+astounded whistle at his luck.  But he did repress it, and, shrewdly
+grappling with the overwhelming proposition, replied, after what seemed
+a calculating pause, "Make it five thou., and it's a bargain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Five thousand had been the figure of Mr. Gage's willingness; only, in
+accordance with a well-established business method, he had offered less
+than he was ready to give.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," he replied.  "Five thousand while I'm Lord Quorn.  We
+shan't need a written contract.  It will be as much to your interest to
+keep quiet as it will be mine to write you a cheque on the&mdash;let's
+see&mdash;the ninth of every month.  So that's settled, eh?"  He refilled
+the glasses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, my lord, that's settled," responded Peckover with a grin, and
+feeling happier than at any time during the past twenty-four hours.
+"Here's health and the best of luck to your lordship."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"I don't quite see ourselves bluffing all and sundry that you are Lord
+Quorn," Peckover said doubtfully, as they finished the bottle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My good sir," replied Gage, "I don't see how we can help taking them
+in if we make up our minds to do it.  Just think; what man is there
+alive who could really, logically prove his own identity if he were put
+to it.  Not one of us.  We are just accepted by the world as William
+White and Henry Black, John Thompson or Thomas Johnson; and in most
+cases correctly so.  In one case in ten thousand the world makes a big
+mistake, but it doesn't count for much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose not," observed Peckover, wondering whether he would not have
+plenty of enforced leisure for counting if the world should find out
+its mistake about him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very few people know us over here," argued Gage; "and the few who do
+can be easily bluffed, if it comes to that.  If we both swear to the
+same thing, who can stand against us?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, that's right enough," Peckover agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now I've been thinking," continued Gage, "that it won't do for us to
+part company till this little arrangement of ours can run along without
+pushing.  You must come over to these Towers with me and see how the
+land lies.  We shall want to spend some money, at least I shall, so you
+had better be a rich friend I picked up on the voyage, and we can
+pretend the ready comes out of your pocket."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But only Lord Quorn is asked," Peckover objected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," replied Gage, "a rich man is always sure of a welcome.  He may be
+expected to pay for it, but there it is, all ready for him, if he asks
+for it cheque-book in hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps it may not be a very genuine article; a sort of rolled-gold
+welcome for which you are expected to pay as though it were twenty-two
+carat all through.  But it will wear long enough for our purposes, and
+the adulteration won't be all on their side."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Host Popkiss looked in.  "Rain clearing off, my lord," he announced.
+"I expect Colonel Hemyock will be here directly to welcome your
+lordship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, landlord," replied Gage.  "In the meantime my friend and I
+are quite comfortable here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Popkiss stared at him, in mind to resent what he considered an
+irreverent liberty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still, I shan't be sorry to find myself at the Towers," Gage observed
+casually.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was rather more than Popkiss could stand.  He did not approve of
+casual customers (even if they ordered champagne) playing unseemly
+jokes with noble guests in his coffee-room.  "Beg pardon, sir," he said
+with puffing severity, "I was addressing myself to Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," returned Gage, "you were addressing yourself to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In consequence of the superincumbent fat which circumvallated them Mr.
+Popkiss could not open his eyes very wide, but, as far as the muffling
+flesh permitted, his spacious face was understood to express an
+electrifying astonishment amounting almost to incredulity.  "Lord
+Quorn?  You, sir?" he gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, my venerable joker."  Peckover beckoned the bewildered
+Popkiss to him by a backward jerk of the head. "You've been tying
+yourself up in the wrong bag all the afternoon.  I've let you go on
+because I never spoil a good joke, but now my friend and
+fellow-traveller, Lord Quorn, has appeared, it is about time your folly
+was pointed out to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure I'm very sorry, my lord," the discomfited Popkiss apologized.
+"But as this gentleman did not deny it when I addressed him as my lord,
+and as we were expecting your lordship to honour my poor house, why,
+the mistake was only natural."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all right," replied Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're forgiven," grinned Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Wheels sounded under the archway of the courtyard, and Popkiss was glad
+to bustle out.  "I had my doubts about him all the time," he told
+himself in extenuation of his error.  "If I'd seen them both together
+at first I should ha' known at once that 'tother was the lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the two confederates were laughing at each other over the
+success of the first step on the path that promised to be so pleasant
+for both.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They composed their faces as the door was thrown open and Colonel
+Hemyock and the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, accompanied by John
+Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, were ushered in with breathless ceremony by the
+egregious Popkiss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn?" the Colonel inquired in a tone of pompous cordiality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Popkiss unctuously indicated Gage, who came forward with plausible
+aplomb.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the ladies were presented, and Sharnbrook noticed gleefully the
+dead-set that lurked in their eyes.  His escape, he told himself, was
+now assured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I present my friend, Mr. Percival Gage?" the supposititious Lord
+Quorn said, as, taking the permission for granted, he brought up
+Peckover, whom, however, the Hemyock trio regarded a trifle doubtfully.
+"Made a fine position for himself out in our part of the world," Gage
+continued half confidentially, "and has come over to the old country to
+enjoy the fruits of his good fortune."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ladies instantly thawed.  The golden sun easily gets through
+snobbery's thin coating of ice.  They looked at his aggressive diamond,
+excused his vulgar flashiness on the ground of Colonial ignorance, and
+received his advances with as much gush as was left over from the
+lavish expenditure on the <I>soi-disant</I> Lord Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A millionaire," Gage observed to the colonel, sinking his confidential
+tone yet a little.  The highly starched Colonel became almost limp
+under such a shower of good fortune.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;ah&mdash;hope Mr. Gage will do us the honour of staying at Staplewick,"
+he said, and there was no doubt that he meant it.  "Lady Agatha will be
+charmed.  Any friend of Lord Quorn's will be more than welcome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So after a few more flourishes, it was settled.  Mr. Gage's luggage had
+unfortunately gone astray, but his costume would be excused that
+evening by Lady Agatha, and next day a complete outfit, the visitor
+declared, would be a mere question of the resources of Great Bunbury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently the neglected but chuckling John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook was
+noticed, and casually, as a matter of grace, introduced.  He lost no
+time in getting on easy terms with his prospective deliverer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm the tenant of your shooting, Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hope you get good sport?" Gage replied politely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Birds thick as cabbages," Sharnbrook assured him.  "I hope you will
+come out with me and see for yourself.  Of course you and your friend
+shoot?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should just think we did," Peckover chipped in with an eagerness due
+to the near realization of one of the dreams of his life.  Hitherto his
+shooting had taken place under cover at the rate of seven shoots for
+six-pence, and the presentation of a cocoa-nut if by luck or
+markmanship he rang the bell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That so bucolic and provoking a person as Sharnbrook at present clothed
+in the contempt woven of familiarity should be allowed to monopolize
+the distinguished guests by his stupid sporting chatter was
+intolerable.  Accordingly he was promptly snubbed and thrust aside.
+Then, amid much smirking and exhibition of the best side of everybody's
+face, a move was made for the phaeton.  Gage surreptitiously slipped a
+bank note into Peckover's hand, with which, and with a grand flourish,
+that unexpected plutocrat settled the somewhat exorbitant demands of
+Mr. Popkiss, and bestowed a liberal guerdon, accompanied by a wink, on
+Miss Mercy.  Then with what excitement and the nearest approach to
+cheers a country town on a wet evening can furnish the distinguished
+party drove off to Staplewick Towers.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"It is too bad of you, Ethel.  I do wish you would mind your own
+business and confine your attentions to either old Sharnbrook or Lord
+Quorn.  The way you try to flirt with Mr. Gage is disgraceful.  Even
+you ought to be ashamed of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Dagmar," her sister replied blandly, "Sharnbrook is, as you
+always said, after finding he preferred me to you, an idiot.  Only fit
+to be a keeper at the Zoo, or curator of a Natural History museum.
+Four thousand a year is utterly wasted on him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No reason why it should, or should not, be wasted on his wife,"
+returned Dagmar shrewdly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn," pursued Ethel, "falls to you by right.  A coronet, when
+he can afford one, will no doubt suit your style of beauty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," retorted Dagmar, "I happen to prefer reality to mere show.
+Quorn hasn't a penny to speak of, Mr. Gage is as rich as anybody need
+be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is hopelessly vulgar, and has an unhappy knack of making himself
+ridiculous," Ethel argued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All millionaires are vulgar and absurd," her sister rejoined.  "It is
+expected of them.  People wouldn't believe in their money if they
+didn't bound and make fools of themselves.  Mother says Mr. Gage's
+vulgarity is as good as an auditor's certificate&mdash;whatever that may be.
+And if he has taken a tremendous fancy to me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar flared up.  "What conceited impudence!  You want everybody.  You
+are the elder and Lord Quorn properly falls to you.  Failing him,
+Sharnbrook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"John Arbuthnot," said Ethel dreamily, "has the bad taste not to be
+very keen, and Gage is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quorn's all right," Dagmar suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you have him, dear," her sister retorted.  "Plain Percy Gage is
+good enough for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Ethel was clearly holding to her point, and that not a point of
+honour, Dagmar saw that a mere appeal to her better feelings was
+futile.  "Tell you what it is, my dear," she said, changing her
+tactics.  "If you go on like this we shall lose Quorn and the
+millionaire bounder and old Sharnbrook into the bargain.  We must have
+the coronet and the million in the family."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," Ethel agreed, after a few moments' calculation.  "Let's
+compromise and give each other a fair chance with Gage.  Suppose we
+take it in turns to bring him to the scratch."  She took a pack of
+cards from a box.  "Cut for first innings.  First knave; two out of
+three."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why knave?" Dagmar objected, "Gage is more of a f&mdash;the other thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps," Ethel agreed.  "Anyhow, the knave is the nearest approach to
+him in a pack of cards' catalogue of humanity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They began to cut with business-like eagerness.  Presently Ethel held
+up the desired card.  "Hurrah!  Knave!" she cried exultingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the amiable Miss Dagmar's protracted lips came the sound of an
+exclamation not unlike that which profane men are said to utter when
+the last match is puffed out with the pipe still unlighted.  "Two out
+of three," she insisted, and with the next turn cut a knave also.  But
+fate favoured Ethel, who cut the third.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My first try," she cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wish you joy of Gage," said Dagmar spitefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Dagmar," her sister protested, "it's a bargain.  Half an hour of
+uninterrupted running."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," replied Dagmar hopefully.  "Then I relieve guard, and you
+turn out.  I take up the running and so on alternately, till one of us
+lands him."  "Which shall not be so very long first," she promised
+herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's find out where he is."  Ethel, with business-like promptitude,
+sprang to the bell and rang it.  "Of course," she observed
+complacently, "whichever of us does not bag Gage will have the
+reversion of Quorn or old Sharnbrook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," Dagmar agreed with a suggested determination that the
+privilege in question should not be hers.  "Fancy Sharnbrook!  Ferrets
+in one's bedroom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rats where you least expect them," Ethel chimed in, hilarious at what
+she was resolved should be her sister's fate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That idiotic one-legged partridge," cried Dagmar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pet mice asleep in your boots," responded Ethel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pattern of the carpet undecipherable for fox-terriers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldn't I put my foot down on them," declared Ethel grimly.  "Is Mr.
+Gage visible yet, Bisgood?" she inquired of the butler who now appeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A very faint film of suppressed amusement seemed to spread over the
+well regulated face of Mr. Bisgood.  "Mr. Gage went out riding this
+morning," he answered woodenly.  "His lordship accompanied him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have they returned?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the haze of enjoyment seemed to blur the suave features.  "No,
+miss," Bisgood answered, and there might have been detected a slight,
+ever so slight, catch in the unctuous voice; "Mr. Gage did not get far.
+Harlequin was rather fresh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did&mdash;did anything go wrong?"  It was Dagmar who asked the question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This time there was no doubt about the abnormal expression on the
+butler's sleek face.  "Well, miss," he replied, with an apologetic
+grin, "I believe Mr. Gage came off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without trusting his dignity to carry him through any elaboration of
+the bare and pointed statement, Bisgood, turned abruptly from the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Ethel tried to laugh off a certain sense of annoyance.  Till she
+had tried and failed Gage was more or less her property.  "Poor Gage,"
+she exclaimed.  "Fancy his taking a toss.  I hope he has not damaged
+himself.  That brute Harlequin!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Dagmar, dear, honour between&mdash;knaves.  You will take Quorn and
+Sharnbrook off while I have my innings, won't you?  I'll do as much for
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," she answered, still rather sulky.  "But mind, no unfair
+advantage.  No running me down, or falling into his arms."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," Ethel assured her; "that's a last resort.  We may have to
+toss for that later on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's mother coming across the lawn," Dagmar remarked with a yawn of
+indifference.  "You had better be off and console the noble sportsman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as the fair Ethel vanished through the door, Lady Agatha Hemyock
+came in by the French window.  She was a woman of somewhat stately
+presence, acquired by long practice of standing on ceremony and on her
+dignity.  Her face was well set off by white hair dressed straight up
+from her forehead, pompadour fashion, which had the effect of bringing
+into rather aggressive prominence her sharp physiognomy which she could
+make, when she chose, the vehicle of a gamut of remarkable expressions.
+In French phrase, her face jumped at you; nevertheless, had not the
+nose been rather too long and too sharp she would have been as
+good-looking as she was wily.  Among her ladyship's more prominent
+accomplishments was an interesting trick of carrying on a conversation
+with one person while she listened to everything else that was being
+said in the room; a feat difficult of successful execution, and one
+which has a tendency to depreciate the performer's popularity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's Ethel?" Lady Agatha inquired sharply, after a preliminary
+glance round the room to make sure they were alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gone after Mr. Gage," Dagmar informed her, still sore from the
+consciousness of a lost chance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How provoking of her," exclaimed her mother, "when I particularly want
+her to look after Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what I tell her," said Dagmar resentfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha declared, "will keep.  He is a fool, and is to
+be secured whenever we choose to bring him to the point.  Quorn
+is&mdash;er&mdash;not such a fool, and if the coronet is to come into the family
+it is essential that he should be looked after.  He ought to have the
+choice of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No money, mother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps not.  But a nice old place and an aristocratic position."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've got most of that, mother," Dagmar observed shrewdly, "and you
+are discontented enough."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you can't both marry Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha argued, ignoring the
+personal citation.  "And if you don't take care, the one he does not
+choose will lose Quorn as well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, for a peer and a millionaire," Dagmar observed decidedly, "they
+are the most hopeless specimens.  Neither being in the least like what
+he ought to be, I should prefer the money.  It is the only thing here
+that looks like what it is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am thinking of your position, my dear," her mother replied
+insinuatingly.  "Millionaires are getting so common and unpopular."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Peers are common enough," Dagmar retorted.  "They made a dozen&mdash;and
+such a dozen&mdash;the other day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not old ones," rejoined Lady Agatha.  "Quorn's peerage is centuries
+old, and improves with time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I don't," returned her daughter pointedly.  "And the idea of my
+descendants swaggering about with a coronet wherever they can put it,
+in the year 2147 doesn't amuse or comfort me at all, or reconcile me to
+the fact that nobody, without being told, would take Quorn for a peer,
+even if he dressed every day in robes and coronet, always supposing he
+could afford that somewhat expensive get-up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"After all, a peerage is above money, my dear," Lady Agatha urged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," was the quick reply, "it ought to be above it, and have the
+money underneath to support it.  No, I prefer to take my chance of
+cutting out Ethel, and buying a peerage with some of Gage's money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha shrugged.  She could not bring herself to let Quorn slip
+through their fingers when they had him in hand.  "There is as much
+difference between an old title and a new one as between new wine and
+old," she asserted dogmatically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Granted, mother," Dagmar assented cheerfully.  "But when some idiot
+has pulled the cork out, causing the strength and the flavour to
+evaporate, and the dust has got in, the old is worse than the new."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are most provoking and disappointing, Dagmar," Lady Agatha
+exclaimed, losing patience.  "To think that the Quorn coronet should go
+begging."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's exactly what the owner will have to do, it strikes me," the
+undutiful one retorted.  "And it is what I don't intend to do while
+Messrs. Gage and Sharnbrook are handy and bachelors.  Here's Ethel.
+Hurrah!  She doesn't look all over a winner.  My turn," she said with a
+snap, as that discomfited-looking young lady came in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That it isn't," Ethel flung back in a reciprocally pleasant tone.  "I
+haven't seen the man yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar's look would hardly have been accepted as a testimonial to her
+sister's veracity.  The statement, nevertheless, was true.  Ethel had
+raced all over the grounds in pursuit of her quarry, but had just
+missed striking the trail; the object of her hunt having contrarily
+appeared in the drive as the fair huntress, after drawing it blank,
+moved off hungrily to the park on the other side of the house, whence
+having prowled herself tired, she had at length come in, spent and out
+of breath and patience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Noting her amiable state of mind, Lady Agatha, prompted by experience,
+prepared to withdraw, with a Parthian shot which took the form of the
+sarcastic expression of a thoughtful hope that, in case of possible
+accidents, the pair of charmers were not entirely losing sight of the
+existence and eligibility of a certain John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, nor
+were permitting him to ignore theirs.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"You haven't hurt the horse?" Gage inquired, as he and his confederate
+walked towards the house together.  "Sorry now I didn't think of
+stopping to see what happened."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hurt him?" Peckover exclaimed, resenting the question as making light
+of his own peril.  "Never had a chance.  It took all my time to see he
+didn't hurt me.  Hurt the brute?  I should like to," he continued
+wrathfully reminiscent.  "I'd teach him the difference between a
+quadruped and a gentleman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How did you come to take him on?" asked Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take him on?  He took me on," returned the discomfited equestrian.
+"All right, I'll remember that groom, Wilkins, or rather, I won't
+remember him.  'Just throw your leg over Harlequin, sir,' he says, 'and
+take him over the turf!'  Now, old man, I should describe that animal,
+from a safe distance, as an inferior plater; but when I got up my
+feeling of contempt changed to one of respect&mdash;it usually does.  On
+foot I'm pretty familiar with horses; once on their back I feel as
+though I had not been properly introduced.  Well, I mounted in best
+jockey style; I haven't shelled out for the saddling paddock for
+nothing.  'Me up,' says I, just waking him up with the whip.  Next
+moment it was me&mdash;down, and instead of putting him over the turf, he
+very nearly put me under it.  I don't think you could have passed a
+five-pound note between his hind hoof and my front teeth.  His near
+plate was so near that my jaw was almost off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good job it wasn't," observed Gage, wondering how much such a
+catastrophe would have affected his enjoyment of the pleasures of the
+peerage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're right.  Well, the fellows were grinning; so, thinks I, if the
+horse won't be beaten, no more will I.  So I ups into the pigskin
+again, and tries the soothing system."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did that do better?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Slightly.  The animal began to feel quite comfortable, and after a bit
+sat down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sat down?" laughed Gage.  "What became of you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I don't know," answered Peckover, with rueful humour, "whether
+it has ever struck you, in Tasmania or elsewhere, that it is a
+difficult thing for a horse and its rider both to sit down at the same
+time.  You see, there is no back to the saddle, so I just slid down
+over the tail, with as much side as I could put on, and then footed it
+off.  It's all very well for you to laugh, my lord," he remonstrated,
+as the other man's guffaws grew exasperating, "but it would take you
+all your time to keep your back stiff when the horse under you is
+sitting up like a cat, and the back of his head trying to play the
+castanets with your front teeth.  Harlequin?  He's a regular pantomime
+rally."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shouldn't wonder," suggested Gage, "if he was called Harlequin,
+because he'll jump through anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dare say!" replied Peckover dryly.  "No doubt he'd have tried jumping
+through a brick wall if I'd stayed there long enough.  No, thank you.
+I prefer seeing these little funniments from the top of the Grand
+Stand, not from the top of the performer."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Can't say I notice much family likeness, old man."  Peckover had been
+enjoying the novelty of a contemplative cigarette in the ancestral
+picture gallery of the Quorns, and was there surprised by Gage who had
+stood for a while silently comparing the portraits of dead and gone
+Quorns, in all stages of costume and self-consciousness, with the
+cheap, up-to-date cockney swell who sprawled in a great chair of state
+before them.  "I guess they didn't pick you out in Australia by the
+family mug."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover gave a short awkward laugh.  "I should hope not," he replied,
+recovering his mental balance.  "If I thought I was anything like that
+tuppence-coloured Johnnie I'd go and hang myself."  He pointed to a
+depressing portrait labelled, "Everard, fourth Baron Quorn."  "Good old
+Everard," he went on.  "I've no use for a nose like that, nor for the
+dial of that old juggins in the Dutch oven&mdash;what's his name?
+Marmaduke.  He'd only have to take the top off the pepper-castor to
+give the enemy a shock.  Useful face that to fall back on, and it looks
+as though some one had been falling back on it."  And he flicked the
+ash off his cigarette scornfully at the doughty warrior.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We don't run to beauty, do we?" Gage remarked.  "At least we didn't
+till quite recently," he corrected politely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fact is," said Peckover, "the old crowd were an over-rated lot.
+Making allowances for bad workmanship on the painters' side, we should
+have no use for them except on the Fifth of November.  They are fair
+frauds.  What do you think of a man who wears a steel lounge suit like
+that?"  He flung the end of his cigarette, having lighted a fresh one,
+at the nearest suit of armour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it covered up his deficiencies," observed Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Peckover, "it's about as clever as wrapping a twopenny
+smoke in silver-foil."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage gave a look round the gallery as though to see that they were
+alone, and then sat down beside his friend.  "Tell you what it is, old
+man," he said seriously; "to change the subject, we must do something
+to make things hum a bit more for me.  I became my lord to get some fun
+out of it, but as things are, it strikes me that I've got the empty
+title, and you're having all the fun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why," Gage proceeded, "what's my position here?  I'm Lord Quorn with a
+million of money; but because Lord Q. is known to have next to nothing
+a year, nobody looks at me.  You're supposed to be the millionaire and
+every one runs after you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that my fault?" Peckover asked pertinently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't say it is," Gage returned.  "It suited our purpose to fix it
+so.  But it don't work.  There must be a change.  I don't pay five
+thousand a year to stand out in the cold on the bleak eminence of an
+impoverished peerage, looking on and seeing every girl in the place
+tumbling into your arms."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One can have too much of that sort of tumbling," Peckover remarked
+sententiously.  "And&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I'd like a little of it," snapped Gage, "and I'm going to have
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's reasonable," Peckover agreed.  "What do you propose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," answered Gage, "I've thought it out, and it's simple enough.
+I've got to find an excuse for spending my money, or, rather for having
+money to spend.  I've a plan.  I'm going to save your life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"  Peckover jumped a foot away and turned a suspicious and
+alarmed face on his companion.  "What&mdash;what do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what I say," the other replied quietly.  "I've got to save your
+life&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What from?" Peckover inquired apprehensively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drowning, for choice," was the cool answer.  "Then in common gratitude
+you will make over to me a sum sufficient to give me a handsome income.
+See?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover looked immeasurably relieved.  "I see that much," he replied.
+"But how are you going to save me from drowning?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that presents no difficulty.  We are going fishing on the lake,
+and you are going to over-balance yourself in your excitement and slip
+overboard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, am I?"  Peckover looked uneasily doubtful.  "I don't see where the
+excitement about fishing comes in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a detail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I can't swim," Peckover objected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All the more reason for my jumping in to save you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But supposing you don't save me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm bound to save you.  If I'm not going to rescue you, there is no
+point in your getting wet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you are not going to rescue me there's no point in my getting
+drowned," Peckover returned, with misgiving.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall work it all right," Gage assured him.  "Never let go of you.
+You're too precious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know.  It would be worth five thousand a year to you to let me
+dive to the bottom and stay there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm neither a fool nor a murderer," Gage declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not much catch in taking a cold bath with your clothes on," Peckover
+remarked, with an uneasy shiver.  "However, I suppose I must do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Gage, "after all it's the most feasible form of
+life-saving, combining as it does the minimum of risk with the maximum
+of effectiveness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it was arranged, and the next afternoon the confederates, dressed
+for the occasion in their oldest clothes, went fishing on the lake.
+Peckover, whilst ostensibly instituting inquiries as to the best pools
+for sport, had cunningly obtained information as to the depth of the
+water at various spots, and it was at one of the shallowest that he
+insisted on having the punt moored.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the good of my pretending to save your precious life in four
+foot six of water," Gage expostulated in a disgusted tone, as he
+pointed to the watermark on the punt pole.  "We shall be taken for
+blithering idiots."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That won't matter," returned Peckover stolidly.  "It's better than
+being blithering idiots, and dead ones at that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shall give the show away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better than giving a peerage and a million away," Peckover retorted.
+"Life's too comfortable just now for us to run any risks.  Besides
+who's going to remember how shallow the water is; and it stands to
+reason that if we could keep our breathing apparatus above water by
+just standing up, we shouldn't be such fools as to want any swimming
+and life-saving."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Gage had to submit, which he did with a better grace when he
+reflected that there might, after all, be some risk in saving a
+panic-stricken lover of life in really deep water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The two fishermen made a great fuss over their sport, angling as
+probably no one in this world had ever angled before, and in a manner
+calculated not to take in the most unsophisticated fish that ever swam.
+What their proceedings, however, lacked in method, they made up in
+exuberance; never before had two such showy fishermen sat in a punt.
+Naturally their intention was to emphasize, generally, their existence,
+more particularly their presence in the punt on the lake, and
+incidentally their designs upon the fish.  To their satisfaction they
+saw that they were not without observers.  The farmer, to whom the
+grazing of the park was let, had luckily put in an appearance to
+inspect his sheep, accompanied by a semi-sporting person who might,
+however, have been, and indeed was, a butcher from Bunbury in quest of
+raw material.  Presently two women came in sight, crossing the park by
+a right of way which skirted the lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The moment was propitious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Old man," said Gage, "this is grand.  We're in luck for an audience.
+Now, over you topple; only, do it artistically, or you will have your
+dip for nothing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover threw a distasteful glance at the weed-grown water, and then
+his eye roved from the haggling fanner and butcher to the chattering
+pair of villagers.  "Almost too much of an audience," he objected, with
+a view to postponing his immersion as long as possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rats!  Can't be too many for our purpose," Gage returned impatiently.
+"We've got to make a business of it, if it's to do any good.  Over you
+go.  The water won't be any damper for you than it will be for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can swim," observed Peckover with something suspiciously like a
+chattering of the teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What odds does that make in four foot six of water?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beastly weedy hole," remarked the unwilling adventurer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All the better.  Makes it look more dangerous, and keeps people from
+seeing how shallow it is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe," said Peckover, with an admirable air of conviction, "there
+is an out-sized pike under those weeds.  I just saw his scales glisten."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you'll astonish him, that's all," was the unsympathetic reply.
+"Any one would think it was a crocodile or a shark by the funk you're
+in.  Now, are you going over?  Not knowing the treat that's in store
+for them these people aren't likely to wait all day.  They'll be past
+directly.  Stand up and swing your line out."  Nerving himself to the
+disagreeable task, Peckover stood up, and began swinging the rod round
+his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That'll do," said Gage, with a show of directing his attention
+elsewhere.  "Now, over!  That'll do with the rod.  They'll think you
+mad.  Over, you fool!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus adjured, Peckover took the plunge, if plunge it can be called.
+Dropping the whirling rod on the placid surface of the lake, he
+suddenly stooped, nervously clutched the gunwale of the punt and,
+assisted surreptitiously in the manoeuvre by Gage's left foot, tamely
+rolled over the side.  His despairing shout, which had been agreed
+upon, was smothered by the shock of the cold water and the utterer's
+general preoccupation.  It therefore remained for Gage to do the
+shouting, which duty he performed with a vigour out of proportion to
+the apparent exigences of the case.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+For the dripping Peckover was still holding tenaciously on to the side
+of the punt, with a fixity of purpose which no mere considerations of
+stage effect seemed likely to dispose him to relax.  Added to this,
+there was more of his body above the surface of the water than appeared
+quite consistent with the idea of imminent and deadly peril; this was
+accounted for by the fact that he was standing, miserably enough, on
+the bottom of the lake.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get down!  Let go of the punt!  D'ye hear?" commanded Gage, in an
+exasperated undertone.  "What's the good of hanging on there like a
+fool?  Get down, will you?  Duck that idiotic mug of yours under water,
+or how am I to go after you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;d&mdash;d&mdash;daren't," chattered Peckover: "my feet are slipping or
+sinking or something; it's dashed deep mud at the bottom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish your head was in it instead of your feet," retorted his
+prospective heroic rescuer, all the while making a fine show of bustle,
+for which, however, as viewed from the shore there was no obvious need.
+"Will you get down, before I knock you under?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he spoke Gage was surreptitiously jabbing at Peckover's fingers,
+and, incidentally, at his face with the butt-end of his rod.  This
+somewhat drastic method of enforcing his orders and ensuring the
+vraisemblance of the performance was perhaps justified by the manifest
+absurdity and uselessness of his taking a showy and heroic dive in
+order to rescue a man who was, to the spectator's eye, holding
+comfortably on to a substantial punt with his breathing organs high out
+of the water.  As matters&mdash;that is to say, Peckover&mdash;stood, danger was
+the last thing that would suggest itself to the casual onlooker.  The
+note at the moment was farcical; it was urgently necessary to change it
+to the tragic, even at the expense of loosening a few of Peckover's
+front teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That unhappy dissembler, finding the episode of having a brass-capped
+butt in forcible contact with the more sensitive and damageable parts
+of his physiognomy more than he had bargained for, spluttered forth an
+objurgatory remonstrance, and, to cut short the objectionable
+attentions, let go, disappearing forthwith under the side of the punt.
+Whereupon Gage, uttering a wild and wholly unnecessary shout, poised
+himself for a few moments with one foot on the gunwale, and then,
+having attracted the attention he desired, took a tremendous dive into
+the water.  With such vigour did he go down that he forced his head and
+arms into a thick bed of weeds, which demanded for a time his
+breathless attention.  On extricating himself from the difficulty, and
+coming to the surface, he was much concerned to find that Peckover was
+nowhere to be seen.  Instantly he took another superfluous dive, and as
+he came up, knocked his head against the bottom of the punt.  Half
+dizzy with the blow, he now saw Peckover watching his efforts from the
+other side of the craft whither he had worked his way round while the
+diving was in progress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you doing round there, you idiot?" he gasped.  "Get right
+down into the water at once and shout for help till I come along and
+catch hold of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the word, he struck out manfully and swam round to the other side
+of the punt, only to find on arriving there that Peckover had
+disappeared.  Whereupon he dived again, only to come up empty-handed
+once more, and to see the anxious face watching him, alertly
+apprehensive, over the farther gunwale.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What fool's game is this?" he hissed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"None of your larks," returned Peckover in a tone of resolute desire
+for self-preservation.  The cold water, the weeds and the mud were
+beginning to tell upon him; all sense of a practical joke had
+evaporated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage looked round.  On the right the farmer and the butcher, on the
+left the two women had come down to the margin of the lake and were
+watching the proceedings in a silence which betokened some doubt in
+their minds as to how they ought to take it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you get under water and let me come to the rescue?" Gage demanded
+with exasperation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not good enough," Peckover replied, and thereupon he began a spirited
+effort to climb back into the punt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fool!"  Gage shut his mouth with a snap, and took a vicious dive under
+the punt as the shortest cut to his objective.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he rose, Peckover was half on board.  Without further expostulation
+Gage seized the leg which still hung in the water and furiously tried
+to drag it down.  Peckover resisted, kicking, and a very pretty
+struggle ensued, which taking place, as might be supposed, between a
+millionaire and a peer of the Realm, must have given rise to singular
+reflections and conjectures in the minds of the onlookers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Eventually the turn of the position favoured Gage.  The conditions
+under which Peckover fought rendered the struggle additionally painful;
+by degrees he lost ground and finally was dragged back exhausted into
+the water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You stupid ass, I've a good mind to shove you under and keep you
+there," Gage growled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His victim could only gasp and shiver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What must we look like from the shore?" Gage demanded savagely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover made no reply, but from his manner it might have been gathered
+that his mental attitude on the subject was one of complete
+indifference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Haven't we had enough of this tommy-rot?" at last he ventured to
+suggest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage was maintaining a fine show of keeping afloat in the
+four-foot-six.  "I think we have," he returned.  "I'm getting chilly,
+so we had better come to business.  Now, will you keep down in the
+water when you've quite done advertising the fact that it isn't up to
+our shoulders?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All the response Peckover made was&mdash;"Look at the punt!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Keeping the corner of an eye warily on his companion, Gage turned and
+looked.  The distance between them and the punt instead of a few feet
+was now some twenty yards.  The cause of this alteration was obvious.
+Their struggles had caused the cord which made fast the craft to one of
+the poles to become untied and the other pole to work loose.  There was
+some wind, under which the punt was now moving at a fair pace over the
+lake, dragging one pole with it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," said Gage, "I'll soon catch it and bring it back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peckover clutched him with the tenacity of despair.  "No, you
+don't," he exclaimed, anxiously resolute.  "You don't leave me here.
+How am I to get ashore if you don't come back?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Walk," answered Gage, trying to free himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I dare say," Peckover retorted.  "You don't catch me trying it.
+It's not the same depth all over.  We're on a bit of a bank here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look at the blamed thing going off," Gage cried.  "Let go!  She'll be
+a quarter of a mile away directly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peckover was not to be shaken off.  "You don't go and leave me
+here," he insisted wildly, "for any old punt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The situation was an interesting one, and as such, no doubt the four
+spectators acknowledged it.  Their comments, however, had not so far
+been directed to the performers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you going to do?" Peckover asked, still gripping the plunging
+Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going for a swim," he answered unfeelingly, at the same time making
+spirited but futile efforts to dive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you don't," Peckover returned, restraining his companion's
+attempts with all the energy that the chill and unusual element allowed
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage, kicking and struggling, was at length obliged to desist, after
+having furnished a several minutes' novel and exhilarating exhibition
+to the puzzled spectators.  Short of actual murderous violence, it was
+not possible for him to free himself from the tenacious Peckover.  It
+was difficult, he had to own, to do much in the way of natation with a
+desperate person hanging like grim death on to his legs, moreover,
+Peckover's embrace had a tendency to send Gage's head under water and
+to keep it there.  So, exasperated and vindictive as he felt, he had to
+compromise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he said, veiling his displeasure and sense of defeat with a
+cheerless grin, "am I going to save your life or not&mdash;before we catch
+our death of cold?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've got to," was the dogged reply.  "Five thousand a year is too
+good to say good-bye to in the middle of a pond."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is all your silly rot that has stuck us here," Gage returned.  "If
+you hadn't played the drivelling idiot, the life-saving performance
+would have been comfortably over half an hour ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, get it over now," retorted Peckover, "as quick as you like, and
+no tricks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right; come on," said Gage ill-humouredly.  "Let's hope those
+fools won't see through the fake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This way," said Peckover, starting off breast-high in the water,
+towards the nearest shore, and still holding tightly to his companion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are not going to walk?" Gage exclaimed aghast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm going to do what I can do best, and I can't swim," Peckover
+replied, with a determination which was apparent even through his
+shivering.  "We'll have to try this life-saving joke in some other
+form.  It's getting a bit stale this way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slowly their progress towards the shore, impeded by mud and thick
+weeds, began.  They had not noticed that the farmer, actuated by
+humanitarian motives or with an eye to reduction of rent, had run off
+to an old boat-house, and was now hurrying back with an oar and a coil
+of rope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, my lord!" shouted the butcher, as taking credit for his
+friend's action.  The two men, shivering and struggling unromantically
+through the jungle of weeds, smiled unpleasantly at the cry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Peckover became aware that the water was up to his chin.
+"It's getting deeper," he gasped, trying to hold his companion back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let it," Gage retorted sulkily.  "We've got to get to shore, dead or
+alive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With an energy which suggested his preference for the latter mode of
+arrival Peckover threw his arms around Gage and tried to draw him back.
+"Try another way," he panted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can.  I'm going straight on.  You should learn to swim," was the
+unkind response.  "If you don't let go, not another penny of my money
+shall you see," Gage added, beginning to have doubts about his own
+ultimate safety in those dreadful weeds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're not going to leave me here to drown?" Peckover remonstrated,
+shaking with terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can go back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the good of that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll fetch a boat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Water had become so utterly distasteful to Peckover that even the
+comparative shallows had no longer the slightest attraction for him.
+"What am I to do?" he shrieked.  "Gage, you must save me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't feel up to it now; too cold," was the unfeeling reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover now found that the extra six inches in the depth of the water
+made all the difference when it came to a struggle.  The margin below
+the breathing point was too small to permit of a sustained effort.
+Gage struck out, and Peckover, choosing what a momentary consideration
+suggested as the lesser of the two evils, let go his hold and stayed
+behind where at least his mouth was above water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What the four people on the bank now saw was this.  The supposed Lord
+Quorn leaving his companion, and energetically striking out for the
+shore, while the head which was all that was visible of the pretended
+millionaire remained a weird and ghastly object on the green expanse of
+water.  To add to the interest of the scene, Peckover, finding the mud
+on which he stood, had a tendency to give way beneath him, was forced,
+as he gradually sank, to keep jumping, with the object of maintaining
+his head well above water.  That the situation had grown critical was
+now fairly apparent, and it became borne in upon the farmer and his
+friend that heroic measures were indicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Directed by the butcher, who assumed an important (and dry)
+superintendence of the operations, the farmer now waded to the tops of
+his gaiters into the lake, and flung out the oar with the rope attached
+towards the wildly struggling Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There you are, my lord.  Lay 'old!" shouted the butcher.  "Then you
+can go back for the gentleman.  You'll 'ave to get a little farther
+out, Mr. Purvis; the rope's a bit short."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wish you'd come and lend a hand yourself, Mr. Fanning, instead o'
+telling me what any fool can see," Mr. Purvis called back testily, as
+the water lapped over the rim of his gaiters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're all right, Mr. Purvis," Mr. Fanning cried encouragingly,
+ignoring the invitation.  "Pull the oar in and throw it out again to
+his lordship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thought you could swim, Fanning," observed Mr. Purvis, wrestling
+uncomfortably with the difficulties of the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never," Mr. Fanning protested promptly and mendaciously.  "Wish I
+could.  Now, out with it!  Take care of his lordship's 'ead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once more the oar hurtled through the air, and fell this time within a
+yard of Gage's blanched face.  Making a desperate and supreme effort,
+he seized it, and, once sure of the timely support, clung to it panting
+and exhausted.  As he rested there, his feet naturally sank till they
+met with an obstruction.  Moving them about to clear himself, Gage
+found that they had touched the bottom; he forthwith stood up and
+disclosed the fact that he had been swimming for his life in three feet
+of water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look to the other gentleman, Mr. Purvis," directed Mr. Fanning from
+his post of high and dry observation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Purvis and Gage accordingly directed dubious glances at the bobbing
+head of the unhappy Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If your lordship would swim out with the oar to the gentleman," Purvis
+suggested, "I can pull you both in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say," returned Gage with chattering teeth.  "I'm not going
+back, the fun doesn't pay for the trouble.  You wade out as far as you
+can and throw the oar to him, and let your friend hold the rope.  Hi!"
+he called, to the complacent Mr. Fanning, "come here and catch hold.
+Hurry up or there'll be an inquest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dictatorial Mr. Fanning's expansive face, together with his
+self-centred spirits, fell at the invitation.  "Sorry I can't swim, my
+lord," he objected, advancing along the margin with dry and lagging
+steps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one wants you to," retorted Gage as he heavily emerged, dripping
+and pitiful from the water.  "Go in, and hold the rope," he commanded,
+"or my friend will be drowned."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And indeed Peckover's sharp cries, uttered so as to fill the
+opportunities when his mouth was above water, gave colour to the
+statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning, perhaps by the nature of his trade, rendered somewhat
+indifferent to the question of life and death where he was not
+personally concerned, had been congratulating himself on being well out
+of the affair; and now the order coming as it did from so important a
+personage and customer as Lord Quorn, was neither pleasant nor to be
+disregarded.  Personal discomfort was a thing to be endured by him only
+in other people, and now as he waded reluctantly into the water he
+resolved to avenge his outraged feelings and damp extremities by an
+extra penny a pound all round on his future deliveries at Staplewick
+Towers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now throw me the end of the rope, Mr. Purvis," he commanded when the
+water reached half-way up his calves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must come right out, Mr. Fanning," was the peremptory reply, "or
+we shall never reach the gentleman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accordingly Mr. Fanning, standing between a cross fire of admonishment
+and objurgation, was fain to advance till waist-deep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Encouraged by the recently indicated shallowness of the water, Mr.
+Purvis now went boldly forward, as much with the idea of exhibiting
+superior prowess compared with Mr. Fanning, as of ingratiating himself
+with the lord of Staplewick.  The resoluteness of the proceeding,
+however, had the effect of demonstrating its own superfluity, for as
+Mr. Purvis pushed forward he sank no deeper in the water and was able
+to approach waist-deep within the oar's length of Peckover who, it
+appeared, had unfortunately come upon a hole and, in his fright, stayed
+there.  Clutching the end of the oar he was pulled out into safety,
+not, however, without a great show of superfluous energy on the part of
+Mr. Purvis, who wished to make the most of his effort and have the
+greatest possible return for his ruined breeches and gaiters; and so
+the three, rescuers and rescued, stumbled with mixed feelings to the
+shore.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The most tangible result of the aquatic performance was that Gage,
+through his long immersion, caught a bad chill, and had to take to his
+bed.  Peckover, who was none the worse for the trying twenty minutes
+(having probably been too frightened to think of catching cold), was
+summoned to his lordship's bedroom, and there passed a particularly
+uncomfortable quarter of an hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is all your idiotic fault that I'm stuck away here," the patient
+declared wrathfully.  "That ass of a doctor says he won't let me get up
+for a week.  A fine lot of fun I'm getting out of the title up to now.
+And I'm paying you a hundred pounds for a week in bed.  As though it
+matters when I'm between the blankets whether I'm a lord or a
+solicitor's clerk.  A peerage only counts when you've got your boots
+on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm very sorry, old man," said Peckover contritely.  "But I don't see
+that you can blame me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do blame you," Gage burst out.  "Why couldn't you do as I told you,
+instead of dodging about like a fool and nearly bringing us both to our
+death!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You might make allowances," urged Peckover, "for a chap's feelings,
+when he finds himself for the first time in cold water with his clothes
+on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bah!" Gage returned scornfully.  "You've no pluck.  And you spoilt the
+whole show.  Well, it will have to stand, anyhow; I'm not going to let
+you make a fool of me again, whatever you may do with yourself.  Now
+perhaps you will put your mind to carrying through the dry land part of
+the trick.  If you don't I'll chuck you back your beggarly title, and
+get on without it.  It hasn't done much for me yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you want me to do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"While I'm lying here," Gage answered in an aggrieved tone, "you've got
+to make the most of the rescue.  I reckon neither of us wants to play
+the joke over again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not me," Peckover agreed heartily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then, the least you can do is to make out what a splendid rescue
+it was, and that I'm a first-class hero, and that you're going to
+recognize the fact by making over to me a big slice of your fortune.
+D'you see?  If I'm not a hero there can be no point in your solid
+admiration and gratitude.  So rub it well in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," Peckover promised.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may as well," Gage proceeded, "send for the lawyer chap from
+Bunbury and have a deed drawn up, settling, say, a couple of hundred
+thousand on me, it won't mean much as between you and me, but it will
+impress the local public; and I tell you I mean to have a good bit of
+glory to pay for this beastly cold.  Now, do it at once and do it with
+a snap, or I shall find a better use for five thousand a year than a
+cold-catching title."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus admonished, Peckover carried out his instructions with a will, and
+in a very few hours the <I>soi-disant</I> Lord Quorn's heroic act promised
+fair to be an undying tradition for the country-side.  In fact,
+Peckover, in his anxiety to retain his desirable income, rather overdid
+the business, and so much so that one or two cynical spirits were
+goaded into making question whether the life so saved was really, apart
+from the income it might have left behind, quite worth the value its
+owner evidently set upon it.  Still, that mattered nothing to Peckover,
+who was not thin-skinned, at least on dry land.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Bunbury Bulletin</I> devoted a column and three quarters to the
+"Romantic and Heroic Incident at Staplewick Park," and told its
+breathless readers in unusually and adjectively gorgeous language how a
+distinguished young Colonial of immense wealth was the guest with the
+newly succeeded Lord Quorn at Staplewick Towers, temporarily in the
+occupation of Colonel and Lady Agatha Hemyock; how he had, while
+fishing in the justly celebrated and admired lake in the beautiful
+park, overbalanced himself in making a cast, had fallen into deep
+water, and he being in imminent risk of drowning, how the gallant young
+nobleman, worthy descendant of a line of heroes and otherwise
+distinguished ancestors, had plunged in and with great difficulty and
+after unheard-of exertions rescued his friend.  The writer having fully
+described the occurrence, with a minuteness of detail only possible
+from the pen of one who was not there, proceeded to give the respective
+lineage and achievements of rescued and rescuer, while the interstices
+in the thrilling narrative were filled up with topographical,
+historical and picturesque notes by way of local colour; items which
+were kept ready for use in the event of anything worthy of description
+happening at Staplewick, from a chimney on fire to a royal visit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Great as was the sensation which the highly coloured account created,
+it may be safely asserted that by none was it read with more consuming
+interest than by Mr. Purvis, the farmer, and Mr. Fanning, the butcher.
+Their traditional and rooted belief in the infallibility of the
+newspaper press received a shock from which it never recovered.  But
+when their astonished perusal reached the last and most sensational
+paragraph, in which it was stated "on the best authority" that the
+grateful millionaire had, as a mark of his esteem, admiration and
+gratitude, settled a considerable fortune, "a sum which, it was an open
+secret, might be represented by a two and five noughts," on his
+deliverer, their sensations became of a complicated character that
+defied analysis.  Anyhow, the result was that they met to discuss the
+matter, and the outcome of the meeting was that next morning they
+proceeded to the Towers and sought an interview with the supposititious
+millionaire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover felt somewhat uncomfortable when the visitors were announced.
+In his exuberance in making the most of a sham rescue he had overlooked
+the spectators, or at least had regarded them as negligible factors in
+the episode.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After a few words of disingenuous congratulation, Mr. Fanning came to
+the point.  He and Mr. Purvis had seen it stated, doubtless correctly,
+in the local paper that Mr. Gage had in his gratitude, etc., rewarded
+his purported rescuer in more than princely fashion.  And Mr. Fanning
+and Mr. Purvis, whilst not withholding their meed of admiration from
+his lordship, whose illness they deplored, and who had, they generously
+admitted, done the best he could, were anxious to know where they came
+in, and could only say that it was hard for them to express in words
+their joint and several disappointment at being mentioned in connexion
+with the affair only in the roles of casual spectators.  Whereas, Mr.
+Fanning urged with a suggestion of latent heat, it was they who brought
+the accident to its comparatively happy termination; but for them and
+the parts they played, he, Mr. Fanning, did not think they would that
+day be having the pleasure of addressing Mr. Gage, or at any rate he,
+Mr. Gage, the advantage of being in a position to listen to them; the
+depressing inference being obvious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Peckover had by this time come to take a more comfortable and even
+jocular view of the affair, he was not inclined to give more notice to
+the claim than seeing in it evidence that the bogus rescue had deceived
+its witnesses.  Moreover, as a Cockney, he had not much opinion of or
+consideration for the feelings of a farmer and a country butcher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't think you did much," he replied off-handedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Begging your pardon, sir," Mr. Fanning maintained, "we did everything,
+if the lives of yourself and his lordship count for anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You didn't risk your lives," Peckover argued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We did, begging your pardon, sir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, in three feet six inches of water?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How," urged Mr. Fanning, "were we to know the depth?  We were prepared
+to go much deeper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say," returned Peckover incredulously.  "But as you didn't that
+doesn't come into the account.  You did a lot of shouting, I admit, and
+nearly knocked my head off by flinging that infernal oar at me as
+though you thought you were harpooning a whale.  Well, what do you
+want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning's face was lowering, and that of Mr. Purvis was overspread
+by a foolish grin of disappointment.  Certainly matters were not
+turning out as they had anticipated on their walk to the Towers.  They
+were being rudely awakened from their dreams of returning to their
+respective homes rich men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning paused for a moment, as collecting, so to say, his routed
+forces for a final charge.  "Well, sir," he said, bluntly now and with
+a note of repressed indignation; "putting myself aside for the moment,
+I should like to ask, seeing what you are doing for his lordship,
+whether my friend Mr. Purvis' efforts on your behalf are not to meet
+with suitable recognition.  It was Mr. Purvis who, with me, kept our
+presence of mind when matters looked black; it was Mr. Purvis who,
+under my direction, ran with splendid promptitude to the boathouse; it
+was Mr. Purvis who fetched out all there was to fetch, the oar and the
+rope, and, under my directions, lashed the one to the other; it was Mr.
+Purvis who, at my suggestion, and at imminent risk to himself, first
+made sure of his lordship when his lordship was totally exhausted.
+Yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning paused, and drew a murrey-coloured handkerchief lightly
+across his heated brow.  Mr. Purvis, with the reticence of conscious
+desert, stood eyeing Peckover with an expression which suggested, that
+if that unsympathetic person was not duly impressed by the catalogue of
+his achievements, he ought to be, and that if he, Purvis, failed to
+obtain due reward for the same he would be content to leave his claim
+to the judgment of posterity, but at the same time would much prefer an
+immediate and more material recognition.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was Mr. Purvis," resumed the butcher, "accompanied and assisted by
+your humble servant, who at considerable risk, I may say, great risk,
+since I am no swimmer&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor ain't I," interjaculated Purvis, thankfully, as looking to his
+ignorance to increase the figure of his recompense.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anyhow," continued Fanning, rather put off his eloquence by the
+interruption, "we risked it.  We risked it.  And we are husbands of
+wives and fathers of families."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning, who was said to be in the habit of knocking his wife about
+after an evening at the <I>Pigeons</I>, became, for a butcher, almost
+touching, and Mr. Purvis, whose wife ruled him with a copper-stick on
+the rare occasions when her tongue failed, experienced no difficulty in
+looking intensely married.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was Mr. Purvis, guided and sustained by me, who pushed out for you,
+sir, and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was Mr. Purvis, directed by you, who nearly sliced the top of my
+head off," Peckover interposed flippantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your rescue," pursued Fanning, ignoring the interruption, "was no
+light matter.  It was the stiffest job I've ever been concerned in,
+though I must say I never expected to have to bring the fact home to
+the gentleman most interested in it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Peckover curtly, "what did you expect?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leave it to you, sir," Purvis replied promptly, shrewdly fearing the
+effect his friend's verbosity might have upon the ultimate figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Mr. Fanning would have his say.  "Putting aside, sir, the risk of
+life we ran, to say nothing of the most valuable existence which it has
+been our privilege to prolong, I may mention that I was wearing on the
+occasion a bran new pair of boots which are now good for nothing, quite
+ruined, sir; I had on likewise my best market-day gaiters and breeches
+ditto; added to which the tails of my coat and the sleeves were so
+saturated that my missus can do nothing with 'em.  And I believe I am
+correct in stating that Mr. Purvis' wearing apparel was greatly
+deteriorated."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned towards Purvis for corroboration.  That worthy man gave an
+assenting nod.  "Ain't been able to get into my breeches since, nor my
+boots, nor my gaiters," he asserted painfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover made a rapid calculation based on the price-tickets he had
+studied during the luncheon hour in the windows of various
+establishments in Cheapside.  "All right," he said graciously, "I shall
+be happy to present you with five pounds apiece; that is one pound
+seventeen for the damage and three guineas each for your trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a few moments a sepulchral silence reigned in the room.  Then Mr.
+Fanning's mouth slowly opened, as though the machinery, brought to a
+sudden stop, was just set going again.  But all he could say was:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Five pounds apiece?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So profound was his emotion that for the moment Peckover was at a loss
+as to the real effect of his offer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As a mark of my high appreciation of your services, and taking into
+consideration that we did not know the depth of water was only three
+foot six, I shall be pleased to make it guineas," Peckover announced,
+in as grand a manner as he knew how to assume.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning threw up his hands and turned to Mr. Purvis, an incarnation
+of despair.  "Five guineas!  Five!" he gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The gentleman's joking," was all Purvis could say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I really mean it," said Peckover with princely condescension.  "I
+absolutely refuse to reward your services at any lower figure, however
+much less your modesty may feel them to be really worth.  I said five
+guineas and I mean five guineas, and not a shilling less than five
+guineas apiece shall you have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning was now reduced to a state of abject helplessness.  "Five
+guineas! five guineas!" was his cry.  "While the man who had to be
+rescued himself&mdash;by us, by us&mdash;gets a sum running into six figures.
+It's something to be a lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A poor look-out for respectable farmers and tradesmen," put in Purvis.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What," demanded Peckover, in well-feigned surprise, "aren't you
+satisfied?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly," Fanning answered feelingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," returned Peckover, "I consider five guineas very good pay for
+ten minutes' work in preventing two gentlemen from drowning in three
+foot six of water."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's an insult," Fanning maintained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, well," retorted Peckover, "I won't insult you.  Good-day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But neither Mr. Fanning nor Mr. Purvis had any intention of leaving
+heroism to be its own reward.  They made a simultaneous movement to
+intercept their insulter as he moved towards the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't misunderstand us, sir," said Fanning, tempering with a nice
+sense of dignity his demand for justice.  "We are poor men, and if five
+guineas apiece is really all you are disposed to offer us, why, our
+duty to our families is to accept it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, I thought you'd come to your senses," observed Peckover with a
+grin.  "Five guineas isn't to be sneezed at."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've done a lot of sneezing for it," replied Fanning, "and so has Mr.
+Purvis.  We both got bad colds from the wetting."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you can't expect me to pay you for having a cold in the head,"
+returned Peckover, with more flippancy than justice.  "Here's your
+bonus."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He took out the money and paid them, with the full intention of
+recovering the same from his friend and patron upstairs.  Messrs.
+Fanning and Purvis received the inadequate solatium in a due spirit of
+protest.  The crackle of the notes in their bucolic fingers woke them
+from their dreams of affluence, and as they gazed with sorrow on the
+legend thereon the fact was established that five, not five thousand,
+was the figure at which their heroism was assessed, and that if justice
+was to be found in the world her habitat was not Staplewick Towers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the departure of the dissatisfied pair Peckover threw himself into
+a chair and laughed for some minutes as he recalled, one after another,
+the salient points of the serio-comic interview.  He had his
+limitations and deficiencies, but a certain sense of humour was not
+among them, and the logical consequence of that magnificently absurd
+rescue and reward appealed to it strongly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I'm in for a fine time at last," he chuckled, in unrestrained
+enjoyment of his new state of existence.  "What a bit of luck!  I'm
+going to be in clover for the rest of my days.  Tal ra, ra!  It's
+immense!"  He jumped up and began, in pure joyousness, to dance a
+double shuffle.  In the midst of his saltatory abandon he suddenly
+stopped.  The light in the room had become sensibly diminished.
+Pirouetting round to the window to ascertain the cause, he saw bulking
+therein the huge figure of a man who was watching his caperings with a
+threatening eye.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The man who, with his burly form filling up the window, stood looking
+in with grim amusement at Peckover's performance, was a great
+round-faced, bullet-headed fellow of six feet two, whose massive
+proportions, coupled with his juvenile countenance and somewhat vacuous
+expression, gave him the appearance of a fat schoolboy seen through a
+magnifying-glass.  He was dressed in a Norfolk suit of leather, which
+by its amplitude of cut made the wearer look even a bigger man than
+Nature had intended him to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some seconds the two stood staring at each other in a sort of
+stupefied silence.  Then Peckover, somewhat nervously, remarked,
+"Hullo!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Keeping warm?" the substantial apparition enquired, drawing back the
+corners of his wide mouth in a sarcastic grin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Foot asleep," was the ready explanation, given with a certain
+apprehensive quaver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see."  The stranger accepted the statement for what it was worth.
+"This is Staplewick Towers?" The question was put in a tone of settled
+conviction that only an answer in the affirmative would be deemed
+worthy of credence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Front door round to the left," said Peckover perking up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," returned the intruder significantly.  "I'll try that way when
+I leave."  He took a step in to the room and stared round him curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Awkward member!" was Peckover's muttered comment, duly impressed by
+the other's size, which made the furniture look small.  "You wish to
+see Colonel Hemyock?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not particularly," returned the stranger gruffly, "I want Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn!"  Peckover caught up his face in the act of falling.
+"Pressing business?" he inquired politely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any message?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No."  The man's voice was unnecessarily, objectionably loud, Peckover
+thought.  "You would not care to take what I've come all the way from
+Australia to give him," he added with unpleasant significance, as he
+twirled a thick crop, just missing a statuette by half an inch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So the complication which Peckover had feared but of which his good
+fortune and the zest of his new life had made him forgetful, had
+arrived.  In a moment the particularly awkward truth flashed upon him,
+that this was the dreaded bully from Australia, the brother of the
+would-be Lady Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The idea put his thoughts in such a whirl that he was not ready with
+any reply.  His hesitation seemed to have the effect of exasperating
+the quick-tempered visitor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is this nobleman?" he roared, with sneering emphasis on the
+substantive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover, with the income of a Cabinet Minister at stake, was rapidly
+running over expedients for meeting the monstrous emergency.  To put
+him off for the moment and send for the police seemed the most feasible
+way.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn?" he replied.  "Oh, he's about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He won't be about much after I have done with him," was the grim
+retort.  Suddenly stooping forward and looking viciously round the
+room, the unpleasant visitor carelessly threw his crop away over his
+shoulder and caught up the poker.  "Look here!" he bellowed.  "His
+lordship's right leg."  With the word he made a furious effort and
+snapped the poker in halves.  "See?" he panted, throwing the pieces
+down so near Peckover's feet that the impressed observer sprang
+eighteen inches into the air.  "How will his lordship like that?" he
+asked loudly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It occurred to Peckover that, considering the poor fellow's situation,
+the tampering with his noble limbs would not be likely to affect him
+much, and he said so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The strong man stared at him in incredulous exasperation that the
+performance had missed its intended effect.  "What?  He's not a big
+chap, is he?" he demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Peckover answered, "I&mdash;I mean he is so devoid of feeling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The visitor caught up his crop and flourished it.  "My poor sister is
+not, though," he roared, with a violence which even his possibly just
+resentment scarcely seemed to justify.  "He promised to marry her, and
+then ran off.  But we are on his track.  Yes, I've got my
+broken-hearted sister waiting outside in the garden."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover felt that he must have a few minutes' solitude in which to
+think out the solution of the awkward problem.  "Hadn't you better go
+and fetch her in, while I tell Lord Quorn?" he suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will," was the answer, given with a violent suddenness which made
+Peckover start.  "And when I catch sight of his lordship," added the
+amiable zealot, "I'll astonish him.  I'll&mdash;I'll make him jump."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll astonish a good many people besides if you do," murmured
+Peckover dryly, as the bully flung off through the window.  Here was a
+pretty situation.  Was the good time he was enjoying and promising
+himself to turn into ash like a pipe of tobacco?  Already the
+<I>soi-disant</I> Lord Quorn was complaining&mdash;and with some justice&mdash;that he
+was not having much fun for his money.  Would he be likely to continue
+paying five thousand a year for the privilege of marrying an
+undesirable colonial maiden with the alternative of having his arms and
+legs snapped, possibly his nose slit and his eyes gouged out, if he
+refused?  Not likely.  Nor that he would care to wear the title when he
+found it carried so little fun and so many inconveniences with it.  But
+what was he, Percy Peckover, to do?  The situation baffled him.
+Temporize was all he could think of; temporize till he could hit on
+some expedient for ridding the position of this awkward element which
+threatened to spoil it.  It was certainly exasperating just when he had
+settled down into a good thing to have to return to the hard world of
+work which he hated, poverty which he loathed, and his own identity of
+which he stood in terror.  But this great noisy bully&mdash;ugh! how he
+would like to&mdash;&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His bitter meditations were interrupted by footsteps on the path and
+next moment the <I>bête noire</I> reappeared, this time with the lady.  The
+first anxious glance at her did nothing to dissipate Peckover's
+apprehensions.  A fine woman she was certainly, according to the
+popular acceptation of the term&mdash;tall and massive, but coarse and
+off-hand almost to vulgarity.  She had challenging black eyes, a nose
+which the most casual glance could never overlook, and a determined
+mouth and jaw.  Her hair was cut short like a man's, and in her hand
+she swung a substantial ash stick which she seemed quite capable of
+using to enforce any argument which verbal persuasion had failed to
+drive home.  As to her dress, it was of masculine cut, the skirt being
+deeply edged with leather.  Altogether she was a formidable and
+workmanlike young woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover had taken the precaution to latch the French window.  Finding
+it did not yield to his heavy hand, the gentleman from Australia
+applied his boot to it and burst it open.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This rotten window sticks," he remarked by way of apology.  "Come in,
+Lalage.  Mind the glass.  This," he said aggressively to Peckover, "is
+my poor deceived sister, Miss Lalage Leo.  My name is Carnaby Leo.
+Now, where's Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In bed," answered Peckover manfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" roared Mr. Leo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You need not shout," Peckover suggested, fearful that the noise might
+reach other ears and occasion complications.  "We had an accident on
+the lake the other day, and he has been in bed ever since."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've heard of it," said Miss Leo, speaking for the first time.  Her
+tone was as downright and masculine as her appearance.  "And are you
+the rich young man who was rescued from drowning?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Brother and sister exchanged glances, and the glances, Peckover told
+himself, foretold a further complication.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn is very seriously ill," he said impressively.  "Took a bad
+chill, and is suffering from congestion and&mdash;and fever.  It is quite
+impossible that you should see him for at least a fortnight, if he
+isn't dead by that date."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll see him, dead or alive," shouted Mr. Leo, who was making a tour
+of inspection round the apartment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be calm, Carnaby," said his sister casually.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would kill him," observed Peckover, with conviction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Killing's too good for him," returned Carnaby, loudly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush, Carnaby!" the lady commanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is delirious," said Peckover, warming to his work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll bring him to his senses," growled Leo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better leave him to me for the present," suggested Miss Leo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wouldn't recognize you, or you him," said Peckover, for once
+touching upon the truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll soon let him know who we are," bellowed Mr. Leo, "and what we
+are&mdash;and what he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Impossible, while he's in this state," Peckover maintained.  "If you
+kill him&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good job too!" Mr. Leo interpolated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He won't be much good for matrimonial purposes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"True," Miss Leo admitted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover had noticed with some discomfort that of late her eyes had
+rested on him with increasing interest.  He was always typically alive
+to the slightest sign of female attraction to himself, but this
+particular attention did not produce in him the usual sportive
+complacency.  The situation was becoming tense.  The very complexity of
+his position took from Peckover his usual volubility.  Then he
+bethought himself of certain alcoholic sustenance which he and Gage
+kept in a closed cabinet in order to be able to indulge in it at
+uncanonical hours without the fuss of ringing and ordering drinks.
+<I>Noblesse oblige</I>, the new-fangled peer had observed in reference to
+his obligation to hide the evidence of irregular refreshment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have a drink?" he suggested, as he whipped out a decanter of derelict
+sherry which a foraging tour of the cellars had discovered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Carnaby Leo's interest in his surroundings seemed to deepen at the
+suggestion.  "I will," he promptly responded, as he swooped down upon
+the wine.  "Sherry!"  He pronounced the word with a contortion of his
+fat face which might be construed into an indication of preference for
+some other beverage not immediately forthcoming; but he drank it,
+gulping down a glass at a swallow, nevertheless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Miss Leo turned to Peckover.  "You are not married?" she
+demanded with startling significance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet," he answered, blanching.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Engaged?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stood over him breathing a fell design, her black eyes transfixing
+him, and seeming to wither his flippant courage to the very root.
+Still he made a feebly desperate effort to stave it off.  "Not quite.
+Almost.  Practically," he stammered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a trifle," the lady returned with masterful decisiveness.
+"Easily got over."  Then to his relief she turned her blighting gaze
+from him and directed it meditatively to the expanse of park beyond the
+window.  "I think," she said musingly, "that in any event I see my way
+out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that is the best way out," murmured Peckover as loudly as he
+dared, following her gaze.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But she ignored the rash speech, and for some moments the silence was
+broken only by the smacking of Mr. Leo's lips as he endeavoured to
+impart gusto into his occupation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover, dreading the next words, was about to call attention to the
+beauty of the landscape when Miss Leo suddenly turned upon him, and, as
+though struck by an exceptionally brilliant idea, said&mdash;"In the event
+of my not being Lady Quorn, why should I not marry you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, bother!"  Peckover was startled into the expression of
+disagreement.  "Why should you?" he objected manfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I set my mind upon it," she said, with a dangerous look in her eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please take it off," he protested.  "Lord Quorn is my friend; he saved
+my life, I could not be so base as to rob him of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," the lady replied dryly, "you wouldn't if I wanted him.  But I'm
+not so sure about it.  Anyhow, in case the poor fellow doesn't get
+better, why, he couldn't complain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, that would be my work," Peckover reflected anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Weak stuff, this," exclaimed Mr. Leo.  "Brandy neat is my sauce.
+Can't taste sherry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not for want of trying," Peckover thought, as he noticed the
+almost empty decanter, but he did not say so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't he a fine fellow?" murmured Miss Leo, with an unwelcome approach
+to affectionate confidence.  "Be nice to him and he'll soon take to
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has soon taken to the sherry," was Peckover's mental commentary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Strong as a lion," said Lalage, waxing enthusiastic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And thirsty as a dozen," Peckover told himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Carnaby, dear," his sister called sweetly, "I want you and Mr. Gage to
+be great friends.  We are so already," she added caressingly to the
+unhappy Peckover; "more than friends, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't seem to have lost much time," was her brother's not unnatural
+comment as he leered at their victim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover felt that if he did not take a firm stand at once he was lost.
+"I quite agree with you," he replied boldly, addressing himself to the
+still thirsty Mr. Leo and ignoring the lady's blandishments.  "There is
+no need to be in such a deuce of a hurry.  You see"&mdash;he took courage to
+face his would-be enslaver&mdash;"I never set eyes on you till ten minutes
+ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Leo's face changed swiftly from affection to resentment.
+"Carnaby," she exclaimed, as an ill-boding light flashed from her eyes,
+"do you hear that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carnaby, disturbed in his employment of draining the last drops out of
+the decanter, responded loudly, and, it seemed a trifle perfunctorily,
+"Never set eyes?  All right.  I'll take them out for you, and reset
+them directly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I'm not the man you want," Peckover protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nobody," roared Leo, "will want you much after I've shaken hands with
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want Lord Quorn," Miss Leo declared resolutely.  "Failing Lord
+Quorn, I'll take you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, but&mdash;&mdash;" Peckover began to expostulate, when Mr. Leo rolled up
+and stopped him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, look here, my pretty dickey-bird," he explained grimly, "I'm
+gentle up to a point, because my sweet sister doesn't like bloodshed.
+That poker," he pointed to the broken steel, "was his lordship's right
+arm; here is yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He caught up the shovel, and with a quick movement snapped it, throwing
+the pieces back into the fender with emphatic and dismaying clatter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you mind listening to me?" urged Peckover, regarding the
+object-lesson as unpleasantly superfluous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the man of strength disregarded his appeal.  "I shan't hurt you
+yet," he declared with an under-lying threat, as he caught up the tongs
+and flourished them.  He opened and closed them with a snap several
+times uncomfortably near Peckover's nose.  "Both legs," he exclaimed,
+as, putting forth a mighty effort, he twisted and broke them, throwing
+them down with the same provoking clangour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you," Peckover declared desperately, "this house is not mine.
+It is not even at this moment Lord Quorn's.  It is let furnished.  I
+wish you would not interfere with the fire-irons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not particular," Leo returned.  "Can't stop to go into the
+ownership of fire-irons.  You've seen what I'm capable of; now send 'em
+up to his lordship with my compliments."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn is not at home here at present," Peckover insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A lord," said Lalage, "is at home anywhere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The thought of the real Lord Quorn crossed Peckover's mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fine thing to be a lord," he reflected bitterly.  "That poor chap has
+missed this fun."  Then seeing Carnaby evidently on the look-out for
+fresh worlds, or, rather, domestic implements, to conquer, he turned
+desperately to Lalage.  "I say," he proposed seriously, "can't we
+compromise this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words, or at least one of them caught the ear of her brother, on
+whom possibly the sherry was beginning to take effect.  "Compromise,
+you wombat?" he bawled.  "Compromise my beautiful sister?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, Carnaby," protested the beautiful one in question, with a look
+at Peckover which gave unmistakable point to her words, "how absurd you
+are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Compromise my precious sister, you slink!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," Peckover objected, getting quite reckless between the two
+fires; "not your precious sister.  How absurd you are!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next instant the giant had sprung at him and had him in his grip.
+"Absurd?  Am I?  I'll wring your neck!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean settle," Peckover explained in a shriek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll settle you," was the retort, emphasized by a tightening grip.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean settle with money," gasped the tortured one, hoping the magic
+word might have a relaxing effect upon the stricture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But whatever might have been its effect upon his tormentor's mind when
+unclouded by alcohol, it had now the reverse of the desired result.
+"Money!" he cried in maudlin indignation as he threw him off, "what is
+money where the honour of my lovely Lalage is concerned?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover had come to the inevitable conclusion that it would be worth
+his while to make some pecuniary sacrifice in order to get out of the
+difficulty.  He would do well to jettison part of the cargo of his ship
+which had seemed to be coming home so nicely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," he explained, "much as my friend Quorn may admire your
+sister, he will be bound to marry a rich girl to support his title."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A peer wants a lot of keeping up, I suppose," growled Mr. Leo, taking
+out another bottle from the cabinet and shaking it viciously,
+demonstrating by his action that a bush-bully requires a certain amount
+of keeping-up as well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It stands to reason," Peckover replied.  "Now," he added
+insinuatingly, "if a hundred pounds&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when he was sorry he had
+uttered them.  There was an explosion, a smash, and the little table
+with its contents was lying on the floor broken by a thump from the
+mighty fist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hundred devils!" Mr. Leo roared.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+So far as he dared, Peckover began to lose his temper.  "I wish you
+would not smash things," he ventured to remonstrate.  "I'll take your
+word for your muscle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My muscle prefers to speak for itself," was the retort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It need not talk with such a deuced lot of emphasis," Peckover
+rejoined.  "What do you say," he added, returning to business, "to two
+hundred pounds?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you wish I may take it?" exclaimed the fair Lalage with infinite
+scorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't expect any more," Peckover urged.  "Lord Quorn is a very
+poor man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is he?" Lalage asked, becoming thoughtful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly he is.  Really not worth looking after.  Now," he added,
+coaxingly.  "Can't you put a fair price on your journey?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What price my glorious sister's broken heart?" bellowed Mr. Leo,
+truculently maudlin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damaged goods half price," was Peckover's inaudible reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh, you scallywag?"  The big man advanced upon him threateningly.
+"Let me go into figures with your beautiful Lord Quorn.  Once before a
+man played the fool with Lalage, and we got five thousand pounds out of
+his executors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Executors?" repeated Peckover, interested in spite of more urgent
+considerations.  "Poor fellow died then?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, you see Carnaby called upon him," Lalage explained sweetly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," proceeded Mr. Leo, always with unnecessary volume of tone,
+"before I proceed to extremities, I should like to know from you, as
+his lordship's friend, how we stand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It occurred to Peckover that the chances were that either he or both
+would stand on two stumps before long if the weather did not change.
+"Name your own sum for the return ticket," he said desperately.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo walked up and placed his hands upon Peckover's shoulders with
+such energy that the smaller man wondered he did not collapse into his
+boots.  "Does he mean it?" he cried, glaring tipsily into Peckover's
+contorted face.  "Not he!  Look at his eye; it's shifty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The victim considered he might esteem himself lucky if the feature in
+question did not shift out of his head forthwith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must take time," said Lalage, laying a repressing hand on her
+brother's arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll stay a week or two with you," Mr. Leo declared; "till his
+lordship has decided whether he will remain on above ground or not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It occurred to Peckover that the property would be considerably out of
+repair by that time, but he recognized that a refusal was at the moment
+quite out of the question.  Then, as Mr. Leo, having given him a
+preliminary shake, released him from his clutch by sending him
+backwards with uncalled-for violence against a floor lamp which was not
+improved by the contact, the door opened and Miss Ethel Hemyock looked
+in.  "Oh, Mr. Gage, I have only just got rid of poor Mr. Sharnbrook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young lady came in with a smile for Peckover and a doubtful glance
+at the strangers.  Perhaps Miss Leo's appearance suggested to her
+ignorance that she had not much to fear from that quarter in the way of
+rivalry; anyhow, her look changed to one of easy graciousness as
+Peckover, awkwardly enough, introduced them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me present some Australian friends of mine," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very great friends," added Lalage, with a significant smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More than friends; brothers, eh, Gage, my boy," put in Carnaby taking
+the cue from his sister, and accompanying the words with a slap which
+nearly dislocated Peckover's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," said Miss Ethel, rather drawing back, and looking enquiringly at
+Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So pleased to know all your friends, dear," observed Lalage with
+mischievous significance.  "I am sure we shall be great friends,
+Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ethel Hemyock," the young lady supplied frigidly, the word "dear"
+having congealed her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha and Dagmar came in.  The hostess' look of enquiry at the
+sight of the abnormal visitors was cut short by Ethel's anxious
+enquiry.  "Where is Mr. Sharnbrook?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tone suggested to her mother's sharp ears that something was wrong.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Sharnbrook has just gone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is staying to luncheon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Dagmar answered.  "Mother did not ask him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He must!" Ethel exclaimed, making for the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ethel!" Dagmar cried, as she sprang after her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha, scenting mischief, turned to Peckover.  "Will you present
+your&mdash;friends?" she said coldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover, roused from the natural preoccupation induced by his
+position, did so.  "Miss Leo, Mr. Leo&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Friends from the Bush?" Lady Agatha enquired superciliously, eyeing
+through her "witherers" Lalage's short hair and short dress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;just so," Peckover answered in his confusion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" roared Carnaby.  "Bush?  I'll bush you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Carnaby," his sister remonstrated, "be calm.  Yes, we are just from
+Australia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Friends of Mr. Gage's?" Lady Agatha enquired, in a tone of disgusted
+resignation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Friends of Lord Quorn," Peckover corrected swiftly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And of Mr. Gage's, I should hope," Lalage added with an embarrassing
+show of affectionate insistence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!" said Lady Agatha, transferring her attention and her glasses to
+Carnaby, "Lord Quorn's former sheep partner, perhaps?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" shouted the worthy fellow, more bellicose than usual under the
+influence of the sherry.  "Sheep partner?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not necessary," observed Lady Agatha with cutting distinctness,
+"to speak so loud.  I am not aware that any one in the room is deaf."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What," demanded Carnaby of Peckover in a roaring whisper, "does the
+old lady mean by calling me a sheep partner?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush!  It's all right," he replied.  "She thinks you are an Australian
+swell&mdash;a mutton-king."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mutton king?" Carnaby bawled, raising his arm as though to pulverize
+his insulter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The evidences of his strength had meanwhile attracted Lady Agatha's
+attention.  "Are you," she asked severely, "the person who has been
+taking liberties with the fire-irons?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," answered Carnaby with justifiable pride.  "I just snapped them
+to amuse this little wombat."  Then, as a brilliant afterthought, he
+suggested&mdash;"Shall I ring for some more and show you how it is done?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By no means," was the frigid answer.  "I should very much object to be
+shown anything of the sort.  And I must request you, if your friends
+need amusement, to choose some other method of providing it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, don't be alarmed," replied Carnaby, on whom her grand tone
+was quite wasted.  "Winter's coming on and I won't reduce the stock;
+I've got something more interesting to break than fire-irons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way," Lady Agatha observed, "we saw a strange and not very
+prepossessing person in the shrubbery by the drive just now.  Was he by
+any chance a friend of yours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not likely, ma'am," Carnaby answered, "unless it was Lord Quorn, and
+this little wallaby tells us he is in bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was not Lord Quorn," said Lady Agatha.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Misses Ethel and Dagmar came in breathless, with Sharnbrook between
+them, looking as a pick-pocket might under escort of two policemen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We caught him, mother, at the drive gate.  I told him how sorry you
+were you had let him go when you meant to insist upon his staying to
+luncheon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," Lady Agatha corroborated, conveniently ignoring the fact
+that she had practically sent him off as having no further use for him.
+"Mr. Sharnbrook might have known we never could be so inhospitable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sharnbrook gave an enquiring glance at Peckover, who could only
+helplessly reply by a sign directing his attention to Miss Leo, at
+sight of whom hope gave way to despair in the Sharnbrook bosom.
+Bisgood announced luncheon.  Lady Agatha's look at Peckover said as
+plainly as speech&mdash;"What are you going to do with these impossible
+people?"  And under the look he felt more limp and nonplussed than ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Under the circumstances Peckover was actually relieved when the tension
+of the situation was snapped by a loud exclamation of satisfaction from
+Carnaby.  "Lunch!  Good!  I'm all there!"  With a stride he placed
+himself by Lady Agatha's side, and offered her his arm with what might
+be supposed to stand in the Bush for the grand manner.  Ignoring his
+arm, Lady Agatha crossed her own and walked stiffly and resentfully
+from the room.  By no means abashed, Carnaby looked round and pounced
+upon Dagmar, who, having lost Sharnbrook in a struggle for him with her
+sister, was also disappointed of getting Peckover, whom Miss Leo had
+taken prompt care to annex.  But Carnaby was hardly acceptable, even as
+a consolation prize.  Dagmar drew back and made a sudden dart after her
+mother leaving the rest to follow in various degrees of discontent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, mother," she exclaimed breathless with indignation, "what
+appalling people!  We had better keep an eye on the silver.  Do you
+know, I saw that horrid man again in the shrubbery just now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the last of the party were pressing through the library door "that
+horrid man" came up to the window and looked furtively in.  It was none
+other than Lord Quorn, the real Lord Quorn; he who had drunk Peckover's
+drugged champagne at the <I>Quorn Arms</I> at Great Bunbury.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"I've  had enough of this, I'm going to get up," Mr. Gage, the
+<I>soi-disant</I> Lord Quorn, declared, as Peckover after luncheon devoted a
+few minutes of his present complicated existence to visit that
+impatient patient.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't I?" was the querulous rejoinder.  "Why not?  The doctor's gone,
+and&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's something worse than the doctor come," said Peckover with a
+long face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know what's worse than the doctor, unless it's the
+undertaker," returned Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I do," said Peckover feelingly.  "A most unfortunate thing has
+happened.  A girl who I was a bit sweet on out there has followed me
+over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage whistled.  "Then our game's all up.  Of course she'll know you are
+Quorn and I am not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," replied Peckover subtly.  "I have made it all right about that.
+Told her there was a mistake and I was not the rightful heir."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was smart of you," Gage said with gloomy approval.  "Well, what's
+the trouble, then.  The lady doesn't expect me to marry her, does she?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," answered Peckover with intensity, "she does."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"  Gage nearly landed out of bed in his surprise.  "Me?"  Then
+laughed incredulously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She says she has come six thousand miles to be Lady Quorn and she is
+going to be Lady Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The deuce she is.  How is she going to manage that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By force."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" Gage shouted.  "Marry me by force?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," answered Peckover seriously.  "You see, she has brought her
+brother with her, a dare-devil rampaging brute of a bush-ranger, six
+foot three tall, and broad in proportion, who sticks at nothing but
+your favourite vital part with a bowie knife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd like to see him," Gage observed scornfully
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will, if you get out of bed and come downstairs," returned
+Peckover impressively.  "Also you will have an opportunity of remarking
+the havoc he has made with the fire-irons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?  Fire-irons?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has been snapping a few pokers and tongs just to show what he will
+do with you when he catches you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What absurd rot," Gage said with rising exasperation.  "I never had
+anything to do with the brute's sister."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you have got to marry her," rejoined Peckover quite seriously, "or
+take the consequences."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, have I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; you had better stop in bed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had I?" Gage exclaimed, flinging off the clothes.  "I rather think
+I'll get up and hand the ruffian over to the police, as you don't seem
+to have the <I>nous</I> to do it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not I," returned Peckover shrewdly.  "Not quite such a fool.  Once
+open police-court proceedings, and our little arrangement will come out
+and be spoilt, even if nothing else happens."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what are we to do?" Gage demanded, recognizing the weight of his
+friend's objection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You stop in bed," said Peckover, with an air of authority based upon
+expediency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"D&mdash;&mdash;d if I do," Gage retorted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you don't, you'll have to," replied Peckover with truth underlying
+paradox.  "A fortnight of the downy is better than six months of the
+plank."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What, stop here for a fortnight?" Gage cried wrathfully.  "It's a
+regular take in.  A rollicking time I'm having for my money;
+cold-shouldered, half-drowned, and now tucked up in this beastly bed
+for weeks.  Where does Lord Quorn come in?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn," observed Peckover sententiously, "will go out if Mr.
+Carnaby Leo gets hold of him.  He has got a museum at home of pickled
+ears, and eyes and noses, et cetera, of which he has deprived certain
+parties who didn't do as he told them.  After all," he added
+persuasively, "it is better to stop in bed with the schedule of your
+features complete than to get up for a rollick and find some of the
+items missing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why the devil didn't you tell me you'd been playing the fool with a
+bush-ranger's sister?" Gage snapped savagely.  "I wouldn't have looked
+at you or your title.  You've got my money under false pretences."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You never gave me time to go into my past history," was the plausible
+reply.  "You might have known when you took over a peerage you were
+letting yourself in for something of the sort.  You know it's a way we
+have."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A pretty brilliant way, to get tangled up with bush-rangers," sneered
+Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He didn't come on the scene till an hour ago.  I suppose, by the way,"
+he suggested mischievously, "you would not care to marry her, and so
+see your way to getting out of bed without damage?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marry ten thousand devils!  That's not my idea of fun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lalage is a fine figure of a woman," Peckover continued.  "Make an
+imposing Lady Quorn.  Fine mover; takes the drawing-room in three,
+including anything that stands in the way.  The coronet would suit her
+better if she'd let her hair grow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Crops her hair short?" Gage enquired, in a tone of infinite disgust at
+the picture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover nodded.  "Bit too much of the dragoon for our taste, my boy.
+You stop in bed, and let me try to get rid of them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I won't stop in bed," returned Gage.  "Where are these brutes?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sent 'em down to <I>The Pigeons</I>," Peckover answered.  "Lady Agatha
+wouldn't have 'em in the house.  Don't blame her.  Their manners aren't
+exactly Vere de Vere.  Things were a bit awkward at lunch.  Carnaby,
+the beauty, had been mixing his liquors and fell asleep with his ugly
+head in the salad bowl, and the tomato which Lalage aimed at him to
+wake him up, missed, and spattered on Bisgood's shirt-front.  Lady Aggy
+wasn't pleased."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all very well," said Gage sulkily, "but I'm going to get up.  The
+woman can't make me marry her against my will, nor can the great ox,
+her brother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Peckover agreed, "but he can have a good try for it, and the
+process might not be pleasant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never heard such nonsense."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; I wouldn't have believed it," said Peckover, "if I hadn't had the
+fellow's dukes round my windpipe.  He is just a buffalo in trousers.
+And if you get up, and shy at the sister, who is a hyæna in petticoats,
+you'll know it; that is, if he leaves you in a state to know anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A pretty abominable treat you've let me in for," said Gage sourly.
+"But I'm not going to stay in this four-poster.  You've got to go and
+square this at once.  Ask them what they'll take to go back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've offered them a couple of hundred," Peckover replied, "and got
+nearly strangled for my trouble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Couple of hundred!" said Gage contemptuously.  "You'll have to make it
+thousands and take it out of your five."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I say!" the other protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right; if you don't," Gage declared resolutely, "I'll chuck the
+title and leave you and your friends to fight it out among yourselves.
+If she means Lord Quorn she shall have him, but not me, my boy.  And
+I'm not going to stop between the sheets for any bush-ranger in
+Australia or out of it.  So there!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap19"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+After Lord Quorn&mdash;supposed to be Percy Peckover&mdash;had been carried to
+Dr. Barton's surgery, he lay for several days in a state of now total,
+now semi, unconsciousness.  The astute Mr. Doutfire, pluming himself on
+his neat capture, hovered about the unfortunate peer, drank whisky and
+water with the much-bored medico, and discussed over sundry cigars the
+chances of the patient's slipping through his fingers into the next
+world.  The object of his solicitude did slip through them, though not
+quite so far as that.  And it happened in this wise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Doutfire was not himself on guard (to the accompaniment of
+nicotine sedatives and alcoholic tonics) he took care to post a
+constable about the doctor's premises with instructions to keep a sharp
+look-out for any sign of activity on the part of the lethargic
+criminal.  Then suddenly the police authorities of Bunbury and district
+were thrown into a state of excitement by the news of a daring burglary
+which had taken place at Mansetter Park, the seat of Sir James
+Rumbelow, the importance of which crime was heightened by the fact that
+the stout baronet, roused from his post-prandial nap by the news, had
+unwisely attempted to pursue the thieves, who had by that time got four
+or five miles' start, and had cut short the chase, so far as he was
+concerned, by tripping over a croquet-hoop on the lawn and thereby
+severely injuring himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was clearly a case that called for the utmost activity on the part
+of the representatives of the law; the Bunbury police force was on its
+mettle, and the fussy Mr. Doutfire became in a moment the incarnation
+of bustling importance.  The comatose culprit at Dr. Barton's was
+forgotten in the gravity of Sir James Rumbelow's stolen plate and
+broken nose.  And it so happened when the detective was reminded of him
+it was by a communication from headquarters announcing that Peckover's
+associate, Cutbush, had been arrested, and he had volunteered a
+statement which made it appear that there might not be much of a case
+against his dupe.  Under the circumstances, Mr. Doutfire felt little
+hesitation in withdrawing the guard and drafting him into the Mansetter
+district, especially as the doctor assured him that he might be under
+no uneasiness as to the likelihood of the patient's being in a
+condition to get up and walk about.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless, that is exactly what Lord Quorn did.  Suddenly waking
+from a lethargic sleep, he stretched himself, sat up, looked round in a
+dazed fashion, and after a futile attempt to remember who and where he
+was, feeling an irresistible longing for fresh air, he got up, shuffled
+into his clothes, and walked unnoticed into the street.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was market day; the noise and the bustle worried him, and in his
+weak state the jostling of the yokels was more than he could stand.  So
+he turned into one of the quieter streets and thence wandered off into
+the country, his mind still a blank as to what had recently happened to
+him.  Although the fresh air revived him and was grateful after the
+drug-laden atmosphere of the doctor's dispensary, yet it did not quite
+drive the fumes from his brain, and his existence and identity were, as
+he strolled on, as much a puzzle to him as ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have a lift?" asked a good-natured farmer, overtaking him on the dusty
+road, and noticing his dragging footsteps.  Quorn mechanically got into
+the cart, in his aimless, drifting state of mind; all he knew was he
+had begun to feel tired and wanted to get right away from the place
+whence he had come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going far?" inquired the farmer, as they bowled along.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Far as you like," was the dull answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The farmer stared at him, and then proceeded to cross-examine him, with
+the result that he came to the conclusion that he had picked up an
+escaped lunatic.  With this idea he resolved to set his passenger down
+at the first village they came to, which happened to be Staplewick.
+Finding Quorn had no money, the good fellow took out a coin and gave it
+him, in lieu, as it were, of taking him further, and drove off in a
+state of cogitation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Naturally Quorn had been set down opposite an inn, the sight of which,
+combined with the touch of the silver in his hand, told him he was
+hungry and more especially thirsty.  He went in and called for
+refreshment, and then took his seat in a room which had already two
+occupants.  They were no others than Messrs. Fanning and Purvis, who,
+after their discomfiture at the Towers had dropped in at <I>The Pigeons</I>
+to discuss their all-absorbing grievance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Until Quorn's hunger and thirst were appeased he paid little attention
+to his companions, but when he had pushed his plate away and lighted up
+the churchwarden pipe that the house afforded, he fell to listening
+lazily to the unrestrained emphasis of their remarks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fi'pun note!  Fi'pun note!" exclaimed Mr. Fanning almost tragically.
+"And his blooming lordship, who didn't do nothin' more in the water
+than a cat would 'a done, smothered with wealth, just because 'e
+'appens to 'ave a 'andle to his name.  Mean, I call it; low mean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That it is," agreed Purvis.  "And 'im adding insult to injury telling
+us to get a noo rig-out, and keep the change for our trouble.  Noo
+rig-out?  I'll wear my old boots and breeches down to the last nail and
+stitch first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right!" exclaimed Fanning, with an energy which ignored the æsthetic
+considerations which such a proceeding would involve.  "Fi'pun note!"
+he repeated, relapsing into his now chronic state of truculent
+grievance.  "Fi'pun note for us poor deserving 'eroes, and two hundred
+thousand quid for that bit of gilt gingerbread, Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a flash of enlightenment the real Lord Quorn jumped from his seat,
+and stood staring at the two men with distended eyes.  "By Gum!  You
+said Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did," Fanning declared, half defiantly, as not quite sure whether he
+had not opened his mouth rather too wide and too often.  "I said Lord
+Quorn, and I meant Lord Quorn, but my grievance ain't agin 'is
+lordship.  I blame no man for takin' wot's offered.  Wot I blame and
+'ate and detest is the meanness of those 'oo call themselves gents and
+reward a man not accordin' to the services rendered, but accordin' to
+persition in life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The trenchant pronouncement was entirely wasted on the person to whom
+it was addressed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had started to his feet with a great cry of self-recognition.  The
+word seemed to have pierced the mist of oblivion which clouded his
+brain, and the incidents of the last hour of his former waking
+existence came thronging to his memory.  Lord Quorn?  Why, of course,
+he was Lord Quorn; although exactly what had happened to him in
+consequence he could not make out.  "Lord Quorn?" he demanded eagerly
+of the astonished pair of grievance-nursers.  "What about him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know his lordship?" Fanning asked suspiciously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I ought to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then," said the butcher resentfully, "you know the man who has
+earnt two 'undred thousand quid quicker and easier than any man ever
+did before.  Look 'ere!"  Determined to speak his mind to his lordship
+through his acquaintance, Fanning jumped up and tapped Quorn
+impressively on the chest to emphasize his story.  "Wot do you think o'
+this, mister?  Lord Quorn and a rich millionaire friend of 'is&mdash;I won't
+call 'im a gentleman&mdash;goes out fishin' on the lake.  They fools
+themselves overboard into the water, and is within an ace of drownin'.
+This gentleman," indicating Purvis who sat stolidly blinking with
+conscious merit, "and me, goes to the rescue, and at the risk of our
+lives pulls 'em out when they were just at the last gasp.  What
+'appens?  My nobleman persuades 'is friend that it was 'e 'oo saved 'is
+life, and ignores what me and this gentleman done.  Again wot 'appens?
+Millionaire, 'oo, in my opinion ain't fit to own two and sixpence, ups
+and settles a couple of 'undred thousand sov'rins on his lordship, and
+when me and this gentleman who 'ad risked our lives and ruined our best
+suit of clothes 'appens to ask where we comes in&mdash;what do you
+think?&mdash;'ee fobs us off with a beggarly fi'pun note."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't have taken it," Quorn commented wonderingly, as he
+recovered from the extra hard slap with which the last words were
+driven home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning waggled his greasy head knowingly.  "P'raps you wouldn't,
+mister.  But you didn't catch me nor this gentleman playin' into 'is
+'ands by refusin' it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That accounts for it," said Quorn, following his own train of thought
+rather than Mr. Fanning's biassed narrative.  "That accounts for it.
+I've been half drowned.  Funny I don't remember anything about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You?" exclaimed Mr. Fanning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"According to your story," Quorn maintained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Fanning turned a glance on Mr. Purvis which suggested a grave doubt
+as to their companion's sobriety.  "Oh," he replied sarcastically, "and
+'oo may you be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," answered Quorn deliberately, "I rather think I'm Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again Mr. Fanning's glance sought Mr. Purvis', and this time it
+indicated a diagnosis of more serious mental trouble than mere alcohol
+would account for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you think that, do you?" he returned with gentle banter.  "Then,"
+he added mischievously, "I should recommend your lordship goin' up to
+the Towers 'ere, and turnin' out the party 'oo is at present occupyin'
+your position."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh?"  Quorn started up as a fresh puzzle took hold of his mind.  "Is
+that so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instead of replying directly to his questioner, Mr. Fanning turned to
+his friend, and somewhat exasperatingly repeated the enquiry to him.
+"Is that so, Mr. Purvis?"  Then with an exaggerated wink, he added,
+"Yes, no doubt about it, there's a screw loose somewheres."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn stared at him for a moment, and then turned to the door.  "What's
+the name of the place?" he asked over his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your lordship's residence?" grinned Fanning.  "Staplewick Towers."
+And as the door shut upon their late companion the two aggrieved heroes
+indulged in the first merriment they had found the heart for since it
+had been borne in upon them that their gallantry was held so cheap.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap20"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Staplewick Towers.  That was the name of the place, his own, that he
+had been on his way to see.  He would soon get the answer to the
+riddle.  As to his having been nearly drowned, it could not have been
+he.  The last thing he remembered was drinking the drugged wine at the
+<I>Quorn Arms</I>.  Surely he had not gone through an active existence
+between that and his waking up in the doctor's surgery.  He argued the
+probabilities with himself as he hastened eagerly towards the Towers
+which loomed grey and real enough before him.  Confident now of his
+position he walked through the lodge gates with an air of ownership,
+and made his way up the drive until he saw a little way in front of him
+several people.  The sight checked his hurry.  It suddenly occurred to
+him that it would be a good plan and amusing to lie low and just see
+what was really going on before declaring himself.  One thing was
+certain.  He was not the Lord Quorn who had been rewarded with a
+fortune for pretending to have saved a millionaire's life.  That was
+too good to be true; he only wished it were.  Then who was the other
+Lord Quorn, and what devil's game could they be playing?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So he turned off the drive and slunk along behind the shrubs which
+fringed it, lurking in the bushes until he could see his way clear to
+get up to the house.  He was seen, as has been shown, but the observers
+were too intent on their own ends to take more than casual notice of
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently, however, he got his chance, and was able to make his way
+unseen to the library windows.  He peeped through, and the first person
+his eyes lighted on was Percy Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an instant some idea of the real state of affairs flashed upon him;
+and his hazy guess was not far from being correct.  Fired with
+indignation and a furious desire to put an instant stop to the
+nefarious game that was being played, he put forth his hand to open the
+window.  Before he could do so a figure advanced from a side of the
+room which was hidden from him, and with a sickening shock he
+recognized his former flame, Miss Lalage Leo.  Behind her loomed now
+the unmistakable form of the great bully whom he had never actually
+met, but had learned to regard with the enhanced terror which the
+unknown inspires, and from which the present glimpse detracted nothing.
+Happily the frightened face was not noticed by any of the party who
+were setting their faces resolutely towards the dining-room.  So Quorn,
+as he recovered from the shock of the forgotten terror, was able to
+move back unobserved and slip away to a quiet spot where he could
+review his deplorable situation.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+After luncheon and Peckover's interview with Gage, he and Sharnbrook
+had a somewhat uncomfortable half-hour together over a cigar.  Lady
+Agatha had proved herself equal to what had seemed the impossible task
+of bundling the Leos out of the house.  But then Carnaby was in a state
+of comparative helplessness, and Lalage, although she would have liked
+to stay and, perhaps, smoke a cigar with the object of her matrimonial
+intentions, was disarmed by the superior style and the strength of Lady
+Agatha's grand manner.  It was something quite outside her experience,
+and, for the time at any rate, it paralysed any tendency to opposition
+and insistence on her part.  So she went off with her clumsy,
+staggering brother, and with a promise, unacceptable, but not to be
+ignored, to return very soon and keep a business eye upon Lord Quorn
+and Mr. Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whew!  That's a good riddance," Peckover exclaimed, with a great puff
+of relief as he lighted a big cigar and dropped into an easy chair.
+"I've had some uncomfortable meals in my time, but that bangs the lot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nice let-in for me," said Sharnbrook ruefully.  "I'm back in their
+clutches again, just when I was congratulating myself you had got me
+out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I couldn't foresee this volcanic eruption," replied Peckover
+apologetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Sharnbrook admitted.  "You did your best to draw them off.  They
+are nailers, and their staying power is wonderful.  But, I say, you are
+never going to marry that&mdash;&mdash;?"  He jerked his head backwards in the
+direction Miss Leo was last seen taking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if I know it," Peckover answered feelingly.  "I'm going to
+compromise&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I mean compromise any claim she may have on me; pay her off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see.  But how on earth did you ever get nuts on her?" Sharnbrook
+inquired wonderingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How, indeed?" thought Peckover.  "Well, you see," he answered, "out
+there the girls aren't enough to go round.  You're lucky if you see one
+in a month, and somehow, when you do see her you don't care to lose
+sight of her.  Where there's only one, that one's the best.  Over here
+Lalage suffers by comparison."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You bet she does," assented Sharnbrook with more warmth than gallantry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Out there," Peckover declared, "she was unique."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So she is here," said Sharnbrook with conviction.  "Well, if you are
+going to square matters with her otherwise than on a matrimonial basis,
+you might call the fisher-girls off me again before I'm quite landed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," assented Peckover who had now quite recovered his spirits.
+"I'll do anything to oblige, especially when there's a little fun
+attached to the job."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At that moment Miss Ethel's voice was heard singing in the corridor
+leading to the picture gallery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's coming after me," Sharnbrook exclaimed in an agitated whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Slip out," said Peckover, "and leave me to do my best for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sharnbrook gave him a nod of gratitude and ran off by the opposite
+door, just as Miss Ethel, keen on the scent, looked in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do come in, Miss Ethel," Peckover besought her, with an earnestness
+not to be ignored.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was looking for Mr. Sharnbrook," she replied coldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has just gone out that way," said Peckover indicating the other
+door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he see Dagmar?" Miss Ethel inquired jealously, crossing the room
+with determined steps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover sprang to intercept her.  "Don't run away from me, Miss Ethel.
+I know you must be annoyed by those vulgar people who intruded here
+just now&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think so," said Ethel haughtily, trying to pass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," urged Peckover, "you won't be troubled by them again.  I'm
+paying their fares back to Australia; so that will settle them&mdash;out
+there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel suddenly appeared to be somewhat less desirous of reaching the
+door.  "Oh?" she said slowly.  "And are you going with them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if I know it.  Old England's the place for my money."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not going to marry the&mdash;the lady?" she asked breathlessly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do I look like it?" he replied insinuatingly.  "Now, don't trouble
+about them, or about that silly old Sharnbrook, who prefers to go off
+and buy his fifty-ninth fox-terrier to waiting for you.  Let's sit down
+and have a nice cosy chat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The invitation was, under the circumstances, hardly to be resisted,
+whatever short work the young lady might, under others, have made of
+it.  As they took their seats side by side, Peckover stretched out his
+arm behind the lady to arrange a cushion for her&mdash;and let it stay there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For as many seconds as probability allowed Ethel affected to be unaware
+of the caressing attitude.  Then suddenly she seemed to wake up to the
+fact that her companion's arm was round her shoulders, upon which she
+leant forward to allow him to withdraw it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peckover was not keen on taking hints when they ran counter to his
+amusements.  "Isn't it comfortable?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your arm."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My arm's all right," he assured her cheerfully.  "Do lean back.  Hope
+I'm not in the way.  Of course if you'd rather I went and sat at the
+other end of the gallery I'll do so.  Only it will be a bit slow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage, how absurd you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he agreed, "the suggestion is rather far-fetched.  We may as
+well keep within kissing distance, mayn't we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but it is not proper," Ethel protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kissing?" he asked in surprise, "I think it is proper; if you are
+going in for a proper time.  Why not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," she answered demurely, "between some people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"People who know how to make the time pass?" he suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"People who are&mdash;engaged," she said, with as much indifference to the
+immediate and personal application as she could assume.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he rejoined flippantly, "you are engaged, and I may be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage!"  She turned on him indignantly.  "I am not engaged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not to Sharnbrook?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage, how absurd you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope so.  Are you engaged?" he asked significantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whether I am engaged or free," she answered, "it is all the same to
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he returned, "if you were a little more free it would be quite
+different."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would it?" she asked, with a provocative glance at his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wouldn't it?  Like this."  He closed his arm round her and tried to
+draw her to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Gage, you don't mean it," she protested, holding back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come!" he said.  "One kiss."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no.  It wouldn't be right," she still objected.  Then she sighed.
+"Poor Jack!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, poor fellow," Peckover said, with a hardly suppressed grin.  "Poor
+old Sharnbrook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is very fond of me," she said, regretfully.  "But of course if I
+can't care for him as much as I ought to&mdash;I don't know what the poor
+fellow will do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give me something handsome, I hope," was Peckover's thought.  "Ethel,"
+he whispered, and this time did get something like a kiss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Percy, it is wrong of you," she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know it is," he admitted, drawing in a breath as of pain.  "Poor old
+Sharnbrook; and he thinks I'm his friend.  He'll never give you up," he
+added with conviction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant Miss Ethel's look suggested that that matter might be
+safely left in her hands to bring to a satisfactory conclusion.  But it
+swiftly passed away, and she said, "Jack Sharnbrook is a good fellow.
+He will not stand in the way of my happiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That he won't, I'll go bail," said Peckover to himself.  "Ethel!" he
+murmured caressingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Gage," she returned, in half-yielding protest.  "Percy,
+darling," he suggested, drawing her to him for another kiss.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must wait," she objected, "till we are engaged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We Gages never wait," he assured her softly.  "It's a tradition in the
+family.  No.  We don't hang about for the mistletoe to grow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless the present representative of that impatient race had to
+postpone his endearments, for the door opened softly and Miss Dagmar's
+scandalized voice cried, "Oh, Ethel!" making the fond pair start aside
+with electric unanimity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bother it," Peckover muttered, putting on the air of self-conscious
+indifference usual in such contretemps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, Miss Dagmar," said Ethel through her teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hope we haven't disturbed you," exclaimed Sharnbrook who had followed
+Dagmar into the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover jumped up and went to him.  "Got a cigarette?" he asked in a
+loud voice, adding in a whisper, "Don't look so pleased, old man; or
+you'll spoil everything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sharnbrook took the hint at once.  "Don't speak to me, Mr. Gage," he
+cried resentfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've not lost any time," Dagmar sarcastically remarked to her sister.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, dear," Ethel replied with feline sweetness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He belongs to that appalling woman from Australia," said Dagmar
+confidently.  "She'll hold him.  Don't you wish you may get him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've got him," Ethel declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's ready to break it off," whispered Peckover to Sharnbrook.
+"Don't be too eager.  Pretend to be broken-hearted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The other nodded.  "Mr. Gage," he said, with a fine show of dignified
+feeling, "I find I am mistaken in you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you are," Peckover muttered aside through the corner of his mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you do the broken-hearted?" Sharnbrook enquired in a whisper,
+seeing the ladies were occupied in reciprocating sarcasms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't make too much noise," Peckover instructed him, in the same tone.
+"Think you are feeling sick; that it's your wedding-day with Ethel.
+Fancy you've missed a pheasant and shot your best dog."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I should make a noise," the pupil objected.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, mug a bit," said Peckover, with a model grimace suggestive of
+the wrong horse winning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't speak to me!" Sharnbrook shouted, as the ladies seemed to
+tire of their mutual repartees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it," murmured Peckover.  "Don't let her go too easily."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I have something to say to you, Ethel," Sharnbrook declared with a
+sob in his voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Jack," she exclaimed, with a pretty imitation of remorseful
+distress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come round the garden with me, if it be for the last time," said
+Sharnbrook, his tones quivering with emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too loud," whispered Peckover critically as the jilted swain passed
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Jack," cried Ethel, the distress in her voice counterbalanced by
+the look of triumph she threw at her sister, "don't look so miserable.
+I couldn't help it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sharnbrook gave vent to an explosive, window-rattling sigh as, with a
+wicked half-grin at his deliverer, he held open the door.  The fickle
+Ethel, as she prepared to pass out, put her shapely hand to her
+treacherous lips and contrived to waft a kiss to her latest lover.  And
+she did this without detracting in any appreciable degree from the
+contrite expression with which she successfully veiled her sense of
+triumph.  Which shewed that, up to a point, she was a clever girl, or
+at least a credit to her maternal up-bringing.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap21"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It was, however, unfortunate that Miss Ethel had to leave her lover and
+her sister together.  Peckover, baulked of a kiss in one direction, was
+by no means above trying for one in another; and, while Ethel was
+getting off with the old love, thought he might as well utilize the
+opportunity in getting on with the new.  And Miss Dagmar, save in the
+matter of temper, was quite as interesting an object for his attentions
+as her sister.  What was considerably more to the point, her manner
+suggested that she was even more susceptible to his fascinations than
+Ethel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," he observed with a leer, "while they are settling their
+differences we've got to amuse ourselves, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A wild desire to cut her sister out on the spot took possession of Miss
+Dagmar.  Lord Quorn was for the time out of the question, and even if
+he were available, she was certain that she would give herself a far
+better time by marrying the richer man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How shall we do that, Mr. Gage?" she asked, with an archly provocative
+glance at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," responded Peckover, by no means at a loss, "suppose we try how
+much we can get to like one another in ten minutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid&mdash;&mdash;" she began, when suddenly she became aware that his arm
+was round her waist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be afraid, Dagmar," he entreated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am," she returned, releasing herself.  "I'm afraid you are a
+deceiver."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no," he protested, far from displeased, however, at the accusation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have just been making love to Ethel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing to speak of," he assured her lightly.  "You see," he added,
+more amorously, "I did not know you cared for me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Gage!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't," he maintained, wilfully misunderstanding her protest.  "I
+dare say I ought to have, but I didn't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now"&mdash;she laughed meaningly&mdash;"you think you have discovered my
+secret?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The last word nearly brought a whistle to Peckover's lips, but he
+suppressed it in time.  "Yes," he urged, "if I am right, if I have
+discovered it&mdash;&mdash;" he paused to get a look at her face, and something
+more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?" she murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's make the most of it," he suggested.  "Give me a kiss."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, it wouldn't be proper," she objected, holding back.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite proper," he assured her.  "There's nobody looking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't quite see," said Dagmar thoughtfully, "how the fact that
+nobody is looking makes it proper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," argued Peckover, "if nobody is looking I don't see how it
+matters whether it is proper or not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it does," she maintained, holding off.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So long as it's agreeable to both parties," he urged; "we've no one to
+please but ourselves.  Of course," he added airily, "if you've any
+rooted objection to kissing&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," said Dagmar hastily, "a question of what is right and what is
+wrong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover began to think this was dry work.  "You think kissing wrong,
+then?" he suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unjustifiable kissing," Dagmar declared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unjustifiable?" Peckover repeated, with the suspicion of a yawn.
+"Seems to me if both parties don't object the act is justified."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar glanced reflectively at the clock and calculated how many
+minutes more remained to bring him to the point.  "Not necessarily,"
+she rejoined with provocative archness.  "There are certain people who
+may kiss each other, and the rest may not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's no reason why they shouldn't try," argued Peckover, warming
+again under the influence of the fetching glance.  "That's just where
+the fun comes in.  You ought to kiss your mother and your grandmother
+or your sister, or your aunt, or your&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or your fiancée," Dagmar supplied quietly yet promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naturally," he agreed, "but that doesn't count."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doesn't it?" Dagmar enquired in a tone of surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, it's expected of you," he explained.  "There's&mdash;much more of
+a catch, the poets tell us, in the unexpected."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar was beginning to grow desperate.  Ethel's next (and nearly due)
+innings might hold the unexpected for her.  "There are some things,"
+she observed demurely, "which are made much more delightful by being
+looked forward to."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's right enough," he assented, catching an inviting gleam from her
+eyes.  "But it's poor fun looking forward to a thing you aren't going
+to get.  You know what I'm looking forward to?"  He pointed the
+question with a leer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Gage," she protested artlessly, "how can I know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By my teaching you," he answered promptly putting forth an endearing
+arm, which, however the lady deftly avoided.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," she declared, as bewitchingly as her limitations allowed.
+"It is not right, as we are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a pretty broad hint, but the sands of opportunity were running
+low, and Miss Dagmar meant business.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As we are?" the philanderer echoed, with a short laugh of
+discomfiture.  "No, it's certainly not right or even possible when we
+are so far apart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar fancied she caught the hateful sound of her sister's voice.
+"That's what I mean," she said, covering her desperation that a touch
+of demureness.  "We might be close enough to&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right!" Peckover exclaimed eagerly, making a spring towards her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On this occasion she did not seek to elude his grasp, possibly
+considering that the time for that was past.  She contented herself
+with keeping her inviting cheek at a tantalizingly safe distance from
+Peckover's lips till he wearied of the struggle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For that spoilt child of Fortune was not used to opposition about
+trifles on the part of the fair sex.  "This is dry work.  What are you
+afraid of?" he protested impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You really mustn't.  We are not engaged," was the artificially
+agitated reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That doesn't matter," he insisted.  "Who'll be any the wiser?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Matrimony, not wisdom, was Miss Dagmar's concern just then.  "I
+couldn't let you," she declared, with a cunning suggestion of duty
+overriding inclination.  "I couldn't&mdash;unless&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+To her disgust, she found herself suddenly released.  "Oh, all right,"
+said Peckover, settling his necktie.  "You shan't, if you don't want
+to.  There are other girls about who ain't so particular.  Ethel's not
+coy."  And he made for the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an instant she was after him.  "Ethel?" she cried, clutching his arm
+in desperation, as she saw the lady in question coming across the lawn.
+"You forget Ethel is engaged."  Which speech was, to say the least of
+it, rather disloyal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What of it?" Peckover demanded off-handedly.  "All the better.  You
+allow engaged persons may kiss."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, each other.  Ethel is engaged to Mr. Sharnbrook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Sharnbrook won't mind," he returned, with more truth than
+politeness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dagmar's clutch increased in force.  "Mr. Gage," she exclaimed, in
+almost horrified protest, "you are never going to be so thoughtless as
+to wreck two people's happiness?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wasn't aware of it," he replied, somewhat sarcastically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but you are," she urged vehemently.  "Jack Sharnbrook is wrapped
+up in Ethel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Finds the wrap a bit too warm to be pleasant," Peckover observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sooner than see John Sharnbrook's happiness wrecked," the suddenly
+emotional and altruistic Miss Dagmar proceeded, "I would make any
+sacrifice.  Mr. Gage," the moment was critical, and her grasp now
+intense, "you shan't make love to her.  Promise me you won't, and&mdash;and
+you shall have a kiss, even before we are engaged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Footsteps sounded on the gravel just outside the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," Peckover responded cheerfully.  "I promise to let her
+alone if she lets me alone.  I'm not the man to stand in Sharnbrook's
+light."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His arm was round her and his lips three inches from hers, when a
+vigorous exclamation of disgust from the window made it expedient that
+even they should pretend to be engaged in quite another of the varied
+but limited number of occupations which necessitate the heads of two
+persons being close together.  Nevertheless Dagmar found time, before
+the window opened to admit Gage, who had come down for an hour, and
+Ethel, to say hurriedly but with none the less fell intent, "Remember
+your promise.  You will be true to me, now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Ethel, rendered thoughtfully emulative by the evidences of her
+sister's progress, contented herself with tossing her head peremptorily
+and disdainfully at her treacherous sister.  Further activity on the
+part of the young ladies was, however, postponed by the announcement of
+tea.  Gage lingered behind to say a word to his friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beats me," he observed sourly, "what's the matter with this peerage.
+Always thought a lord had it all his own way.  Instead of that, the
+girls talk about the weather and the flower-beds to me, and they drop
+into your arms one after the other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're a bit calculating all the same," Peckover remarked with a
+sense of failure.  "I don't know that we might not just as well have
+been talking about the weather."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook came in whistling and radiant.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap22"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+It was to appear that Mr. Carnaby Leo and his sister were not to be put
+off so easily as the confederates imagined.  Encouraged by what they
+considered the other side's weakness, and led on by their ignorance of
+European ways, they&mdash;or rather the lady&mdash;grew determined to make out of
+their trip a much bigger coup than at first seemed likely to be
+forthcoming from what was really nothing but a huge piece of bluff.  It
+is true that Lady Agatha, with her unassailable manner, was a serious
+obstacle in the path which this enterprising couple proposed to take,
+but she, after all, Lalage argued, was but an outside and detached
+factor in the affair, an outlying rampart, as it were, in the defence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless the influence of her repellent personality was so great
+that neither of the Leos cared to come face to face with her again if
+that situation could by any possibility be avoided, and in their
+councils of war (in which Lalage tried to teach her thick-witted
+brother how to back up her brain by his muscle) the temporary mistress
+of Staplewick was never regarded as a negligible quantity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it happened that when, in the evening, the Leos resolved to pay
+another visit of coercion to the Towers, they took care to enter
+unannounced, and to keep out of Lady Agatha's way.  Confident in the
+reasonable cause of their presence, they made their way quietly from
+the hall along a corridor leading to the picture gallery which seemed
+to offer an inviting lurking-place.  As luck would have it, the
+gallery, as being somewhat isolated, had been appointed the
+trysting-place of Peckover and Miss Ethel.  And it was there that the
+arch-deceiver with a cynically expectant smile on his face was awaiting
+his lady-love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The long room had struck chill as he entered it, and he had lighted a
+cigarette, if not with the idea of warmth, at least to keep his nerves
+in order.  "Quiet," he remarked aloud to himself as he glanced with a
+little shiver along the line of effigied Quorns before whose canvases
+at intervals were arranged, like sentinels, stands of armour.  "Not to
+say Madame Tussaudy.  Rum things ancestors.  What a lot some folks seem
+to think about 'em.  Can't say I ever troubled about mine.  That
+reminds me, I must get up a family history of these Quorn Johnnies, and
+impart it to poor old Gage.  It need not," he gave a little knavish
+laugh, "be all strictly correct according to 'Ume and Smollett.  Well,
+Percy, my boy," he kept talking to himself as though to keep the
+silence at bay, "you've dropped into a nice thing.  It's a fine life to
+be a rich toff, or the imitation of one&mdash;which is quite sufficient for
+the general public.  Ethel is a smart little thing; she has come on
+wonderfully since those Australian nuisances gave her a fright.  Poor
+old Gage!  Strikes me I'm having the fun he's paying for.  Ah, here she
+comes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Footsteps were heard by the door.  He flung away his cigarette, and
+went forward as quickly as the semi-darkness would allow him.  "Ethel!"
+he whispered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The figure whom he addressed emerged into the stream of moonlight, and
+he saw, to his dismay, Lalage Leo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's me, dear," was her greeting, pleasant, yet with a suggestion of
+business behind it.  "Lalage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh, yes," he stammered, trying to mask his annoyance with a laugh.
+"Funny place to meet, isn't it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You and Miss Ethel evidently don't think so," was the obvious retort.
+"So you were expecting her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thought the step was hers," he replied disingenuously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor girl!  She must have a heavy tread if it is anything like
+Carnaby's," Lalage returned pleasantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On the hint Peckover looked beyond her and saw the looming figure of
+her brother with an irritating grin on his just discernible face.
+"Carnaby has got a heavy foot," his sister pursued significantly, "and
+he is going to put it down and keep it there.  Eh, Carnaby?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The objectionable figure lurched forward.  "Point out the spot you want
+it planted, Lal," he said truculently, "and down it goes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover found himself wishing that the abominable extremity had been
+planted in the Antipodes and had taken root or, for preference,
+withered away there.  "Where?" he asked wearily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where," Miss Leo echoed.  "Why, on your carrying on with these Hemyock
+girls.  Carnaby, dear," she made the appeal with a vicious look, not at
+her brother but at his intended victim, "you won't see me fooled?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I tell you&mdash;&mdash;" Peckover began, when she snapped him up.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you are good enough for other people, you are good enough for me.
+So no nonsense."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense?" Carnaby roared.  "I'll&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lalage thoughtfully turned to shut the door.  "That's it," she
+whispered.  "Frighten him a bit."  For it seemed to her that the effect
+of the snapped fire-irons was wearing off.  "Tell Mr. Gage," she said
+aloud, holding Carnaby in the moonlight with a glittering eye, "what
+happened to those three mounted police who went after you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Owing either to the suddenness of the demand or the spell of his
+sister's masterful glare, the small mind which dominated the mass of
+muscle seemed paralysed.  "Ah, yes," he responded stupidly.  "Didn't
+they!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Leo for the moment seemed to justify her name; she looked like a
+lioness ready to spring, but withheld by considerations of expediency.
+"Go on," she whispered through her clenched teeth.  "Carnaby!" she said
+more mildly and aloud.  "The three who looked after you in the Bush."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But either the hero's recollection was hazy or invention was not his
+strong point.  "Eh?" he said confusedly.  "Yes.  They&mdash;they followed me
+into the Bush."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?  Well?" enquired Peckover, curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And two of them are there now," continued Lalage with a world of
+uncomfortable meaning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish you two were," thought Peckover.  "Tell us all about it," he
+said resignedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on, Carnaby," his sister commanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether or not the man of thews and sinews had been keeping up his
+constitution injudiciously at the <I>Three Pigeons</I>, certain it was that
+his brain did not seem in glib working order.  "Ah, yes," he said
+slowly, quailing under Lalage's eye, "three mounted constabulary&mdash;&mdash;"
+after which thrilling statement he paused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Came after you in the Bush," the flippant Peckover ventured to supply.
+"Yes, we've heard that."  For the little man saw no chance of ending
+the interview till the narrative was concluded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo, failing to stimulate his imagination to the required point,
+fell back upon a more ready and less intellectual form of address.
+"I'll eat you in a minute, boots and all," he informed his impatient
+listener with an undue amount of emphasis.  Then, as though the
+outburst had spurred his invention, he went on, "Three&mdash;three mounted
+police at me at once.  Three to one&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cowards," commented Peckover warmly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was alone," shouted the son of Mars, now plunging recklessly into
+the recital; "no bush-armour; nothing but my fighting-jacket.
+They&mdash;they&mdash;&mdash;" he stammered and stopped as the trickling stream of
+imagination ran dry.  He, however, sought to make up for verbal
+shortcomings by fixing Peckover with a stare of the most appalling
+ferocity.  Lalage saved the situation by prompting from the darkness
+behind him into which she had slipped.  "They came on at the charge,"
+he roared, never relaxing his truculent glare at his listener; "one in
+front, one on each flank&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's right," whispered Lalage.  "Keep it up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And one&mdash;&mdash;" roared the encouraged swashbuckler.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thought you said there were only three," objected the irrepressible
+Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll wring any man's neck who interrupts me and puts me off my
+stroke," was the savage response, and as the application of the remark
+could bear but one interpretation, its object decided that it would be
+better to curb his critical faculties before they brought on an
+interference with his personal appearance and comfort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On they came like a hurricane," roared Carnaby, as the promptings
+reached him, "one here in face: one on the right flank, one on&mdash;on&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He stopped with some hazy notion that he had made a mistake.  In his
+graphic action illustrating the narrative he had landed himself beyond
+ear-shot of his prompter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On the left," Peckover supplied sympathetically.  "What's the matter?"
+For the reciter seemed confused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has had so many fights that he forgets them," explained Lalage,
+emerging from the darkness to the rescue.  "More than the other fellows
+do, though.  Go on, you great fool!" she politely adjured the
+free-lance under her breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus incited, Carnaby put on a grimace which would have been nicely
+calculated to send an old lady into a fit or an infant into
+convulsions, albeit there lay beneath it an abject fear of his sister's
+displeasure.  "I'll show you!" he bellowed, while Peckover, with an
+uneasy calculation of the means of exit, wondered whether the object
+lesson would involve his posing as the inadequate representative of the
+unfortunate mounted police.  "First chap," the mighty one proceeded,
+with, it must be confessed, a certain tendency to reiteration, "first
+chap comes on full gallop in front."  Peckover nodded his absorbed
+interest.  "I pull off my boot and dash it in his face."  For an
+instant Peckover looked dubious; then realizing his ignorance of
+fighting under antipodean conditions, he accepted the statement for
+what it was worth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Down he goes," the story continued, "tobogganning over the horse's
+tail."  Peckover, having without prejudice admitted the premises, could
+not resist accepting the conclusion as highly probable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly the warrior's hand shot out and grasped him by the shoulder.
+"You," he shouted, becoming intoxicated with excitement as the tale of
+his prowess grew, "are the second man.  As you pass, I slip under your
+arm and catch you a smack on the point of the jaw which puts you to
+sleep."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instantly Peckover covered with both hands the part of his anatomy
+referred to, and was understood to intimate that his own powers of
+imagination were quite equal to the task of realizing the particular
+form of assault which it was unnecessarily proposed to illustrate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Postponing for the moment the exemplification of the knock-out blow,
+Mr. Leo proceeded in spluttering ferocity with his narrative.  "In a
+moment I have got hold of the first man's cutlass&mdash;&mdash;" here he caught
+up in his excitement a sword which unfortunately hung near, and
+flourished it in a fashion not hitherto adopted by any recognized
+school of arms.  "I turn, and cry&mdash;&mdash;" he bellowed, when, as luck had
+it, his energy led him to catch the weapon, in his terrific swing,
+against a suit of armour which was brought toppling over upon him and
+thence to the floor with a crash which sounded through the gallery with
+startling din.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The effect on the man of doughty deeds was, however, even more than
+startling.  He fell forward under the shock of the cold metal, and with
+the helmet, thus jerked loose, striking him a smart blow on the head,
+his roaring was changed in a moment from truculence to terror.  "Oh!
+Oh!" he cried, as he sprawled over a chair, "don't hurt me.  I am only
+pretending!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But his quicker-witted sister was already at hand to cover his
+confusion.  "Carnaby will have his joke," she exclaimed laughing
+loudly.  "You see?" she demanded suddenly of Peckover, effectually
+dispelling the amusement which was gathering on his face, "he is a man
+of action," she continued with grim significance.  "Cares for nobody,
+except his sister.  And he won't see her made a fool of."  Then, having
+beaten Peckover into retreating from too close an inspection of her
+brother's real state of mind, she turned, caught the sprawling fighter
+by the collar, and pushed him to his feet.  "Great goose!" she hissed
+at him.  "I could strangle you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The striking of a clock told Peckover that the time appointed for his
+assignation had arrived.  "We'll hear that bloodthirsty anecdote
+to-morrow," he said, half trembling at his own temerity.  "It's too
+good to be wasted on an audience of one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, my little wallaby-rat," responded Carnaby in a tone
+unpleasantly threatening, and with a valiant attempt to cover his
+discomfiture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't wait," Peckover's apprehension of a coming complication forced
+him to say.  "Not much fun in this dark, chilly place.  I'll stop and
+pick the tin plates up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as he made for the scattered armour, Lalage seized him.  "No, you
+don't," she said, with determination that filled her victim with
+despair.  "You come with us.  I don't trust you out of my sight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going to meet a girl here?" cried Carnaby, with a quite surprising
+flash of intuition.  "I'd like to see him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will," said Lalage, with quiet insistence; "we will see him.
+Here!"  She took up a breastplate and helmet.  "Get inside this armour,
+Carnaby dear, and we'll just keep an eye on him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Piece by piece she picked it up and buckled it on him, Carnaby during
+the somewhat irksome operation relieving his feelings by addressing
+various minatory remarks to the now discomfited Peckover.  "You stir a
+foot, and I'll twist it off, my pigeon.  You just mention we're here,
+and I'll pull your tongue out, my little magpie.  So you'll play fast
+and loose&mdash;chrrr Lal, you're pinching me&mdash;fast and loose with my
+beautiful sister, will you?  You just try it on, my chicken, and it
+will be the last article you ever do try on.  I'll flatten you out, and
+then swab the floor with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a running fire of such cheering announcements did Mr. Leo relieve
+the tedium of his process of adornment.  At length the pieces of armour
+were fixed to him.  There were absurd gaps in the covering;
+nevertheless, in the semi-darkness there was no manifest difference
+between him and the empty suits of mail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," directed Lalage, as she arranged him on a stand, "you stay there
+as still at you can.  And you"&mdash;she turned to Peckover&mdash;"stir from the
+room if you dare.  You just tell the young minx you won't have anything
+to do with her, and, if she poaches on other people's preserves there
+won't be much sport for her by this day week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes!"  A husky voice filtered through the vizor of Carnaby's helmet,
+as he flourished the sword in his hand.  "If you try fooling I'll cut
+your&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush!" Lalage commanded, as she drew back into the obscurity of a
+recess.  "Some one coming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nice evening this evening," muttered Peckover ruefully as the door
+softly opened.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap23"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage&mdash;Percy&mdash;are you there?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I'm here," was the lugubrious response.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you been waiting long?" Ethel asked, coming close to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hours," he declared feelingly, then quickly corrected the statement.
+"No, I mean, not long."  Back in the darkness he fancied he could see
+the truculent eyes glaring through the bars of the helmet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I couldn't get away," Ethel said invitingly.  "Had to dodge Dagmar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho! she wanted to come too, did she?" Peckover remarked in
+desperation.  "The more the merrier."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel drew back with rather a sour look on her expectant face.  "Mr.
+Gage, what do you mean?"  Then with characteristic tenacity, she sidled
+up to him again.  "Percy, how cold you are," she observed reproachfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cold?" he returned miserably.  "Yes, it is a bit chilly.  Enough to
+give any fellow the shivers.  Chamber of Horrors is a fool to it.  I
+mean," he quickly added, as an ominous movement of Carnaby's sword
+caught his eye, "the armour strikes cold."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said Ethel huffily, "if you would prefer Dagmar, I'll go
+and send her to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no; please don't trouble.  You'll do," he replied, with an
+indifference born of desperation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lady resolved to try another tack.  "Oh, Mr. Gage," she said, with
+a tremor in her voice; "how unkind you are!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her face was so close to him that the trial was almost more than he
+could stand.  "No, no, not unkind," he denied, looking wildly round for
+a way of escape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So changed," she insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, not changed," he replied equivocally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So distant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wish I was&mdash;a hundred miles distant," he groaned to himself.  "Can't
+help it," he declared, goaded by the consciousness of those four eyes
+magnetizing him from the darkness.  "Perhaps I've been too familiar."
+"Oh, no," she protested, growing desperate in turn, as the prize of a
+millionaire husband seemed slipping from her.  "If I don't mind it
+Percy, dear&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She put out her arms, but he fell back.  "Don't," he exclaimed, the
+hateful words almost choking him.  "It isn't proper, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid," she urged forlornly.  "I have been too absurdly proper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no&mdash;yes, I mean, no, no."  In his state of mind Peckover found it
+impossible to differentiate between what he longed and what he was
+forced to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You said to-day it was dry work," Ethel observed caressingly.  "You
+may have a sip if you like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The invitation, reminding him, with a difference, of his Crystal Palace
+and Welsh Harp days, was well nigh too much for the well-versed
+philander of the suburbs.  "Oh, don't, don't!" he almost shrieked.
+"Please go away.  You will drive me mad.  This is awful," he groaned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, if you'd rather not&mdash;&mdash;" Ethel suggested with a toss of the
+head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's never rather not with me," he protested under his breath.
+"Only&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accepting his lowered tone as one of endearment and invitation, Ethel,
+wondering at his unusual diffidence, drew closer to him.  Mechanically
+and most unwillingly, he drew back.  "Well, you need not run away," she
+pouted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From what he could, in the semi-darkness, see of her eyes he fancied he
+detected there an intention to spring at him, or at any rate to fall
+into his arms.  In tantalizing terror he hastily retreated still
+further, and in doing so stumbled against the stand of armour which
+just then contained the redoubtable Carnaby, receiving for his
+clumsiness a sound cuff from the mailed fist of that truculent spirit.
+Luckily, as the episode took place in the shadow, it was not noticed by
+the lady who had stopped her pursuit of matrimony and mammon in a not
+unjustifiable huff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," she declared resentfully.  "It's all that horrid Colonial
+girl.  How you can like her beats me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, she's not bad," was Peckover's reluctant explanation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think," returned Ethel with decision, "she is simply awful.  If that
+is Colonial taste, I am sorry for you.  You could never think of
+marrying her!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid so," he blurted out in his woe and confusion.  His guilty
+eyes perceived a disquieting movement on the part of the man in armour,
+and in turning, ready to flee from the probable onslaught, he saw in
+the gloom Lalage's eyes scintillating vengeance.  "I&mdash;I mean I hope
+so," he corrected, almost in a shriek.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Induced by this strange and contradictory behaviour, Ethel suddenly
+made a dart and flung her designing arms round him.  "Oh, Percy," she
+cried with an adequate imitation of a sob, "you are not going to throw
+me over for that creature?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must," he replied, releasing himself firmly and with what dignity
+was possible under the circumstances, "obey the dictates of honour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Ethel drew back, looking very sold and desperate in the moonlight.
+"What a charming brother-in-law you will have!" she exclaimed, panting
+with scorn and her late exertion.  "Great lout!  Only fit to guzzle and
+smash furniture."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And," Peckover added miserably to himself, "people who don't agree
+with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His silence gave rise to a wild hope in the besieging breast that the
+defence was wavering.  In a trice, with an improvement upon her former
+tentative onslaught, she had thrown herself with greater deadliness of
+aim and more convulsive tenacity into his willing, yet unwilling, arms
+again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Percy," she howled in a judiciously modulated pitch, "I can't bear
+your coldness!  I can't let you go!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover's situation with those four glaring eyes and those two
+matrimonially determined grips upon him was truly deplorable.  "I'm a
+dead man," he gasped, as he saw, over Ethel's reckless shoulder, the
+awful mail-clad figure raise the sword with grim significance.  "I say;
+stop!" he cried, struggling ungallantly to free himself.  "Keep away!
+I can't marry you!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage!  Do you mean it?"  It was most undignified from both
+parties' point of view, but the fact must be chronicled that she
+shook&mdash;actually shook him.  "Oh, I won't be swindled like this!" she
+cried, in the height of exasperation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finding that with the obvious intention of being as good as her word,
+she, instead of releasing him with scorn, was hugging him tighter in
+desperation, he was fain to cry, in a hoarse whisper, "Hush!  Keep off!
+We are not alone.  Somebody in the room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ethel started back and looked round with a half-indignant,
+half-distrustful eye and saw&mdash;Dagmar.  That young lady having had her
+suspicions aroused by the prolonged absence of her sister and their
+eligible guest, who, by the way, was supposed to be cheering the sick
+bed of his friend, Lord Quorn, had started off on a search expedition,
+and had just then crept pryingly into the picture-gallery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ethel?" she cried with a pounce.  "All alone with Mr. Gage here, of
+all places, and in the dark!  This is disgraceful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage," Ethel declared calmly, "is going to marry me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was quite ready for her sister to join issue on that statement, but
+to her surprise the contradiction came from another quarter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage is not going to do anything of the sort."  It was Lalage Leo
+who, emerging from the obscurity which had shrouded her, uttered the
+flat denial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There!" said Peckover in uncomfortable justification of his
+backwardness, "you see we were not alone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No!" cried a loud voice as Carnaby clanked forward.  "Not much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Gage, how dishonourable," Ethel exclaimed trying to look
+scandalized while she resolved how best she could turn the situation to
+account.  "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did tell you not to hug me," Peckover replied bluntly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If," suggested Carnaby with a leer, having, after a struggle to a
+running accompaniment of murmured strong language, got his helmet off,
+"if you want anybody to hug&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" Ethel cried in manifest disgust, as though her demonstrativeness
+was regulated by any less material consideration than its object's bank
+balance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll take the armour off," Carnaby assured her, his tone suggesting
+that that might make all the difference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not be treated like this," Ethel exclaimed indignantly, aware
+of the necessity for having her position in the complication settled
+then and there.  "Mr. Gage is engaged to me."  She seized Peckover's
+arm and hung on to it grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, to me," Dagmar objected as with a desperation born of an insecure
+tenure she clutched his other arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lalage, with mischief in her dark eyes, swooped down upon the trio.
+The unhappy Peckover's arms being fast held, the only way that occurred
+to him of avoiding the coming assault was to endeavour to sit down on
+the floor, in which he succeeded, after a short and spirited attempt on
+the part of his captors to defeat the manoeuvre.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage," said Lalage with
+calm determination; "and I mean to enforce it, eh, Carnaby?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just let me get out of this rotten armour," growled her brother, thus
+appealed to.  "I'll&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it's not my fault," urged Peckover plaintively, from his
+undignified position on the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His weakness was not, however, shared by the ladies who, having him
+fast in their grips, knelt, under the exigences of the situation,
+beside him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is engaged to me," Ethel maintained stoutly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are engaged to Sharnbrook," objected Dagmar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not," she denied loudly and with decision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right!  That's settled," exclaimed a blithe voice from the gloom,
+from which next moment the said John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook emerged.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap24"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The real and resuscitated Lord Quorn had all this while been having a
+deplorable time of it.  Driven from the <I>Three Pigeons</I> in consequence
+of that hostelry being the abode of the terrible Leos, denied access to
+his own home through the same fear, he had betaken himself to a
+neighbouring village, and there spent his days, only venturing towards
+Staplewick after nightfall, when he would prowl about the Towers like
+an uneasy, discontented ghost.  But now the small sum he had been able
+to raise on the little jewellery he wore was all but spent, and he was
+becoming desperate.  Every day he expected to find that his trackers
+from the Antipodes had departed in disgust; every night he was
+disappointed.  Surely, thought he, with the false Lord Quorn to all
+intents established, what have these nuisances to wait for?  Surely
+even the self-and-brother-reliant Lalage can scarcely be stupid enough
+to suppose that she had a chance of catching the substituted lord of
+Staplewick.  If he has the cleverness and enterprise to fill that
+position backed by his friend's money he will hardly be such a rank
+idiot as to allow himself to be snapped up by those Australian sharks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the position for the real owner was drawing to a point when
+something would have to be done.  Necessary as it was for him to lie
+low, it was yet more necessary for him to live, and his resources were
+now about exhausted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And the other Lord Quorn, he who had, so to speak, bought a title
+without a title, was, except so far as nourishment went, in an almost
+equally uncomfortable position.  He had vowed that he would get up (his
+chill having left him) and he had done so, much to Peckover's annoyance
+and apprehension.  That astute person, rendered yet more wily by the
+chance of losing a handsome income, and furthermore of being kicked out
+of the fairly safe asylum he had found in the Towers, had set himself,
+with all the desperate disingenuousness he could summon to his aid, to
+work upon the fears and personal considerations of the convalescent.
+The consequence was that Gage, obstinate as he was, so far succumbed to
+the lurid picture, drawn by his friend, of the certain consequences of
+showing himself, that he had to submit with a very ill grace to
+confining his perambulations to the more secluded parts of the house
+and garden.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He would not have minded this so much had his circumscribed existence
+been mitigated by the charm of constant&mdash;or even inconstant&mdash;female
+society.  But the fact was that so long as the rich Mr. Gage,
+represented by the strategic Peckover, was more or less free, Lord
+Quorn, even with a fair income, the result of his performance in the
+lake, was, to these ladies at least, less to be desired than the man of
+wealth.  The Misses Hemyock were too familiar with an aristocratic
+position for it to have any charms for them.  They were also well
+versed in the tricks of keeping up appearances on limited means, which
+meant going in for the parade and going without the desirables of life;
+in consequence of which their discontented hearts were both rigidly set
+upon solid fortune rather than upon empty grandeur; money was what they
+hankered after; they were tired of mere social standing.  So Mr. Gage's
+yearning was still ungratified, and so he told himself, and his friend,
+Peckover, in no measured terms as he rampaged about the more secluded
+quarters of the demesne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the time for the Hemyocks to give up their tenancy of
+Staplewick had arrived, and that designing family had left the Towers.
+Not to go far, though.  Lady Agatha with an eye to bringing the
+business in hand to a happy conclusion, had persuaded some
+acquaintances, two elderly sisters, to turn out of the Moat, a house
+within half a mile of the Towers, and seek the invigorating air of a
+seaside resort for a month or two.  From this point of vantage she
+continued to keep an opportunist's eye on the eligible bachelors, whose
+position of comparative freedom was now from the lady's point of view
+that of a bird who is let out of its cage and allowed to hop and
+flutter to the extent permitted by the string attached to its legs.
+But the Moat and the <I>Three Pigeons</I>, where the enterprising Leos still
+lingered in an attitude of doubtfully restrained aggressiveness, were
+both marked with a red cross in the minds of Peckover and Gage, to be
+given a wide berth in their rambles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now a curious chance was to bring about a still more complicated state
+of affairs than already existed.  Gage was out riding one afternoon,
+exploring the roads and bridle-paths of the neighbourhood alone, for,
+since his adventure with Harlequin, Peckover had decided that life on
+five thousand a year was too precious to risk on horseback.  He was
+jogging along a woodland road, turning over in his mind plans for the
+extraction of more fun than he was just then getting out of his
+purchased dignity, when suddenly a turn in the way gave him a glimpse
+of the well-known figures of the ladies from the Moat who did not
+exactly fit in with the distractions he was seeking.  Luckily their
+backs were towards him, while the grassy road deadened the sound of his
+horse's hoofs.  Quickly he reined up and turned aside into the wood
+with the intention of striking a bridle-path, a few hundred yards
+ahead, which would bring him to the park and safety.  As he gained the
+covert he heard or thought he heard, the would-be charmers giving
+tongue in pursuit.  Accordingly he shook up his horse into a smart
+trot, hoping to get clear away without apparent rudeness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now it is manifestly difficult to ride fast and far through a pathless
+wood unscathed.  In his anxiety to press forward Gage had one or two
+narrow escapes from being rubbed off by interposing trees.  As he was
+being carried away at a smart pace he suddenly had occasion to duck
+over the saddle-bow to avoid a low branch.  While in this attitude,
+leaning sideways, his horse tripped over an exposed root, plunged
+forward and recovered himself, but not before the impetus had shot his
+rider out of the saddle.  In trying to save himself Gage somehow
+contrived to twist and wedge his foot in the stirrup as he fell.  So he
+was dragged along, just able to keep his head from contact with the
+ground by the purchase he got from the bridle which he still clutched.
+He tried in vain to stop the horse, preferring naturally the society of
+the Misses Hemyock to the excitement of that bumping progress; but the
+animal was not amenable to snaffle or reason, and the severely
+inconvenient mode of getting over the ground continued.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then suddenly, in his undignified, not to say dangerous, position, Gage
+heard a man's voice cry, "Whoa, boy!" the horse swerved inconveniently
+for his hanger-on, who became aware as the painful method of equitation
+came to a stop, that a man was at his head.  Without unnecessary loss
+of time Gage allowed himself to be extricated from his unbecoming
+attitude and set on his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Awkward position to adopt," remarked his rescuer dryly.  "Lucky thing
+I happened to be on hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm awfully obliged to you," Gage said, gratefully, feeling that his
+good time had hung in the balance during those exciting moments.
+"Shouldn't wonder if you've saved my life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He surveyed his preserver inquiringly to gather what manner of man he
+was.  A shabby, hungry-looking fellow, who ought to have been more
+respectable than his clothes proclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it's quite likely," was the cool response.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Horse stumbled when I was off my balance ducking away from a bough,"
+Gage thought proper to explain by way of excusing his late pose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!  Just so.  Not an easy position to recover from when once you're
+well shaken into it," the man commented indifferently; "with the horse
+a bit fresh, and the ground not exactly a billiard table.  Lucky I
+noticed you, if you happen to be in no particular hurry to hand in your
+checks."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I really am more than grateful to you," Gage protested warmly,
+realizing the narrow squeak he had had of losing a big investment.  "I
+hope I may be able to prove my gratitude.  Do you belong to these
+parts?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  Not exactly," the man answered gloomily.  "Came down here to get
+a place only to find it snapped up by somebody else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, the way of the world, I'm afraid," Gage commented sympathetically.
+"Well, perhaps I can find you something to do on my place here.  I'm
+Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, are you?" returned the man in a tone which left Gage a little
+doubtful as to his manners.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've taken over an old place that wants a deal of looking after to get
+it ship-shape," he continued.  "Any experience in land and farming?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Plenty," was the prompt answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you ought to do for me," Gage said.  "Anyhow I should like to put
+something acceptable in your way.  You've done me a service I shan't
+easily forget, and I hope you won't do anything to make me want to
+regret it.  Now, will it suit your book to take a position on the
+Staplewick estate?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just what I was after," replied the stranger in a curiously mechanical
+tone.  He seemed strangely preoccupied, even apathetic, but Gage was
+not going just then to criticize too closely the man who had saved his
+life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come along, then," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man seemed to rouse himself from a reverie, then laughed oddly.
+"Yes, I'll come," he agreed more briskly.  "You shan't find fault with
+the way I look after my place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll talk it over as we go," said Gage, throwing the bridle over his
+arm and moving on.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"Full of fun and pretty surprises, the peerage," Gage observed to his
+friend later in the afternoon.  "Makes one wonder what the next start
+is going to be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's wrong now?" Peckover inquired with a laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had a nasty spill, and nearly got sent to bye-bye just as the fun is
+beginning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come off?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage answered by an aggrieved nod, as though he held his friend
+responsible for the mishap.  "Got my foot caught in the iron and was
+dragged ever so far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Awkward," Peckover commented.  "Still you can't put that down to the
+peerage.  Noblemen's feet don't swell, although their heads may."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't," returned Gage snappishly.  "Only the Quorn title doesn't
+seem exactly a mascot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a proposition which the vendor of that equivocal dignity did
+not feel himself in a position to traverse.  "How did you get out of
+it?" he asked sympathetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The iron?  I shouldn't have been taken out alive, with the brute
+bumping me over the ground fit to drive my spine out at the top of my
+skull," Gage replied in a victimized tone, "if it hadn't been for a
+chap that came along in the nick of time and held him up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lucky," remarked Peckover.  "Going to settle a few hundred thou. on
+him?" he inquired playfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly.  But I'm going to give him a billet on the estate.  Poor
+devil, out-at-elbows; superior sort for all that.  Knows all about
+farming, he tells me.  He'd better have that glib old thief Treacher's
+place at the farm.  Turn him in there, and let him make the best job he
+can of it.  He has given me an idea of how he'd work the land, which
+seems pretty sensible, and at the worst he can't rob me more than
+Treacher has been doing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good idea," Peckover agreed, not wildly interested in the arrangement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Gage.  "After all, the fellow saved my life.  I owe him a
+chance of showing he can be honest as well as useful.  Now, as I'm
+considerably bumped about and only fit for a hot bath, I'd be glad if
+you'd just trot the fellow down to the farm, give Treacher his notice,
+and show his successor how the land lies.  We can put him up somewhere
+till Treacher clears out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," Peckover responded with a yawn.  "Anything to oblige.
+Where is the party?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's in the gun-room.  I told Bisgood to get him something to eat.
+Poor fellow seemed half starved.  His name's Jenkins.  Treat him
+kindly.  He has done us both a service," he added significantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All serene," Peckover assured him with another yawn.  "I'll handle him
+tenderly.  In the gun-room, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Peckover opened the gun-room door, Gage's preserver was standing
+with his back to it, scrutinizing a sporting print.  "Up, Jenkins," was
+Peckover's facetious salutation and mode of attracting his attention.
+Next moment it was down Peckover, for he staggered back and subsided
+helplessly into a low chair as, in the stranger who turned quickly, he
+recognized with a gasping cry the real Lord Quorn, whom he had believed
+to be lying poisoned and forgotten in Great Bunbury churchyard.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap25"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+For several seconds neither man spoke; Peckover, sprawling limply as he
+fell, staring with distended, apprehensive eyes at Quorn who, master of
+the strange situation, regarded him with a certain grim amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hope you are having a good time, Mr.&mdash;Gage, is it?&mdash;or something else,
+which for the moment has slipped my memory?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover's wits were rapidly recovering from the shock of dispersal
+caused by the unexpected bomb which had fallen on them.  "Curious we
+should meet again like this," he said with a sickly smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very," was the pointed response.  "And a trifle awkward, I should
+fancy, for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no," Peckover protested, pulling himself together and assuming the
+boldest face he could summon up.  "It wasn't my fault you drank that
+doctored wine, which I intended for my own consumption."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dare say not," Quorn returned uncompromisingly.  "Admitting for the
+sake of argument that was an unfortunate mistake, how about you and
+your friend annexing my place and title?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover's face showed bland surprise.  "Me and my friend taking your
+place and title?  What do you mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," replied Quorn with impatient sarcasm, "we are dense this evening.
+It may astonish you, Mr. Alias Gage, but I rather fancy Staplewick Park
+and Towers belong to Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who suggested they didn't?" asked Peckover wonderingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'd like to see the man, that's all," retorted Quorn.  "And," he
+resumed, "I'm rather under the impression that I'm Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say," was the prompt rejoinder.  "But it doesn't follow you are
+that nobleman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" he roared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't make a noise," said Peckover, with a touch of dignity; "the
+servants aren't used to it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say I am Lord Quorn," the other repeated with less volume but more
+intensity.  "And you know it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But Lord Quorn says he's Lord Quorn," argued the wily Peckover with
+maddening plausibility.  "That's all I know.  I'm not the Heralds'
+College."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're a pair of frauds," cried Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naturally, if you're the rightful peer," was the bland reply.  "But we
+don't know it, nor anybody else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't they?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except yourself, I was going to say, and a lady and gentleman who have
+come all the way from Australia to stick to it&mdash;and you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The hit told.  Quorn's manner visibly weakened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What&mdash;you've had the nuisances up here&mdash;what is their infernal game?"
+he asked, darkly apprehensive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Simple enough," replied Peckover, beginning to feel the courage he had
+hitherto simulated.  "The fair Lalage's game is to be Lady Quorn, or to
+know the reason why.  And she has brought over dear old Carnaby as an
+extra note of interrogation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!  What persevering devils they are," Quorn observed uneasily.  "And
+what do they say to your friend who calls himself Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say?"  Peckover's native smartness was quick to turn the situation to
+advantage.  "Why, their idea is that one Lord Quorn's as good as
+another and failing one the other will do nicely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn gave a long whistle.  "Why, you don't mean to say that Lal Leo is
+going for your friend?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is, though, by George," was the blunt answer.  "Only, of course,
+she hasn't got the hold on him she would have on you.  And that's where
+Carnaby comes in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn looked at him searchingly, but was fain to accept the statement.
+Besides which, it tallied with his idea of the Leonine methods.  "Well,
+that's a queer go," he said, and then fell into a puzzled silence.
+Presently he burst out with a question, not unnatural under the
+circumstances.  "Who the devil is the thief who has the cheek to call
+himself Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover shrugged.  "For aught I know to the contrary he is Lord
+Quorn," he replied blandly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rats!" cried the dispossessed one wrathfully.  "It's a put-up job
+between you and him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My good sir&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know he's not Lord Quorn, and you know I am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've told you already, not being in the know of the Heralds' College,
+I'm not in a position to say anything about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aren't you?" sneered Quorn.  "I know all about it, though.  When I
+drank that loaded stuff that sent me to sleep that was your chance, and
+you took it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did.  And I don't blame you.  But I've woke up now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," rejoined Peckover sarcastically, "since you are so wide-awake,
+perhaps you can explain why I didn't take the title myself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose," Quorn replied nastily, "you didn't feel you could fill the
+part."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of a British nobleman?"  Peckover laughed scornfully.  "Too steady and
+respectable, eh?  My highly creditable record wouldn't have stood in my
+way if I'd had a chance of nobbling the coronet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn brought his fist down with a bang on the table.  "D&mdash;n it, man,
+who is this fellow?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn," Peckover maintained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn!"  The real man could not find words to express his
+disgust.  "How did you pick him up?" he demanded, seeing the
+uselessness of arguing the question of identity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He picked me up," Peckover replied coolly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How?  When?  Where?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll tell you all about it, if you won't make such a noise," Peckover
+said suavely.  "He came to the <I>Quorn Arms</I> just after you had made
+that little mistake in the refreshment, and announced himself as Lord
+Quorn; and who was I to say he was not Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Funny," remarked Quorn, "that he should have brought you along here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fact is," was the ready explanation, "he was afraid of being caught by
+those Hemyock terrors who straightaway began tumbling over one another
+to get him.  Brought me along here as a chaperon, or an umbrella, if
+you like, and I've made myself useful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see," said Quorn suspiciously.  "And how about being a millionaire?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," replied Peckover, "is how we worked the trick.  Lady Agatha is
+a nailer.  She wouldn't have wasted board and lodging on a poor man.
+And as a rich chap I can whistle the dear girls off when they get
+closer to Quorn than he cares about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The assumption of the title irritated its real holder.  "Quorn?" he
+repeated resentfully.  "I like that.  There's only one Quorn, and I'm
+going to show everybody where he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lalage and all?" was the pertinent objection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, confound Lalage!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just so&mdash;confound Lalage," was the hearty response, "Only take care
+Lalage does not confound you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a few moments Quorn preserved an aggrieved and discomfited silence.
+"You don't suppose," he said at length, "I am going to stand being
+humbugged like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't reckon anything about it," replied Peckover with wise
+mendacity.  "You two Quorns had better fight it out between yourselves.
+Only&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only what?" the other snapped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I were you I should wait until the ring's clear before I put up my
+hands."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn stared in front of him in gloomy silence.  "Pretty darned mess it
+is," he remarked presently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is.  But it will clear up," said Peckover cheerfully.  "That is if
+you give it time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn made a sour face.  "Nice position for me&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you will go engaging the affections of ladies from the Bush with
+short hair and muscular brothers," put in Peckover.  "It's a mercy as
+it is that this other claimant cropped up.  He has saved you a lot of
+worry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So they're after him?" asked Quorn with grim amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You bet.  He had to stay in bed for a week to keep out of their way.
+Lalage has crossed over to be Lady Quorn, and she means business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The devil she does!" exclaimed Quorn uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just think," urged Peckover with telling plausibility, "what this
+other Quorn has saved you from.  Dear old Carnaby has a rare hankering
+after experiments on people's physiognomies; trying how a man looks
+with his nose bent, his eye closed, and a tooth or two smudged out.  He
+fitted his dooks once round my throat, and I can feel 'em there now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was that for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just to keep his hand in.  He is uncommonly keen on meeting you, and
+he has got a bagful of funniments ready for the occasion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pleasant fellow," ejaculated Quorn ruefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," pursued Peckover, "it's providential this chap, t'other Quorn,
+turned up.  And if you take my advice you'll let him sit where he is
+till the Leos have eaten their heads off at <I>The Pigeons</I> and turned
+the game up."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Looks as though I'd better," Quorn agreed reluctantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be bad enough if Carnaby catches you about as it is,"
+continued Peckover, encouraged by the success of his argument.  "He may
+do something distinctly unpleasant, but, not being for the moment Lord
+Quorn, you won't have to marry old Lalage into the bargain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's something," murmured Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything, almost," said Peckover cheerfully.  "If you wriggle out of
+that matrimonial spring-trap, you won't mind leaving half of your tail
+behind.  You may lose a feature or two, but you'll be saved a life-time
+of bother."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To get quit of Lalage would be gratifying," Quorn admitted gloomily.
+"But with my nose sliced off&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If," urged Peckover encouragingly, "you keep away from the
+looking-glass you'll never miss it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But other people will," Quorn objected, clearly discomposed by the
+idea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, then," Peckover summed up, "if you don't feel equal to tackling
+the gentle Carnaby either as Quorn or Jenkins, you had best lie low
+till they cart themselves away.  The other Quorn won't be particular,
+since you saved his life, and Treacher doesn't go for a month.  We'll
+fix you up a room in one of the lodges, and you can spend your time in
+keeping out of Lalage's way.  Give out you are surveying the estate,
+which, if it should turn out to be yours, won't be trouble thrown away.
+I'll look after you, and back you up.  You can trust me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know that I can," was the not unnatural objection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course you can," Peckover assured him sympathetically.  "Anyhow,
+you've got to, unless you want Carnaby to wring you out and swab the
+stable yard with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A nice thing," Quorn protested distastefully, "for me to be skulking
+about, and playing the understrapper on my own estate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes," said Peckover sententiously. "We often have to pay for our
+fun when we least expect to."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Thus it came to pass that matters shaped themselves to the wily
+Peckover's handling, and he was able with native shrewdness to snatch a
+fresh reprieve from the threatening exposure.  And it was of manifest
+importance for him to do so, since every day's income made an
+appreciable addition to the little capital he was amassing.  If only he
+could keep the game up for a few months it would be for him, an
+independence.  That former income of his, thirty-five shillings a week,
+would be his for life, and without working.  No wonder he sharpened his
+wits to keep his oddly diversified puppets dallying.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So the unsuspecting Lord Quorn by purchase continued to enjoy his
+title, little dreaming of the Jenkinsian volcano at his very door.  So
+likewise the chafing and mystified Quorn was assiduously taken in hand
+by Peckover and his fears kept up to high-water mark.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap26"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork was a practitioner in somewhat the same line of business
+as Lady Agatha Hemyock.  Her dealings were however, of a wider scope
+and carried out with more histrionic embellishment than those of her
+sister schemer who, as may have been gathered, had her hands full with
+her two discontented and recalcitrant daughters.  Lady Ormstork had,
+she was thankful, and also given to say, no daughter.  But other people
+had them.  Also she had no money to speak of, and again other people
+had.  So, being a tough and wise lady of tireless energy and a grasping
+turn of mind, she set herself to take certain other people's daughters,
+for matrimonial objects, be it understood, and at the same time as much
+of their money as she had the face&mdash;and hers was fairly expansive and
+brazen&mdash;to ask for.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In pursuance of a scheme which her ladyship had already several times
+put in practice with success, she, on hearing certain rumours, ran down
+to Great Bunbury, and secured a furnished house on the outskirts of
+that somewhat uninteresting borough.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the upshot of this apparently pointless and fatuous action, it was
+one afternoon announced to Gage who was seeking relaxation from the
+duties of his position in a game of billiards with his friend Peckover,
+that Lady Ormstork and Miss Ulrica Buffkin were in the drawing-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who the deuce are they, Bisgood?" Gage inquired, in not the best of
+humours at being interrupted in a promising run of nursery cannons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know, my lord," answered Bisgood stolidly, his air suggesting
+that it was his master's business to find out for himself.  "Never
+heard of the ladies before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are they like?" asked Peckover, ever on the alert for an
+unpleasant surprise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Middle-aged lady, sir, and a young one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-looking?" Gage demanded, weighing the visitors against the joy of
+the prettily placed balls by the top pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The young lady decidedly so, my lord," Bisgood answered with the
+dictum of a connoisseur.  "As regards the elder lady opinions might
+diff&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, bother the old lady.  You can look after her, Percy," said Gage,
+putting on his coat.  "I suppose they are ladies, Bisgood?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady Ormstork, my lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's the book?  Let's look her out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Bisgood fetched Debrett, while Gage brushed his hair and gave an upward
+twist to his moustache.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, here it is, correct enough.  'Harriot, Lady Ormstork, widow of
+Henry Fitz-fulke Candlish, fourth Baron Ormstork.'  Come on, old man,"
+Gage commanded; and with pricking curiosity concerning Miss Buffkin, he
+led the way to the drawing-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first glance told both men that Bisgood had not overstated the
+case.  Miss Buffkin had a roguish, voluptuous prettiness which fitted
+each man's ideal of feminine beauty.  Indeed it was so long before they
+could bring themselves to notice her companion that any other than the
+gratified Lady Ormstork would have reasonably shown signs of being
+offended.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn?" the wily peeress inquired sweetly, looking from one to
+the other; and for once, perhaps naturally, at fault.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage, wrestling with his sudden preoccupation, went forward and shook
+hands.  "How do you do?" he inquired tentatively, in a manner from
+which no unprejudiced observer would have deduced any deep concern as
+to the state of her ladyship's health.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must introduce myself."  She opened the conversation winningly, as
+the men took chairs opposite to her and kept furtive eyes on the
+alluring Ulrica.  "I was a great friend of the late peer's&mdash;your
+cousin&mdash;&mdash;"  Gage bowed.  "My husband and he were at Eton together and
+kept up a life-long friendship."  Lady Ormstork sighed.  The men tried
+to look sympathetic and merely found themselves looking at the
+beautiful Miss Buffkin to see how she took it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We often stayed here," the peeress proceeded in a voice of tender
+reminiscence.  "We always loved Staplewick and the&mdash;the neighbourhood."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With an effort the men accepted the interesting statement with a duly
+chastened glance at the maundering lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So much so," Lady Ormstork continued, dropping with surprising ease
+the tone of lament in favour of one which suggested business-like hope,
+"that being sadly in need of change of air after the fatigue of the
+London season, I suggested, instead of the inevitable Homburg, the
+healthy and peaceful paradise of Great Bunbury."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It struck as much of the minds of her listeners as they could afford to
+detach from the prepossessing Miss Buffkin that it had never occurred
+to them so to regard that unlovely market-town, but they made
+allowances for variation in tastes and found it possible to rejoice
+that some one, particularly this talkative old peeress, took pleasure
+in it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's an interesting old place," Gage agreed, with as much irony as
+anything else.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nice change after London," Peckover chimed in, with a slight shudder
+at the recollection of his first impressions of that unattractive town.
+"Don't you think so?" he suddenly asked Miss Buffkin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young lady hesitated, and her hesitation could not be said to count
+as a testimonial to the grimy place in question.  "It's not exactly
+lively," she answered with a smile that disclosed an irreproachable set
+of teeth.  "When you've walked up one side of the street and down the
+other you are ready, if not anxious, to bid Great Bunbury a life-long
+farewell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dearest Ulrica," Lady Ormstork remonstrated, "you have no romance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I had a sackful, Great Bunbury would shake it out of me pretty
+quick," her protégée retorted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," the elder lady resumed almost plaintively, "perhaps it is that
+I view it in the light of happier days.  It used to be quite a treat to
+drive in from here on a fine afternoon to shop in the quaint little
+town."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both men glanced at Miss Buffkin as inviting a comment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The things you buy there aren't much of a treat," she observed dryly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And that is why," proceeded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the remark, "my
+heart turned towards Great Bunbury and dear old Staplewick, so that I
+felt I must come and see it again, even at the risk of being considered
+intrusive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The expression on the two men's faces was calculated to assure her that
+so long as she appeared similarly accompanied she need have no fear of
+her welcome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure I'm delighted," Gage assured her, with a sly glance at the
+fascinating Ulrica.  "I hope you will stay to tea now, and come often,"
+he said with real enthusiasm.  "As often as you can."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork looked deeply grateful; indeed, as though a load of
+ungratified longing had been lifted from her shoulders; while Miss
+Buffkin seemed, from one cause or another, highly amused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, Lord Quorn, it is most kind," Lady Ormstork replied
+gushingly.  "I shall revel in revisiting the dear old haunts.  I warn
+you I shall take you at your word, and come very, very often."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't come too often," Gage assured her gaily.  "Hope Miss Buffkin
+will come too.  You mustn't leave her moping in Great Bunbury.  We'll
+try to get up some fun for her out here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork had no intention of leaving the profitable Ulrica behind,
+and she intimated as much.  Miss Buffkin, on her part, seemed to find
+more than a transitory amusement in the effect she had produced upon
+the men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps you would like a turn before tea and look round the gardens,"
+Gage suggested, nudging his friend, "Rather untidy, but we are going to
+make them trim directly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I should dearly love to see them as they are," the wily old
+peeress assured him.  "Untidiness lends itself to romance, does it not?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say it does," responded Gage, "and gets interest out of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork was too busy manoeuvring to get hold of Peckover to
+notice the joke.  Her game was to throw the new Lord Quorn and the fair
+Ulrica together with ultimate profit to herself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover, it may be stated, was not wildly interested in the dowager
+peeress.  Not quite taking in the situation, he had anticipated that
+she would hang on to Gage, leaving Miss Buffkin in his willing charge.
+But the whole sense of the meeting was against him.  Between the
+grasping old lady and the repudiating Gage, he had no chance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on!" commanded his friend in a peremptory whisper pushing him
+towards the peeress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you love a winter garden?" that astute dowager enquired sweetly
+as she annexed him, and then, without waiting for his predilections on
+the horticultural question, proceeded to arrange for "dear Ulrica" to
+be personally conducted by Gage.  There was no help for it, and
+Peckover resigned himself to the tolerance of aristocratic age and
+presumed inanity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't tell you," Lady Ormstork observed in the cooing tone with
+which she smoothed over her designs, "how delighted I am to make the
+acquaintance of your friend, the new Lord Quorn, and to revisit dear
+old Staplewick.  What a charming fellow he seems."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes; he's a slice of all right," Peckover agreed, wondering whence
+the lady had formed that conclusion, since Gage's behaviour had
+hitherto shown more signs of being charmed than charming.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has," declared Lady Ormstork, "the family likeness.  Particularly
+the nose.  I saw the Quorn nose at once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a somewhat trying statement for Peckover, but he manfully
+repressed all evidence of agitation.  "Yes," he assented, "he's got the
+nose all right, and a bit of the Quorn lip, I'm thinking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Looking round as it were to verify the comparison, Lady Ormstork was
+pleased to see the lagging pair in close and animated conversation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, he reminds me of the late peer, particularly when he smiles," she
+declared with boldness, considering that she had never set eyes on a
+Lord Quorn in her life, nor been until a week before, within fifty
+miles of Staplewick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, does he?" responded Peckover indifferently, as he suppressed a
+yawn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be so nice to come over here often," pursued Lady Ormstork,
+ignoring her companion's preoccupation.  "So delightful for my dear
+young friend, Miss Buffkin.  Naturally to a high spirited girl Great
+Bunbury is a little dull."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think it would be," Peckover responded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the lady with a little sigh of relief, "and so it will be
+such a pleasant change for her to have, so to speak, the run of this
+lovely park."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm sure," Peckover said with emphasis, "Lord Quorn will be delighted
+for Miss Buffkin to come here all day and every day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How good of him," exclaimed Lady Ormstork, greedily accepting the
+suggestion.  "And I shall enjoy it too, more than I can express."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover was silent as he fell gloomily to wondering whether his
+desirable lot would be to entertain this suave old lady while his
+friend flirted with the fair and lively Ulrica.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My young friend," proceeded Lady Ormstork, "is a really charming
+girl&mdash;what a superb Wellingtonia!&mdash;Yes, I see a great deal of her.  Her
+father is not able to take her about, and so she has become almost like
+my own daughter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except that she doesn't exactly take after you in looks," thought
+Peckover; but he merely bowed acceptance of her statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see, her position is quite enviable," the lady continued in her
+society voice and drawl, "As an only child she will be immensely rich.
+Indeed Ulrica has her separate fortune now.  I'm sure I may confide in
+you, Mr.&mdash;&mdash;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gage," Peckover supplied alertly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage.  Not one of the Shropshire Gages?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not that I know of," he replied, beating down a sporting instinct to
+claim kindred with that highly respectable, if rural, family.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah!  Some of the Worcestershire branch, the Lovel-Gages, were my
+greatest friends," said Lady Ormstork regretfully reminiscent.  "You
+don't come from Worcestershire?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not straight," he answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork laughed, as she always did when there was the possibility
+of a joke being intended.  "Well my dear Mr. Gage, I may tell you in
+confidence, as I feel we are going to be very good friends, that one of
+the reasons I brought dear Ulrica down to this quiet place was to be
+out of the way of certain fortune hunters who were pursuing her with
+their attentions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't wonder," responded Peckover, with a touch of enthusiasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," the lady agreed.  "Apart from her immense fortune, she is
+adorable.  So handsome! and so clever!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, she's all that," said Peckover, enviously thinking of what a good
+time his friend was having, and regretting for once, that he had let
+the title go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One person in particular," pursued the dowager, "has given me great
+anxiety.  A Spanish duke, of undeniable family, a Grandee of Spain, and
+all that sort of thing, don't you know, but very poor, and consequently
+most persistent.  You know what these foreigners are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rather," Peckover assured her, in a tone which implied an intimate
+acquaintance with the procedure of Spanish Grandees, rich and poor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," the lady continued, "&mdash;oh, how pretty that peep is!&mdash;of
+course an alliance with Ulrica would set him, the duke, on his feet
+again.  It would enable him to resume his position and live on his
+estates like a prince."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get a new hat to wear in the royal presence," added Peckover,
+remembering that attribute of Spanish Grandees which he had read of in
+the "interesting items" column of a weekly paper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is, I believe, devotedly in love with Ulrica, apart from her
+fortune," continued his companion.  "And of course from the point of
+view of mere rank and grandeur, the alliance would have been quite
+desirable.  But, after all, an English girl should marry an Englishman,
+that is my feeling and the wish of Ulrica's father; and so we have come
+down here to let the storm of the Duke de Salolja's passion blow itself
+out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see," said Peckover thoughtfully, wondering how much of the storm
+was true, since his last habit of mind was naturally now prone to
+suspicion and to look askance at unwarranted confidences.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap27"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Percy, my boy, what do you tot them up to come to?" inquired
+Gage jovially as they turned from an impressive adieu to their guests
+who drove off radiant&mdash;at least as far as Lady Ormstork was
+concerned&mdash;at the success of their visit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They're all right," Peckover answered somewhat gloomily.  Considering
+the poor time he had had as the medium through which the wily peeress
+desired to convey certain information to his friend he could scarcely
+be expected to emulate that gentleman's enthusiasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right?  I should think so," Gage exclaimed with emphasis.  "The girl
+is simply scrumptious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say," Peckover returned, with a jealous twinge.  "Rather
+different from our friends at the Moat, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Slightly.  There's no comparison.  She's a real beauty, and full of
+fun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you found that out, did you?" Peckover observed curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rather.  This is the sort of Lord Quorn I'm paying for."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has a lot of money," said Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The old lady-bird told me so.  Confidential old party.  Good as
+admitted they had come down here to have a dash at you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Me?" cried Gage, much interested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your title.  Or, rather mine," his friend declared sombrely, so
+dismally, indeed, that Gage said&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come, you are not going to repent?  This is what I paid for.  I told
+you so at the outset."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," Peckover agreed.  "It's fair enough," and with the image of
+Miss Buffkin's commanding beauty in his heart, he darkly resolved to
+try whether some of her smiles might not in future be for him.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork was, as might have been confidently anticipated, as good
+as her word.  Almost every day she brought the fair Miss Buffkin to
+Staplewick, and on those that were missed the two friends contrived to
+find an excuse for calling at Cracknels, as the villa, built by a
+retired biscuit baker, was named.  The game was not a very pleasant one
+for Peckover, seeing that in it the dowager was invariably his partner,
+nevertheless he continued to stick to it doggedly in the hope that his
+opportunity for making running with the captivating Ulrica would surely
+come.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accordingly he disguised his feelings and the alertness with which he
+waited for an opening to assert his powers of fascination, making
+himself the while as agreeable and attentive to the astutely meandering
+peeress as the nature of her society talk permitted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn and dear Ulrica seem to have taken quite a fancy to one
+another," she remarked one afternoon, tactfully leading the way so as
+to give a wide berth to a plantation of rhododendrons in the midst of
+which she had reason to suspect the other pair of promenaders was
+lingering.  "Don't you think so, Mr. Gage?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Looks like it," answered Peckover with a sardonic curl of the lip.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are his great friend.  He would naturally confide in you,"
+observed the lady with a pointed invitation to betray the said
+confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes.  He is very far gone," was the somewhat ill-humoured reply.
+"No need for him to mention it, so long as I retain my eyesight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am inclined to think," Lady Ormstork observed meditatively, "that
+the alliance would not be at all a bad thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No?"  Peckover, smarting under his confederate's good fortune, would
+not commit himself to an opinion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think so?" the dowager asked suavely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't blame old Quorn," Peckover replied, rather crudely.  "As to
+whether Ul&mdash;Miss Buffkin might not do better is a matter of opinion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Possibly she might; or she might do worse," was the sage response.
+"After all, Quorn is a charming fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes," his friend assented in a tone so warped that it seemed to
+signify, "Oh, no."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a fine old title," said the lady reflectively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Title's all right," he agreed equivocally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Undeniable," Lady Ormstork maintained.  "But of course, my dear Mr.
+Gage, you understand that advantage would weigh nothing with me if
+Quorn were not genuinely fond of Ulrica."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just so," responded Peckover with a wink at a passing swallow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naturally," she pursued, "you will see my position is a somewhat
+delicate one.  It is on that account, my dear Mr. Gage, that I make no
+scruple in asking you, a clever man of the world&mdash;if I may call you
+so&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, don't mention it," he replied glibly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm asking you not to let me be in the dark as to your friend's real
+feelings and intentions.  For if I were sure that Quorn had no idea of
+proposing I should consider it my duty to take Ulrica away from here at
+once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has not expressed any such intention to me," Peckover replied,
+brightening a little.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But surely you think he will, he must?" demanded the lady anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, he should by rights," Peckover agreed.  "But he may not be a
+marrying man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.  "Every man is a marrying man when he
+meets a girl like Ulrica.  Besides, it is the duty of every peer to
+marry, or what will become of our old nobility?  Heaven only knows to
+whom, as matters stand, the Quorn title will go next."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover had an idea that he could claim to share the knowledge.  "He
+ought to come to a firm offer if he means business," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our time here is getting short," Lady Ormstork declared significantly.
+Not but what she was prepared to grace Great Bunbury with her presence
+for a twelvemonth if that were likely to bring off the match.  "As
+Ulrica's temporary guardian I cannot allow Quorn to flirt with her
+indefinitely if he has no intention of proposing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Peckover responded promptly, wondering how he could get a look
+in.  Then a happy idea struck him.  "Quorn is a shilly-shallying
+fellow," he said guilefully.  "Can't make up his mind.  I usually have
+to do it for him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish you would in this instance," the lady exclaimed fervently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I think I might," he replied with sudden animation.  "But of
+course it won't do for me to tell him straight he ought to propose.
+He'd see you working the figure.  No, I've got a more artful plan than
+that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you dear Mr. Gage!" cried Lady Ormstork, brightening at the
+prospect of an end to her uninteresting sojourn at The Cracknels.  "Do
+tell me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Easy enough," said Peckover, sparkling likewise; "and highly
+effective.  One trial will prove it, or money returned.  Make him
+jealous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can we?" asked the dowager with a dubiousness which her companion
+did not find altogether complimentary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leave it to me," he replied, his sparkle subsiding to a touch of
+huffiness.  "Don't you think I'm equal to it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, indeed, dear Mr. Gage," the lady drawled, eyeing him still
+rather doubtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you make any mistake about it," he protested severely.  "I
+always was first favourite with the ladies, and Quorn knows it&mdash;to his
+cost, I may tell you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you are still friends?" was the astute comment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sworn friends," Peckover replied with much truth.  "I'll prove it by
+making up his mind for him to marry the finest girl in England."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what is your plan?" Lady Ormstork inquired approvingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rapidly the alert little mind had blocked in the outline of his scheme.
+"Let me make the running for a lap or two," he suggested.  "If that
+doesn't hurry him up, nothing will.  You come up as usual to-morrow;
+I'll slip away from Quorn, meet you, and go off for a stroll with Miss
+Ulrica.  You come on to the Hall.  Tell Quorn offhand, when he asks,
+what has become of the young lady.  Say she thought she'd prefer a
+stroll with me for a change, and if he sits still after that it's odds
+against Miss Buffkin being Lady Quorn.  You watch the effect."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork looked as though she might be safely trusted to keep her
+eyes open for it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next day things happened as had been arranged.  Peckover made a timely
+desertion, and Lady Ormstork arrived at the Towers dignified and alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not brought Miss Buffkin to-day?" Gage asked, trying to look as though
+he had still got the better half of the Cracknels establishment.  "Hope
+she's not ill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dear no," Lady Ormstork answered sweetly.  "She is here.  But we
+met your charming friend, Mr. Gage, just by the lodge gates, and dear
+Ulrica said she had been cramped up in the fly long enough, so she got
+out to stroll up through the park."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage evidently experienced some difficulty in looking as pleased as a
+host should at the idea of his guest doing what pleases her best.  "I
+see," he said, uneasily reflective.  "Shall we walk back and meet them?
+It's a lovely day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So Ulrica thought," the astutely suave lady responded.  "And the park
+looked so tempting.  Yes, a short stroll would be delightful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accordingly they made their way down the drive at a pace which, set by
+the deliberate old peeress, ill accorded with Gage's impatience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Naturally Peckover had foreseen this move, and had proposed a
+circuitous and covert route to the house.  Ulrica, quite privy to the
+scheme, offered no objection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sun's rather hot," Peckover observed, when the carriage with its
+guileful occupant had rolled away from them.  "Let's keep under the
+trees."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ulrica laughed, and took without comment the path he indicated.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap28"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"This is a real pleasure to me," Peckover remarked, determined to get
+on flirting terms without wasting precious time in preliminary
+small-talk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This lovely day?" Ulrica responded, with an obvious pretence of
+misunderstanding his drift.  "Yes, it is quite a treat."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I meant," he pursued, with a stimulating glance at the fresh, pretty
+face, highly provocative now with a roguish smile, "a walk with you.
+I've been longing for this moment ever since I first set eyes on you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her glance of amused surprise suggested that she thought he was
+plunging <I>in medias res</I> with a vengeance.  "Clearly," she commented,
+"patience is one of your virtues."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know about patience," he replied.  "If I've waited a long time
+for my chance, it has not been exactly patience, but because I couldn't
+get it sooner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everything comes to him who waits," Ulrica observed with a careless
+laugh, to show she was not taking him too seriously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope you don't mind the change?" he suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the weather?" she asked mischievously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bother the weather!  No.  From Quorn to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That remains to be seen," she answered.  "So far, I have no objection
+to it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Same here.  Lady Ormstork is a proper old grandee, but, well,
+naturally she's not exactly my idea of an afternoon's fun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say not," Ulrica said dryly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you are," he declared boldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She ignored the compliment together with the amorous look which
+accompanied it.  "I have often wondered how you and dear old Ormstork
+were getting on;" she remarked with self-possessed blandness.  "One
+hears of such curious matches nowadays."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment Peckover hardly realized the drift of the remark.  Then he
+stopped dead.  "Why, you don't mean to say," he gasped, "you thought I
+was making love to the old gal?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked intensely amused at his face of disgust.  "Lady Ormstork is
+not bad looking for her age," she suggested wickedly.  "You must admit
+she is rather handsome."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say," he returned, not certain how far she was in earnest.  "It
+never occurred to me to take stock of her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ulrica kept her countenance steady, but her eyes were dancing.  "Then
+your devotion was purely Platonic?" she observed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may call it what you like," he replied, playing for safety.  "As I
+wasn't taking any."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, then, I suppose it was devotion to your friend, Lord Quorn," she
+pursued, the corners of her mouth twitching with mischief.  "Of course.
+He saved your life, didn't he?  And you&mdash;yes; how generous of you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, bother my life," Peckover exclaimed with an impatient laugh.  They
+had covered a good deal of ground without getting on very far towards
+the end he had in view, and any moment now Quorn might run them down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I expect poor old Quorn is feeling rather sick by now," he remarked
+pointedly, "at your giving him the slip and going off with me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't think he'll be jealous?" she asked with a laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shouldn't be surprised."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no real reason why he should be," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor no reason why he shouldn't be&mdash;if you like," he rejoined
+insinuatingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't understand you, Mr. Gage," she said, looking at the same time
+as though she understood him perfectly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you liked me half as well as I like you," he explained bluntly,
+under the compelling spur of her charms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You think it would matter to Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You ought to know best," he returned.  "I know it would matter a lot
+to me.  The question is, which do you prefer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, his lordship, of course," she answered mockingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because he is a lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naturally."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see," said Peckover catching her tone.  "Is that your own original
+idea or Lady Ormstork's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is certainly Lady Ormstork's," was the evasive answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But not yours.  Not altogether," he urged wickedly.  "You might have
+room in your heart for a little fondness for me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed.  "Why should I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It would be such a treat," he pleaded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are very, what Lady Ormstork calls, unconventional," she said
+quizzingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does that mean nice?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't tell unless you give a fellow a chance," he said amorously,
+as his arm, extended behind her, somewhat unnecessarily, to put aside a
+bough, remained there.  "Ulrica!" he murmured.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Percival&mdash;Percy," he suggested with empressement.  "Ulrica, time's
+short, so don't let's quibble about trifles.  You're the loveliest girl
+I've ever set eyes on," he continued with glib passion, "and I'm
+desperately in love with you.  I've been dying to tell you so all the
+time, but never could till this blessed chance came along.  Ulrica, say
+you're a little fond of me, in return."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage!"  Ulrica's expression was compounded of indignation, scorn
+and amusement.  But perhaps the last was the only sentiment that was
+genuine.  "It is not necessary," she protested, "to overdo the part
+like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The part?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady Ormstork's little scheme," she said coolly.  "You need not take
+the trouble to make it quite so life-like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, it's no trouble," he assured her promptly.  "It is a pleasure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understood," she observed laughingly, "that the idea was to put it
+into Quorn's head that he ought to be jealous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it," Peckover replied readily.  "And I'm doing my very best to
+give him cause for jealousy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very spirited of you," she said, with her provocative,
+mischievous twinkle.  "But you need not act quite so hard, need you?
+At any rate till he sees us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He made a wry face.  "Not much fun in waiting till he sees us.  It
+occurs to me this is a little game it pays to play in earnest.  That
+is," he added pointedly, "if both parties are agreeable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, that's the question," she said tantalizingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't you answer it?" he asked insinuatingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"H'm!  I rather like you," she admitted.  "You are breezy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thanks," he replied.  "Then I ought to be in request on a warm day
+like this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn," she said with provoking irresponsiveness, "is breezy.
+But with him it blows from a rather different quarter.  And he is apt
+to be a little gusty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes.  Dare say he would be," Peckover agreed, recalling certain
+squally passages in their intercourse.  "Well, after all, a change of
+air ought to be grateful.  Does you good."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ulrica laughed.  "With the wind chopping about there is likely to be a
+storm coming."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there?" he returned.  "Then let us take advantage of the fine
+weather while it lasts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was about to give a practical suggestion of how they might make the
+best of the sunny hours, with his arm only prevented from encircling
+her waist by a vigorous repulsive action on Ulrica's part, followed by
+a suggestion that the conditions did not exactly lend themselves to
+waltzing, when suddenly a man emerged from the bushes and stood in
+front of them.  It was not the Lord Quorn they were expecting, but the
+real Quorn who had sighted them while prowling about the grounds, and
+now confronted them with an expression of jealous irritation on his now
+chronically aggrieved face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hullo, my cunning little puppet," he exclaimed rudely.  "Enjoying
+yourself this fine morning?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Trying to," replied Peckover, betwixt resentment and politic
+submissiveness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's right," said Quorn with a distinctly objectionable sneer.
+"Poaching on the preserves of the person who calls himself Lord Quorn,
+it strikes me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is this rude person?" asked Ulrica, not knowing whether to be
+amused or alarmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, he's all right," Peckover assured her uneasily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," responded Quorn with dismaying suggestiveness.  "I am
+particularly all right.  About the only man on the place who is all
+right, it strikes me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover, reduced to an apprehensive and gloomy silence, noticed that
+Quorn's eyes were fixed on Ulrica with a look of unmistakable and more
+than passing admiration.  The aggressive manner was softening too,
+clearly for the lady's benefit, and indeed Miss Buffkin showed signs of
+a temptation to laugh at the embarrassment of her cavalier.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right you are," Peckover said, nodding to Quorn as pleasantly as the
+situation permitted, and at the same time trying to get a chance of
+winking at Ulrica to intimate thereby that she need not take the
+new-comer seriously.  "Well, we must be getting up to the Towers now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Quorn showed no intention of budging from their path.  His eyes
+were still fixed in the same resolute admiration on the fascinating
+Ulrica, and it was manifest that the spell of her beauty was holding
+him more strongly every moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You run off to the Towers, old man," he ordered Peckover, with a wave
+of the arm, while his eyes never left the object of their attraction.
+"You're wanted up there at once.  I'll escort the lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a note of determination in his voice that Peckover had not
+noticed before.  Doubtless it was derived from the enchantment of Miss
+Buffkin's personality.  Peckover dared not disobey.  Happily a ruse
+suggested itself to him.  He nodded to Ulrica; "See you again
+presently," and made off down the winding path.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Scarcely had Quorn time to pull himself together in his overmastering
+admiration, and frame the preamble of a rough flirtation, when Peckover
+came rushing back with apprehensive face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, what's the matter now?" Quorn demanded, upset by the
+interruption.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lions on the prowl," Peckover announced in a loud whisper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lions?" cried the exasperated Quorn.  "What do you mean.  You must be
+dr&mdash;&mdash;"  Then the meaning flashed upon him, and he grew white.  "Not
+Leos?" he demanded hoarsely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover nodded warningly.  "Both of 'em.  Looking nasty.  They'll be
+round the corner in a moment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lord Quorn had decided before that moment elapsed not to stay to test
+the truth of the statement.  With an exclamation which savoured less of
+good manners than of abject, if wrathful, fear, he sprang without a
+word of leave-taking or excuse into the bushes and disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then Peckover winked at the astounded Miss Buffkin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was clever of you," she remarked with a puzzled laugh.  "How did
+you do it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Superior power of intellect," was his somewhat vague and unsatisfying
+explanation.  "Mind can start muscle any day.  Never mind that poor
+chap.  Where did we leave off?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wouldn't," she replied significantly.  "If I remember rightly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more I won't," Peckover exclaimed, with boldness increased by his
+late coup.  "Wasn't I just&mdash;&mdash;?  I don't mind beginning again, if you
+don't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His impudence made her burst out laughing.  "You are absurd.  And you
+are not treating your friend well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"P'raps not," he returned.  "But when I look at you I feel called upon
+to treat myself well.  Besides, he'll never miss it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss what?" she asked, innocently or by design falling into his trap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A kiss," he answered.  "You'll let me have one, Ulrica?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Buffkin was saved the trouble of dealing with the&mdash;perhaps
+embarrassing&mdash;request, by the appearance of Gage, who came up somewhat
+heated and resentful, followed by Lady Ormstork, whose face wore the
+look which dowager peeresses wear when their plans, matrimonial and
+financial, succeed.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap29"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Gage, <I>soi-disant</I> Quorn, was, to put it mildly, anything but pleased
+at Peckover's manoeuvre, Nevertheless he did not take the first
+opportunity of proposing to the fascinating Miss Buffkin.  In point of
+fact he preferred the role of Philander to that of Benedick.  He was in
+no hurry to settle down, however strongly the superb Ulrica might tempt
+him to matrimony.  He was more than rich enough to treat her wealth as
+a negligible quantity; added to which he desired to taste the sweets of
+life as dished up to a bachelor peer, and this was the first of them
+which had not turned sour in his mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Naturally he was not going to allow any interference or competition on
+the part of his paid confederate, Peckover.  That gentleman, had, he
+considered, put off the trappings of nobility for a handsome
+consideration, and was in honour bound not to start an opposition
+business on his own account, nor to obtain credit in the guise of a
+millionaire, within an equitable radius from Staplewick, or, indeed,
+from the person, wherever it might be, of the peer by purchase.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The first practice of the scheme not having produced the desired
+effect, namely a proposal, it was arranged to repeat it next day; but
+Gage was too resentfully wide-awake to be taken in again.  He stuck to
+Peckover with all the persistency, and much more than the annoyance, of
+his shadow, and finally took care as the hour of their visitors'
+arrival drew near to post himself at the point of interceptance; the
+wily Peckover remaining at the house in a state of tantalizing
+discomfiture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lady Ormstork, who had not lived in vain in a world where even
+peeresses play "beat my neighbour," was equal to the occasion, and more
+than equal to the suddenly alert Mr. Gage.  Perhaps she had anticipated
+his move; anyhow, she was prepared with a prompt counter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Gage met the carriage by the lodge, the driver, being either new or
+instructed, did not pull up for a hundred yards or so.  Then Lady
+Ormstork quickly alighted and the carriage bowled on at a good pace
+towards the Towers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a wealth of amiability the lady advanced towards Gage who was
+hurrying up with a lowering face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where's Miss Buffkin?" he cried in a cold, exasperated voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork held out both hands gushingly.  "So delighted to come
+again.  So sweet of you to have us!" she crowed.  "Another quite
+heavenly day.  And the dear old park looking more lovely than ever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But where's Miss Buffkin?" Gage demanded hoarsely, clutching the old
+lady's double-dealing hands and thinking unutterable things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dear Ulrica is rather tired," was the plausibly artless reply.
+"She went for a walk to the Scotton Woods this morning.  So she has
+gone on in the carriage and will make herself at home till we come.  I
+am sure that you, as the soul of hospitality will not mind that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Gage looked as though he did mind it very much indeed.  However, he
+shut his lips, perhaps to keep back the unspeakable, and began to move
+on towards the house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The park is truly delightful to-day," exclaimed his companion with
+studied rapture.  "The air is simply life-giving.  Do let us stroll up
+by the beech avenue, dear Lord Quorn.  It is a sin to hurry indoors on
+an afternoon like this.  Ulrica will not mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage's face suggested thoughts too poignant for words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall we stroll round by the rhododendron walk?"  Lady Ormstork
+suggested with a fine air of ignorance of anything abnormal in the
+situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Must go up to the house first," Gage insisted bluntly, his rage being
+almost too great for coherent speech.  "Was on my way there when you
+drove in.  Just remembered, forgot to give Bisgood an important order."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, then do let us go by all means," the lady assented graciously, her
+heartiness stimulated by a wave of satisfaction in thinking that the
+proposal could not be far off now.  "If only you had told us, you might
+have got into the carriage and driven up with Ulrica.  What a pity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Considering the steps she had taken to obviate such a contingency this
+was a somewhat bold speech on Lady Ormstork's part.  But the grand
+manner carries a certain, if not altogether convincing, plausibility
+with it, and disarms rude censoriousness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So they walked towards the house together; the gracious dowager
+finding, as was natural, the slight incline up to the Towers rather
+against anything like pace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have had rather a disagreeable surprise to-day," said Lady
+Ormstork, summoning back to her side the irritated Gage whose
+impatience kept him farther in front of her than politeness might have
+dictated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh?" he responded discouragingly, wishing she would keep her breath
+for the pedestrian effort and defer conversation till the Towers and
+the elusive Miss Buffkin were reached.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she proceeded.  "I think I told you&mdash;or was it Mr. Gage?&mdash;of a
+very persistent suitor of dear Ulrica's, the Duke of Salolja, a fiery
+Spaniard, who had been paying her great attention in town last season.
+In fact it was mainly to escape his importunities that we came down
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, then you didn't come to see Staplewick?" he observed, between
+chafing and chaffing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was my object," the lady maintained with dignity.  "And I brought
+dear Ulrica with me to Great Bunbury as to a sanctuary where we could
+be safe from the duke.  Judge, then, of our embarrassment when, driving
+up the High Street, we saw him coming from the station."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Awkward, if you've been fed up on him in town and don't want any
+more," Gage commented.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very.  He proposed five times at least to Ulrica, and would not take a
+refusal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a way they have in Spain, I believe," remarked Gage, wondering
+gloomily how this new development might interfere with his amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Still," continued Lady Ormstork, "as I think I told Mr. Gage, one
+cannot have the dear girl forced into a marriage, even with a Spanish
+duke, against her inclination.  One cannot blame him, poor man; she is
+lovely, and altogether most adorable; but from our point of view why
+should she exile herself in Spain for the sake of a man she does not
+care for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, indeed?" assented Gage, wondering what the odds were on the
+Spanish duke's being a creature of the old lady's imagination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the fatigued Miss Buffkin had come as an agreeable surprise
+upon the baffled Peckover, and that alert opportunist had lost no time
+in making the most of his good fortune.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear old Ormstork has hooked Quorn down by the lodge," she explained
+laughingly.  "But I expect they'll be up here before long by the look
+on his face as she fastened on him and he saw me bowling on up here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shouldn't wonder," said Peckover with a grin.  "Well, if we've got to
+make him jealous, don't let's lose any time in preliminaries."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage, you are too absurd," Ulrica remarked as she unwound her
+feather victorine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't see much absurdity in that suggestion, anyhow," he returned.
+"What's the good of a chance if you don't take it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We need not exactly act in earnest," she suggested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've always thought that make-believe was poor sport," he rejoined
+engagingly.  "We were getting on nicely yesterday; if only&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, yes," she continued archly; "there's always an if only&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If only," he continued, "Quorn wasn't on our track, we need not be in
+such a hurry to say what's uppermost in our minds.  As it is&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His arm seemed, to her alert eyes, to have a caressing twitch about it.
+"Shall we go out into the garden?" she proposed, by a plausible
+manoeuvre putting the table between them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too many men about, setting the place straight," he objected
+knowingly.  "Safer here, and snugger too, Ulrica!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Mr. Gage!" she expostulated, as by a swift dart he got round to
+her side of the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ulrica," he said seriously, for since yesterday a wild design and hope
+had taken possession of him, "Ulrica, need you marry Quorn?  Tell me,
+like a dear girl.  You don't love him as much as all that, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She laughed.  "How do you know?  I'm not going to tell you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's only for the title," he pleaded, feverishly anxious to arrive at
+an understanding while the chance lasted.  "That's nothing.  It can be
+bought, if you go the right way about it.  Ulrica, I don't believe you
+like him as well as you like me.  Tell me you don't.  Tell me the
+truth, dearest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He seized her hands insistently.  There was no doubt about his
+earnestness and she could hardly laugh at him now.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like you well enough," she answered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Darling!" he cried with genuine rapture.  "Then you'll marry me?
+Won't you?  Say yes.  You're your own mistress.  Say you'll marry me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can I?" she laughed evasively.  "I've got to marry Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because he's a lord?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She nodded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shrugged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You like me best?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're more my sort," she was fain to answer.  "But it is no good."
+Then suddenly breaking away she said, "I've just seen another of my
+admirers, a real Spanish duke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, that chap!  I've heard of him," said Peckover with sovereign
+contempt.  "Well, you wouldn't look at him again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I daren't," she replied.  "I was afraid he'd see me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You leave him to me," said Peckover in his grand manner.  "I'll settle
+the Dook.  I'll slice the top off the Spanish onion.  Ulrica, you'll
+have me?  Hang the title.  Have the man you like."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him.  He was very different from the reckless little
+fugitive who had once tried to put an end to his existence at the
+<I>Quorn Arms</I>.  Prosperity, high living, and a general good time had
+transformed him, smartened him up, and, backed by a certain native
+shrewdness, made him fairly presentable.  Still&mdash;&mdash;  Ulrica laughed.
+Her ideas and original breeding were but middle-class in spite of her
+wealth and expensive education.  But for certain successful
+speculations on the part of Buffkin <I>père</I> (who knew his striking
+limitations, and wisely kept in the background) there would have been
+nothing very unequal in the mating of his daughter with Peckover.  And,
+after all, in spite of the transmuting power of wealth, of changed
+circumstances and surroundings, human nature has always a tendency to
+seek and revert to its old level; to find most pleasure and ease in the
+society of those who are as it once was.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it was that she made answer to her eager wooer.  "I like you well
+enough, but a rich girl can't choose as she likes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should have thought," he urged, "she can like where she chooses."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So she can," Ulrica rejoined.  "But she can't marry him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm just as much a gentleman as Quorn," he argued.  "He happens to
+have the title, but I might have had it and fitted the part just as
+well as he," he added with hidden truth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you might," she agreed.  "But you haven't got it.  And that makes
+all the difference."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll get one if you'll marry me," he pleaded, vaguely optimistic on
+the subject.  Then he fancied he heard Gage's voice outside.  "I say,"
+he urged with desperate affection, "here they come.  Quick.  If you
+love me give me a kiss."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know that I do," she objected, her voice rising to a half
+scream of remonstrance as he clutched her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Give me the benefit of the doubt," he insisted drawing her face
+towards him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But before his lips could reach hers, Lady Ormstork's shrill voice
+called "Ulrica!"  The handle of the door was turned, and Peckover
+sprang guiltily over as much carpet as he could cover from that
+interesting take-off, as Gage burst in upon them with a face of
+suppressed fury which was not diminished by the obvious suggestiveness
+of the attitudes of the conscious pair.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap30"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, old man," said Gage to Peckover, as they settled down to
+their cigars after dinner, "you're not playing the game."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What about?" his confederate inquired blandly.  He had felt from
+Gage's sulky attitude all dinner that something was coming and was
+consequently prepared for it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your carrying on with Ulrica Buffkin," was the blunt answer.  "She is
+my girl; and you know that as well as I do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not in our contract that all the girls belong to you," Peckover
+suggested gently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage frowned.  "She came for me.  She was after me," he returned in an
+exasperated tone.  "That was the arrangement.  And I don't pay you five
+thousand a year to interfere in my love affairs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not my fault," Peckover urged coolly, having drunk champagne
+sufficient for a reckless enjoyment of the controversy, "if the girl
+fancies a change.  It's your business to make yourself sufficiently
+interesting to keep her affection.  If you don't, well, I may as well
+take her on as any other fellow."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you talk a lot of conceited nonsense," retorted Gage, keeping
+down his fury with an effort.  "The girl's all right: but she's led by
+your infernal monkey tricks into thinking that I'm neglecting her; so
+naturally she pretends to take up with you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, that's one way of looking at it," Peckover observed with vinous
+sarcasm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the only intelligent way," Gage returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"From your point of view," his friend rejoined, tossing off a glass of
+port wine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's from my point of view that we've got to look at the affair," Gage
+said, with rising anger, for the other's coolness and confidence were
+more exasperating than his words.  "And," he proceeded, banging his
+fist on the table, "my view of the case is, that if you don't stop your
+little game and sheer off the Buffkin there's going to be a row."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't," observed Peckover sententiously, "have anything to do
+with a girl, however good-looking, for whom my sole attraction was my
+title, and who didn't mind showing as much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has she told you that?" Gage snapped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover shrugged.  "Practically."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," Gage returned with an ugly mouth, "that's because she's
+huffy with me, thinking I'm not so keen on her as I ought to be, and
+you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose her feelings don't count," Peckover retorted, being pretty
+sure of himself with the fair Ulrica.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mine do, at any rate," Gage declared wrathfully.  "I've been humbugged
+enough over this precious title.  And as to your expecting me first to
+take on your revolting Australian pet and then to give up a girl like
+Ulrica Buffkin, why, you don't diagnose my character right, that's all.
+This is my show.  I'm paying for it, and I'm going to run it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," returned Peckover, still cool and unmoved by his friend's
+thumping and shouting, "you'd better make it your business to see who
+that is prowling round the booth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage's irate eyes followed Peckover's nod to the window.  Outside, just
+discernible in the dusk, the figure of a man was moving to and fro.
+Gage jumped up and threw open the French window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who are you?  What do you want here?" he demanded in a rough and
+unnecessarily loud tone.  Peckover rose and lounged against the
+mantelpiece, cigar in mouth, lazily interested in the encounter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man outside stopped, turned, brought his heels together, and made a
+low bow.  "Have I the honour to address myself to his Excellency the
+Lord Quorn?" he asked in a high-pitched voice and foreign accent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have.  What do you want?" was the ill-matching, even brutal, reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man approached the window; then bowed again.  "I have the honour of
+the friendship of the most gracious Lady Ormstork," he said.  "As one
+who enjoys that privilege, I trust I may not be regarded as a
+trespasser."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke with such ceremonious politeness that Gage was shamed into
+gulping down his ill-humour and softening his mode of address.  "What
+can I do for you?" he inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have," said the stranger with another courteous flourish, "already
+given myself the high pleasure of surveying your charming park and
+castle by moonlight.  It is romantic, it is enchanting.  And now there
+but remains to me to crave the honour of a short conference with your
+lordship.  Am I permitted, then, to flatter myself that my request is
+granted?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes.  Step in," said Gage, not over cordially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Before I so unceremoniously cross the threshold of your window,"
+observed the man with another bow, "permit me to announce myself&mdash;my
+name and condition."  With more flourishes he produced a pocket-book
+almost entirely covered with an immense gold coronet and cypher,
+extracted therefrom a card of unusual dimensions, and with a deep bow
+presented it to Gage, who drew back into the light, glanced at it, and
+showed it with a wink to Peckover; that worthy greeting the information
+it conveyed with a low whistle of amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your friend&mdash;&mdash;?" said the stranger with a low bow to Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Gage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah?  I have heard of him too.  Mr. Gage, I have the honour."  And he
+bowed again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When at last he resumed an upright position with some prospect of
+permanency, the friends could see what manner of man the stranger
+looked.  He was small, wiry and rather bald.  His bristling moustache
+turned up from under the longest nose and above the most prominent jaw
+nearly into the fiercest eyes they had ever seen.  With less
+aggressively piercing eyes he would have been rather a comical figure;
+as it was, except when he shut them (which he had a trick of doing), or
+hid them by bowing, he was no laughing matter.  His jutting chin wore a
+closely clipped Vandyck beard, and his clothes were black.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both men, as they regarded him, tried to persuade themselves that they
+were amused, without, however, the result being quite convincing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have the honour," said the stranger, inclining his head and shutting
+his eyes, "to request&mdash;I do not say, demand&mdash;the grace of a few words
+with my Lord Quorn and his honourable friend."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have a glass of wine?" Gage proposed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stranger made a stately gesture of refusal.  "We have a proverb in
+my country, Spain," he said, "'The thistle before the fig.'  You are
+too kind.  But with your permission I will defer the acceptance of your
+gracious hospitality for the present."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a cigar?" Peckover suggested, pushing along the box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the pantomime of refusal.  "At considerable pain to myself, I
+must decline&mdash;at least till I have done my poor best to make myself
+understood," the man replied, with his eyes shut.  "Nevertheless, you
+will not impose upon me the heavier penalty of seeing you forego the
+enjoyment of your own cigars?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They bowed, none the less appreciatively that neither man had
+entertained the slightest intention of doing so.  But they were
+strangely subdued.  Somehow, ridiculous as they assured themselves it
+was, the stranger's personality chained and fascinated them.  He was a
+little man with an absurd nose, but&mdash;&mdash;  They found themselves staring
+at him, drinking in every detail, every flourish, as he drew forward a
+chair with a gesture of asking permission, then sat down and faced them
+with a quiet mastery of the situation which was horribly disconcerting.
+So they waited in a silence, half apprehensive, half quizzical, for him
+to begin, not without a shrewd idea of the purport of the approaching
+communication.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At length with a preliminary flourish of a ringed hand, and an
+effective raising and dropping of the fierce eyes, he began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will have already graciously noted by the acceptance of my poor
+card that it is the Duke of Salolja, Hereditary Grand Sword Bearer to
+his Most Gracious Majesty the King of Spain, Lord Keeper of the Royal
+Vaults, Duke also of Oswalta, Marques of Risposta, with many other
+titles and offices, and a Grandee of Spain,"&mdash;at the recital of each
+succeeding dignity he raised his voice till at the culminating title
+the reverberation made the glass rattle&mdash;"who has the honour to address
+your grace."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both men bowed, and at the same time did their best not to feel much
+smaller than the diminutive duke who held them as an undersized
+rattlesnake might fascinate a couple of finches.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I must begin," said the duke, with what looked like the dangerous calm
+of a quiescent volcano, "by craving your grace's most amiable patience
+while I touch, very briefly, on a few points which stand out in my
+family history, the chronicles of the noble House of Salolja, of which
+I have the honour to be the present unworthy representative."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover glanced at Gage and his look said, "Family history.  We've got
+hold of a crank," and they both looked less uneasy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Families have their characteristics and idiosyncrasies," pursued the
+duke, nodding his head to and fro sententiously.  "In my country,
+Spain, this is peculiarly the case.  Family tradition is strong, it is
+tenacious, inexorable, immovable."  At each succeeding adjective his
+voice rose till it reached the climax in an intense scream.  Then he
+dropped back quite casually into a conversational tone, and proceeded&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is a notorious tradition in my family that we never suffer an
+interloper in affairs of the heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The faces of his two listeners indicated a realization that he was now
+coming to business, and their interest visibly quickened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the year," the duke threw back his head, as though searching for
+the date in the ceiling, "1582, my noble ancestor, Alfonzo de Salolja
+was pleased to love a Castilian lady of great beauty, Donna Inez de
+Madrazo.  A certain vain Hidalgo, one Lopez de Fulano, was rash enough
+to cast eyes on her and enter the lists with him.  Alfonzo did not
+insult the lady by questioning her preference.  He ran de Fulano
+through the heart.  His blood is still to be seen on the Toledo blade
+which hangs in my poor palace in Segovia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused to let the anecdote soak in, before pouring out another.  His
+audience looked interested, but uncertain in what spirit to take the
+recital.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nearly a hundred years after that," the duke resumed, chattily
+reminiscent, "a rash Frenchman, the Comte de Gaufrage, suffered himself
+to indulge a passion for the lovely Donna Astoria de Rivaz y Cortano,
+heiress of the de Rivaz lands and wealth.  Duke Miguel de Salolja, who
+at that date represented my honoured family, heard of this breach of
+punctilio on the morning of the day he had appointed for offering the
+fair Astoria his hand and dukedom.  By noon the Comte de Gaufrage was
+in Purgatory and Duke Miguel in Paradise."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Both killed?" asked Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cut him out?" suggested Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My ancestor," the duke replied in stately tones and with a flash of
+the eyes, "did not die till thirty years later.  And," he turned to his
+second questioner with a bow and a wave of the hand, "permit me to tell
+your Excellency, no duke of the Saloljas ever stooped to 'cut out' as
+you term it.  We do not enter into competition.  We have a shorter and
+more effectual way.  I may explain that by noon the Comte was in his
+coffin, and Duke Miguel accepted by the lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tone seemed to snub their denseness of comprehension.  Peckover
+accepted the elucidation with a faint and inept smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a few moments there was silence as the duke sat immobile; confident
+in, as it were, the cloak of homicidal tradition in which he had
+wrapped himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then with a suddenness which made the two jump (for he was beginning to
+get on their nerves) he plunged again into his blood-stained narrative.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To pass over many like instances of this family trait, and come to
+comparatively modern times," he said pleasantly, "it happened to my
+great grandfather, Duke Christofero, to commit a deplorable mistake.
+He and his neighbour, the Prince de Carmona, unknown to each other,
+loved two sisters, the daughters of the Marques de Montalban.  One
+night they both determined to serenade their respective lady-loves.
+When the duke arrived at the Castle he heard a guitar, and came upon
+the unfortunate Prince beneath the windows of the ladies' apartments.
+Only when he was drawing his rapier out of the Prince's left lung did
+he learn that it was Donna Maria and not Donna Lola for whom the
+compliment had been intended.  It was unfortunate; nevertheless it
+tends to illustrate the working of the traditional law which governs
+our house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes.  I believe that sort of mistake did often happen in the good
+old times," was the not altogether confident remark of Peckover, who
+felt he must make a stand against this sanguinary catalogue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A flash from the duke's remarkable eyes, brought any further tendency
+to volubility to a full stop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Such occurrences," he said pointedly, "are, pardon me, by no means
+confined to bygone times.  The traditions of my house will end only
+when my race is a thing of the past.  In the year&mdash;to venture with your
+courteous permission to resume&mdash;in the year 1841, a titled compatriot
+of your own, Sir Digby Prior, allowed himself at one of the Escurial
+balls the freedom of paying too much attention to my father's
+<I>fiancée</I>, the sainted lady whose unworthy son I have the honour to be.
+Next morning they met on the Buen Retiro Park, from whence in that same
+hour Sir Digby was carried with a bullet in his brain.  Yes!"  He
+sighed reflectively.  "It is not perhaps a cheerful, or agreeable
+record; still it is curious and interesting to trace the same
+inevitable characteristic of our blood in almost each succeeding
+generation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very," Gage agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Most singular," Peckover chimed in mechanically, as he tried to fall
+into a pose of polite indifference under the duke's eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little man received their appreciative commonplaces with a grave
+bow.  "We have now arrived at a point," he said glaring at them, but
+speaking with quiet if significant deliberation, "when it becomes my
+duty to claim the honour of your unwavering attention."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The request was in the highest degree unnecessary.  Both men were
+incapable of greater heed than they were already giving.  "Now it's
+coming," was the simultaneous and uneasy thought in their minds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I fear the politeness with which your graces have brought
+yourselves to listen to my long preamble has caused your cigars to
+extinguish themselves," remarked the duke, with an ambassadorial smile.
+"Pray let me have the supreme pleasure of seeing you relight them."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap31"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Having now," resumed the duke, when the two men had, with a fine
+affectation of nonchalance, but with somewhat unsteady hands, lighted
+up again, "taken you through as much of the history of my family as to
+persons of your acuteness of perception is necessary, I have the honour
+to invite your attention to the moral of my house's story."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His listeners, by this time mentally detached from each other, and held
+pitilessly and without respite by those auger-like eyes, puffed
+nervously at their now tasteless cigars, and by their apprehensive
+silence bade him proceed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The present unworthy holder of the dukedom of Salolja," that person
+continued, with a deprecatory gesture, "&mdash;to leave ancient history
+behind us&mdash;is for the moment in one of those inexpedient positions to
+which his ancestors were occasionally liable, and from which they
+invariably took prompt measures to extricate themselves.  In the
+province where we hold sway there is a proverb, 'A Sololja's rival
+should make his will.'  When one wishes to describe a useless action,
+'It is like granting a lease to the rival of a Salolja.'  Meaning that
+he does not live to enjoy it.  The phrase is expressive."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rather neat," commented Peckover, with an effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now to come to the point," pursued their tormentor, his fierce eyes in
+singular contrast to his bald head and deliberate speech, "the present
+Duke of Salolja&mdash;to keep the discussion conveniently impersonal&mdash;has
+made up his mind to contract an alliance with a certain English lady; a
+commoner, it is true, but one whose beauty and wealth may claim to make
+up, in a measure, for genealogical deficiencies.  The lady's name is
+Miss Ulrica Buffkin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both hearers nodded an acquaintance with it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has come to the duke's knowledge," continued that same nobleman,
+raising his tone to a slightly minatory pitch.  "That another person,
+an Englishman, I should say an English nobleman, has, unwittingly I am
+ready to allow, been led into paying certain attentions to the lady in
+question.  I am sure that to capable and clever men like yourselves it
+is not necessary for me to set myself the disagreeable task of pointing
+out the inevitable result of such an unwarranted and deplorable
+interference should it be persevered in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, took out a silk pocket-handkerchief embroidered with a
+flamboyant coronet and cypher, and passed it lightly across his lips,
+never taking his vicious eyes off the two men who had by this, under
+the paralysing gaze, assumed the appearance and almost the condition of
+a pair of waxworks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the lengthening pause seemed to demand a response, Gage with a great
+effort roused himself from the Tussaudy rigidity, and, with a desperate
+attempt at boldness, replied&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You might let us know, while we are on the subject."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No harm in mentioning it," Peckover chipped in with a somewhat ghastly
+pretence of a smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The little duke thrust back the handkerchief into his breast pocket,
+and then threw out his hands expressively.  "I should have imagined,"
+he replied, with a transcendentally threatening eye, "that men of the
+sagacity and penetration of your graces would have found no difficulty
+in deducing from the instances you have just heard with such admirable
+patience, the fate in store for any one who is rash enough to enter the
+lists with a Duke of Salolja."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice, rising with abrupt suddenness, thundered out the last words
+with a volume and intensity which made his rivals fairly jump in their
+uneasy seats.  Anyhow, the wordy Grandee had come to the point, and the
+point had to be faced or run from.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage, whose mode of life had kept his nervous system in better order
+than his companion's, was the first to reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's all very well," he said, bracing himself to join issue with the
+fiery little Castilian, and assuming a courage he did not feel.  "But
+this is a free country; and in these enlightened days you can't run a
+man through the body before lunch because your best girl has the good
+or bad taste to prefer him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fury leapt like a flame in the duke's eyes, but he replied calmly, even
+suavely, "Your excellency is wrong.  What is to prevent me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The police," Peckover suggested promptly, trying to catch boldness
+from Gage's attitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke burst into a loud and particularly unpleasant laugh.  "The
+police?  Really, your graces compel my amusement.  May I ask you three
+questions?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Three dozen, if you like," answered Gage unsteadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke accepted the bounty with a bow.  "Three will suffice."
+Whereupon very loudly, "One."  Then in a normal tone, "How many police
+have you within a radius of, say, three miles from Staplewick Towers?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One or two," Gage was forced to answer rather sheepishly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke bowed, this time with a sarcastic smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two."  Again the disturbing, superfluous shout.  "How long would it
+take you to send for the nearest, supposing you found him at home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, about twenty minutes," Gage tried to reply casually.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once more the absurdly loud enumeration.  "Three.  And how long do you
+consider it would take me to put a bullet through your body?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Simultaneously with the question a glittering object shone in his hand.
+It was the highly polished barrel of a revolver which he had whipped
+out casually with a deftness which seemed born of practice, and with
+which he now covered his rival.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both men started to their feet with blanched faces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here, I say!" Peckover remonstrated in ill-concealed terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How long?" sang out the little demon of a duke in his commanding
+voice.  "Oblige me by answering the question."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A second, I suppose," gasped Gage.  "Now please turn that revolver
+away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is," proceeded the duke in a tone of satisfaction, "nineteen
+minutes and fifty-nine seconds before the policeman arrives."  Still
+holding the weapon in his hand, but now pointing to the floor, he rose,
+brought his heels together and bowed.  "I trust, milord Quorn and Mr.
+Gage, my most honourable friends, that at length we understand one
+another."  Then he sat down again, his aggressive eyes moving with
+mechanical regularity from one man to the other, since the exigencies
+of the moment had sent the friends apart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now, throughly roused by the critical situation, Peckover spoke.
+"I don't know, my lord dook, whether you are aware that we have strict
+laws in this country against murder."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And," put in Gage, "against carrying firearms without a licence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke laughed scornfully and with superfluous volume.  "Do your
+Excellencies think we have no such laws in Spain?  And do your graces
+suppose that if the Dukes of Salolja had cared a fig for them the
+occurrences which I have narrated to you would have happened?  You hang
+a man for what you call murder here.  But have you ever heard of your
+English law hanging a Grandee of Spain?  And do you think you would be
+allowed to do so?  Pah!"  He snapped his fingers with a noise like the
+crack of a whip.  "What is your English law compared with the
+immemorial traditions of the Saloljas?  NOTHING!  Shall it stand
+between a Salolja and his vengeance, his desire?  NEVER!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He shouted the answers to the last two of his many questions with
+scornful vehemence.  His manner was, no doubt, irritating, and that,
+perhaps, accounted for Peckover's boldness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't bluff us you are above the law," he said, trembling at his
+own temerity.  "If we haven't hung a Spanish Grandee as yet, it's
+because none of you have killed anybody over here that I remember."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The demon duke grinned and spread out his hands before him, as though
+sweeping away a feeble protest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My gracious friend, you jump at hasty conclusions.  Who talks of
+killing, of murder.  Faugh!  It is a vulgar word.  Accidents happen,
+here as in Spain; deplorable, fatal accidents.  Firearms go off, almost
+of themselves; it is sad to think how easily they go off.  I could tell
+you stories of such miserable fatalities in my own family, but you have
+probably heard enough of the ways of the Saloljas for one evening.
+Death is very near us always," he continued sententiously.  "So near
+that the healthiest of us is only just alive.  Which of us bears a life
+worth an hour's purchase?  NONE!  And the man who trifles with a
+Salolja cannot call the next moment his own.  There it is.  Accept it
+or not, it is the truth, the eternal, bitter, naked truth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His voice was like a Nasmyth hammer, now pounding, roaring, seeming to
+shake the room, now gentle and soft as a shy schoolgirl's.  As he
+concluded his speech his tone sank into a solemn hush, indicative of
+the awesome inevitable.  For some moments there was silence in the
+room, save for the ticking clock.  Then, when the tension had lasted as
+long as was desirable, the duke rose, and advancing to the table took
+the finest peach in the dish.  The flashing had now faded from his
+eyes, and the expression on his face was truculently amiable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I sincerely hope I have not wearied your excellencies," he observed.
+"It has been most condescending and gracious of you to let me explain
+myself at such length.  A veritable poem of a peach; I have not met its
+fellow in England.  May I now, since our slight misunderstanding is at
+an end, do myself the honour of drinking a glass of wine with your
+graces?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rousing themselves from the gloomy preoccupation of their discomfiture,
+their graces, with a quite futile pretence of ease, hastened to
+minister to their undesirable visitor's request.  That worthy proceeded
+to toss off a couple of bumpers with a relish commensurate with his
+long and thirst-giving harangue.  "If I ask further for one of your
+graces' excellent cigars," he suggested with a pleasantness which could
+not seem other than grim, "it is as another proof of how unwilling I am
+to bear malice.  Ah!"  He lighted the cigar and blew out a long cloud
+with evident enjoyment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unlike my ancestors I make allowances," he declared significantly.
+"Unlike them again, I never strike without warning.  Yes," he added,
+dropping his voice into a genial tone; "it is perhaps well for us that
+we did not live, and in the same relations one to another, a hundred,
+two hundred years ago.  At least we should not all three be enjoying
+these superb cigars."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a difficult sentiment for the smarting pair to respond to.
+"Just so," was all Peckover, with an awkward laugh, could think of.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am ashamed to have stayed so long," said their guest, with an
+expressive glance at the clock.  "But it is better to risk missing the
+strict punctilio than to have to intrude again.  Your excellency's
+house and park are delightful.  I felicitate myself on my visit.  Your
+cigars are exquisite.  I take another, in token of our better
+understanding, to enjoy on my way to your somewhat depressing Great
+Bunbury.  Good-night, milord Quorn.  Good-night, Mr. Gage.  A thousand
+compliments and adieux to you both.  May it never be necessary for us
+to meet on less amicable terms than those which prevail between us at
+present.  Once again my most distinguished homage.  Adieu."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With his heels together he made to each man a most profound bow; then
+turned to the window, opened it with a sure touch upon the latch,
+turned again, bowed, and disappeared into the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some moments the two men stood staring speechless into the
+darkness.  Then their eyes met.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is a glorious title," said Gage, clipping out the words with
+bitter intensity.  "I am having a ripping time with it.  It's a fine
+thing to be alive just now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All things considered, it's lucky we are alive," was Peckover's dry
+but feeling response.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap32"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Tell you what it is, Percival, my boy," said Gage at breakfast next
+morning; "I've had about enough of nobility.  Grandeur and aristocracy
+have too many inconveniences to suit me.  I've a mind to clear out, and
+hand you back this precious title of yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover laughed awkwardly.  "Don't do that yet awhile, old man," he
+urged.  "You haven't given it a fair trial."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has given me one," was the prompt and pointed retort.  "And it
+strikes me if I don't look sharp and get out of the peacock's feathers
+I shall soon be pecked to death.  That Salolja chap last night was an
+eye-opener."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unpleasant customer," his friend agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unpleasant?  Noisy little devil!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barking dogs don't bite," observed Peckover, but without conviction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't trust him," returned Gage with the firmness the other's
+remark lacked.  "These Spaniards are the very deuce when they're
+jealous.  They get simply mad.  And nobody on this earth is safe from a
+loose madman if he takes it into his head to go for you.  Our friend,
+the duke, meant business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only so long as you interfere between him and Miss Buffkin," Peckover
+agreed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How was I to know what I was being let in for?" Gage exclaimed in an
+aggrieved tone.  "When the old lady mentioned a foreign chap who'd been
+dancing after Ulrica I naturally thought it was some monkeyish fellow
+who'd squirm if you shook hands too hard, and would cry if you spoke to
+him unkindly.  She never gave us a hint she'd got a bald Beelzebub with
+a voice that sends you the jumps and a homicidal history that gives you
+the shivers&mdash;to say nothing of that sickening revolver.  Ugh!  I can
+see the gleam of it now, as I've seen it all night.  I was on the point
+of trying to get in first shot with a champagne bottle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," Peckover admitted; "I've spent a pleasanter five minutes than
+when he was playing with the highly polished popper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, much more of this and I go back to plain Mr. Gage," that
+gentleman declared in a disgusted tone.  "They talk of the fierce light
+that beats on royalty, but I didn't know the nobility lived in a
+set-piece of fire-works with occasional red-fire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They can't all of them do it," argued Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are all of 'em liable to it," Gage returned.  "The squibs are
+there, only waiting for some little complication to come along and
+touch 'em off.  It is getting on my nerves, and I'm wondering where the
+next little disturbance is coming from."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed almost in answer to his thought that, just as he had voiced
+it, Bisgood announced that Lady Agatha Hemyock was in the drawing-room.
+Theirs was a late breakfast; still the call was early.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's where it's coming from," Peckover observed with an uneasy grin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha was sympathetically troubled as she shook hands with them.
+Her preliminary business was to ask them down to the Moat to tea that
+afternoon; but as the men, exchanging significant glances, gladly
+accepted the invitation as affording an asylum from any immediate
+complications connected with the Duke of Salolja, they both felt that
+something more was coming, and of greater moment than a message which a
+note would have adequately conveyed.  They were not long left in doubt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had another object," said Lady Agatha, pursing her lips and looking
+unutterably important, "in paying you this unconventional visit.  One
+has heard from various sources of the advent of Lady Ormstork to this
+neighbourhood.  I have even been informed that the lady in question has
+gone so far as to call upon you, which is the reason why the Colonel
+thought it would be only neighbourly and friendly to give you a word of
+warning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anything wrong," Peckover asked apprehensively.  His nerves had not
+recovered from the previous night's disturbance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha took a letter from her pocket with business-like
+deliberation.  "Very wrong&mdash;or likely to be," she replied as she slowly
+unfolded it, "from what my friend, Lady Bosham tells me.  I happened in
+writing to mention Lady Ormstork's name as having taken a furnished
+house near here, and my friend writes by return imploring me to have
+nothing to do with her.  A most dangerous woman," she added, presumably
+quoting from the closely written letter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage and Peckover caught each other's guilty and apprehensive eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has," continued their visitor, confident in the effect she had
+produced, "I believe, a young person&mdash;a young lady nowadays she would
+be called&mdash;with her.  A Miss Buffkin.  A mysterious Miss Buffkin, given
+out as an heiress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't she an heiress?" Peckover inquired rather foolishly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha shrugged.  "Possibly.  That is a matter known only to Lady
+Ormstork and Miss Buffkin.  But the more vital question is what are
+Lady Ormstork's character and intentions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was somewhat a relief to both men to find someone else's intentions
+called in question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady Bosham says," proceeded their visitor, "and indeed one has heard
+something of the kind vaguely oneself, that Lady Ormstork is notorious
+for getting hold of good-looking girls, often of very doubtful origin,
+and finding husbands for them&mdash;for a consideration."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both men expressed a surprise which they could scarcely be said to feel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"According to Lady Bosham, she is a determined and most unscrupulous
+woman," continued Lady Agatha, apparently quoting from the report.
+"Once she gets people into her toils they find it no easy matter to
+extricate themselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It occurred to her hearers that there were other titled spreaders of
+nets besides the histrionic Lady Ormstork, but they did not say so.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said Lady Agatha, with apologetic plausibility, "it is
+perhaps a great liberty which I take in venturing to warn you.  But
+being such close neighbours and friends, and knowing you to be,
+comparatively speaking, strangers to this country and some of its less
+desirable features, we thought it only right to do so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Much obliged to you, I'm sure," responded Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite so," added Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," Lady Agatha pursued tentatively, "I am unaware how far
+this Lady Ormstork," she spoke the name with withering emphasis, "may
+have forced her intimacy upon you.  Still, it is better to be
+forewarned, even if yours is as yet nothing beyond a formal
+acquaintance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just so," Gage agreed with balking irresponsiveness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady Bosham is very strong on the undesirability of these people's
+acquaintance," said Lady Agatha rising.  "She, that is, Lady Ormstork,
+is a terrible old woman when once she gets her tentacles fixed on the
+victim she has marked down.  But there, I trust I have said enough to
+sensible men like yourselves to put you on your guard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite," replied Gage, wondering where, in it all, the Duke of Salolja
+came in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha took her leave, having made them promise to come early to
+the Moat that afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The promise was faithfully kept, since it seemed expedient to both men
+to avoid their friends from The Cracknels, at any rate till they saw
+how their Castilian rival was going to be disposed of.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are bound to come up this afternoon as usual," Gage observed to
+his friend.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With that Spanish terror after them, shouldn't wonder," said Peckover.
+"We're best out of the way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ethel and Dagmar will be poor fun after Ulrica," Gage remarked
+gloomily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell you what it is, my friend," said Peckover.  "The sooner you bring
+yourself to consider Ulrica a thing of the past the better chance
+you'll have of making old bones.  Ethel and Dagmar may not be all our
+fancy painted, but at least they haven't got a blood-thirsty Spanish
+nob hanging about them with traditions and a nasty way of talking
+polite flummery with a revolver playfully pointed at the vital parts of
+your anatomy all the time.  You won't have a ducal freak poking his
+long nose in there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, we had better go down, have a fling with the second quality
+beauties and then clear out of the place till things cool down," said
+Gage with the air of a man who has made up his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accordingly, after an early luncheon, they went down to the Moat, and
+flirted so recklessly with the not unduly obdurate young ladies, that
+Lady Agatha was induced to dismiss from her mind a grand plan she had
+been formulating for the recapture of John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, and
+even went so far as to canvass the respective claims of pink and
+apple-green in connexion with the general scheme of colour for a double
+bevy of bridesmaids.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was late, as late for safety as they could make it, when Gage and
+Peckover returned home, discussing plans for a sudden flight next
+morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lady Ormstork called?" Gage asked Bisgood carelessly, as he turned
+into the smoking-room for a cigarette before going up to dress.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, my lord.  And Miss Buffkin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You gave her ladyship my message?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, m'lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did she say anything?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her ladyship said she would wait, my lord, as she had something very
+important to tell your lordship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," Gage said knowingly.  "Did she wait long?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her ladyship and Miss Buffkin are in the drawing-room, my lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cigarette fell from Gage's parted lips, thrust out by a profane
+charge which exploded behind it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the&mdash;&mdash;" he turned helplessly to Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Percival, old man, they're waiting for us," he gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anybody else?" Peckover inquired of Bisgood, with a vision of a pair
+of terrific eyes backed by a bald head and set off in front by a long
+nose and a gleaming revolver barrel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No one else, sir," Bisgood answered with as much surprise as that
+functionary ever permitted himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better scoot, eh?" suggested Peckover in a panic-stricken whisper, as
+the butler left them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No.  Let's go and hear what the old bird has to say," Gage replied,
+after a few moment's hesitation.  "If any one is equal to tackling that
+Spanish nuisance she's the person.  Let's go and hear how she takes it."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap33"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork received them with pleasure tinged with just a shade of
+vexation.  "We were so disappointed at not finding you at home to-day
+of all days," she exclaimed.  "We heard this morning of an absurd
+misunderstanding which we were anxious to set right without delay.  And
+we have been waiting nearly four hours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've had tea?" Gage suggested, somewhat beside the point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, thank you," Miss Buffkin assured him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We heard casually," pursued Lady Ormstork, "that you had gone to call
+at the Moat, and naturally expected you would be back soon.  But no
+doubt,"&mdash;this with a world of spiteful significance&mdash;"Lady Agatha
+Hemyock made a point of keeping you there as long as she could.  I know
+her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," said Gage gallantly, ignoring the suggestion, "if we had
+known you were waiting we should have been back long ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not if Lady Agatha knew it," was the tart reply.  "But never mind
+about that hateful woman.  I have waited to see you on a more important
+subject."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She glanced at Miss Buffkin, who rose with an amused face and sauntered
+to the window.  "I'll take a turn among the flowers while you are
+telling the tale, Lady Ormstork," she said casually.  "I'm getting a
+little tired of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both men looked longingly after her as she strolled across the lawn,
+but a consuming anxiety to hear the latest news of the duke curbed the
+desire to invent an excuse for making after her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Duke of Salolja, tiresome person," Lady Ormstork began, "called at
+The Cracknels this morning, and upset us very much by telling us of a
+visit he had the impudence to pay you last evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; we had a pleasant hour of him here," said Gage, grimly
+reminiscent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He tells me," proceeded the lady in a tone of righteous anger, "that
+he has, in the most unwarrantable manner, suggested the existence of an
+engagement between himself and dear Ulrica.  Is that so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He suggested that he wasn't going to allow anybody else to be engaged
+to her," Peckover replied.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Most improper!" commented Lady Ormstork.  "And most unwarranted.  Dear
+Ulrica detests him.  But he is most absurdly persistent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, he's a bit of a nailer," Peckover agreed feelingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was he very rude?" the lady inquired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, he was polite; the most confoundedly polite cuss I ever
+encountered," answered Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm glad to hear that," said Lady Ormstork.  "And so your interview,
+preposterous as it was on his part, was quite amicable?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment neither man felt equal to answering the question.  Then
+Peckover said, "Quite amicable, only a touch one-sided.  You see, it
+don't exactly pay to be nasty when a fellow's sitting over you with a
+revolver."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork threw up her hands.  "A revolver?  Ridiculous person!
+Really&mdash;I hope you told the foolish man that that sort of thing was
+quite out of date."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The revolver wasn't though," objected Peckover with a reminiscent
+shiver.  "It looked quite new, with all the latest improvements and in
+first-class working order."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really?" cried the lady incredulously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As far as we could judge.  Didn't want any closer inspection.  I'm
+content to take a revolver's business capacity for granted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But surely," remarked Lady Ormstork with an amused curl of the lip,
+"you don't mean to say that you allowed this droll Salolja to alarm
+you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men glanced at each other with long faces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We weren't exactly sorry when he said good-bye," was Gage's evasive
+answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, but this is too absurd," protested the lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The funny side wasn't exactly turned to us last night," said Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have," proceeded Lady Ormstork coolly, "told the duke he is making
+himself ridiculous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And how did he take it?" Gage inquired with considerable curiosity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The lady shrugged.  "It is hopeless to argue with that sort of person.
+And naturally dear Ulrica is, from every point of view, a girl whom
+even a duke would find it difficult to give up hopes of.  But her
+father, a man of great discernment and determination would never hear
+of such an alliance.  A foreign title does not appeal to him.  So, my
+dear Lord Quorn, you need have no fears that Ulrica is in any danger of
+becoming Duchesse de Salolja."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was pretty direct speaking.  "It would be a pity," Gage agreed
+warily, "if Miss Buffkin should be coerced into a distasteful marriage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is," replied Lady Ormstork resolutely, "no chance of that.  I
+have told the duke so in unmistakable language.  And I also gave him a
+piece of my mind with regard to his uncalled-for interference between
+Ulrica and yourself.  He had the impudence to suggest that you were at
+his bidding ready to break off your understanding with Ulrica and
+relinquish her to him.  To him!  To a man whom she detests, I simply
+laughed at him, as I hoped you had laughed too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage started up.  "You didn't tell him I was engaged to Ul&mdash;to Miss
+Buffkin?" he gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naturally I did," was the composed answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but I'm not," he protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork gave a smile of pitying encouragement.  "My dear Lord
+Quorn, you are not going to allow yourself to be frightened out of your
+engagement by the bluster of that grotesque little Spaniard?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," he urged wildly.  "Spaniard or no Spaniard, I am not engaged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork shrugged.  "Anyhow, Ulrica is under the impression she is
+betrothed to you.  I have even gone so far as to inform Mr. Buffkin of
+the engagement, being, as you will understand, responsible to him for
+Ulrica's well-being.  You cannot in honour even pretend to be induced
+by threats to repudiate it.  You have your own reputation as well as
+Ulrica's to consider.  That is why I spoke so straight to the duke this
+morning."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her tone was resolute and conclusive.  Gage knew not whether to look
+upon it as a well-arranged piece of bluff or as his dying knell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's all very well," he replied wildly.  "I'm very fond of Ulrica and
+all that.  But the traditions of the Salolja family have, from time
+immemorial, pointed to killing their rivals on sight.  There's not much
+use to either of us in my being engaged to Ulrica if I'm to be shot
+next minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even if you anticipated such a contingency," Lady Ormstork replied
+coolly, "it would not justify you as an English nobleman in jilting
+Ulrica.  It is a point of honour.  You see that, don't you, Mr. Gage?"
+she demanded, suddenly turning to the deeply interested Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just so," he answered with a start.  "Only it's poor fun having your
+wedding and your funeral on the same day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not," Lady Ormstork declared, "understand such pusillanimity.
+After all," she urged, "you are man to man.  Why should you be more
+afraid of the duke than he of you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've no homicidal traditions in my family," Gage explained.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A jealous Spaniard is the very devil," supplemented Peckover, whose
+experience of foreign temperament was derived from penny serials and
+half-crown melodrama.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fact is," added Gage, "what I want is a good time, without any fuss or
+bother from Spanish dukes or anybody else.  I'm willing to do the right
+thing, so far as it can be done without friction."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A somewhat shallow, not to say unromantic, view of life," was Lady
+Ormstork's sarcastic comment.  "I must confess it never struck me that
+the Duc de Salolja carried such terror in his absurd person.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He carries a revolver on his absurd person," was Peckover's pointed
+rejoinder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ulrica will under no circumstances be allowed to marry him, even if
+she wants to," the lady declared, changing her tone.  "I have announced
+to her father that she is going to be Lady Quorn, and am certainly not
+going to take upon myself the odium of suggesting that Lord Quorn has
+been frightened out of the match by the first ridiculous little
+Spaniard who chooses to flourish in his face his family traditions and
+a&mdash;possibly unloaded&mdash;revolver."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We didn't go into that question," Peckover remarked with a reminiscent
+shiver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The whole business is too droll," said Lady Ormstork with an amused
+smile.  "But of course we cannot submit to the duke's impudent
+coercion.  It is, however, easily obviated.  I will take the matter in
+hand, since you seem reluctant to do so.  I am responsible for dear
+Ulrica's welfare and happiness.  It is my business to see the sweet
+girl does not fall a prey to a foreign fortune-hunter.  Yes, dear Lord
+Quorn, you may leave the matter with absolute confidence in my hands.
+You may depute me, as Mr. Buffkin has already done, to deal with the
+Duc de Salolja."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage did not receive the assurance in the spirit in which it was so
+confidently given.  On the contrary he looked more uncomfortable than
+ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All very well," he said, after an embarrassed pause, "but the more you
+insist on sticking me up the more he'll feel called on to knock me
+down.  Eh, Percival?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right you are," was Peckover's gloomy response.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll take care of that," Lady Ormstork assured him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He won't go for you; he'll go for me," urged Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not he.  I'll draw him off," said the lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose he won't be drawn off?" suggested Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Trust me," replied Lady Ormstork, grandly confident of her powers.
+"Diplomacy counts for much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Strikes me it will count revolver shots if we aren't careful," said
+Gage dryly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork drew back her mouth in a pitying smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Lord Quorn!  This is unworthy of you," she declared.  "Do
+think of Ulrica.  Have you so little regard for her?  Is not
+she&mdash;superb creature!&mdash;worth a little daring?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," Gage assented doubtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All you want to do," continued the lady, following up her successful
+appeal, "is to show a bold front, and the terrible Duke of Salolja will
+run away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Think so?" asked Peckover, his secret hopes reviving.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sure of it," said their visitor, rising.  "There, I am certain
+you never meant, dear Lord Quorn, to repudiate in earnest your
+understanding with the dear girl.  Ulrica will be the loveliest and
+most queenly peeress in the kingdom.  And with her immense wealth, the
+alliance is most desirable in every way.  Don't give the wretched,
+preposterous duke another thought.  Do, like a sensible man, dismiss
+him from your mind.  And if he should have the impudence to intrude
+here again show him the door and tell him to go back to his own&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps you'll do that for us, Lady Ormstork," said Peckover, whose
+restless eyes had been kept on the window.  "There he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The others looked round with a start.  There sure enough was the Duke
+of Salolja, stalking, with as long strides as his short legs would
+allow, across the lawn, obviously in pursuit of the fair Miss Buffkin.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap34"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The sight of yesterday's visitor seemed to paralyse both men, and the
+grim fascination that had held them before now clutched them again.
+Gage, who had, under the influence of Lady Ormstork's bitterly
+persuasive tongue, began to pluck up courage, and to view the
+magnificent Miss Buffkin once more in a proprietary right, now visibly
+wilted.  He even glanced round at the door, as though meditating
+flight.  Peckover whistled uncomfortably and tunelessly through his
+clenched teeth; a more elaborate expression of feeling he did not feel
+equal to.  Then they both glanced somewhat helplessly at Lady Ormstork
+in search of some indication of a plan of campaign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Actually intruding here again," the lady exclaimed indignantly, as the
+duke's purposeful strides took him out of sight behind a hedge of
+laurels.  "If I were you, Lord Quorn, I would not hesitate in ordering
+him out of your grounds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage did not look the least inclined to act upon the suggestion.  "Oh,
+let him walk about there, if he likes," he replied with a weak laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Walk about?" repeated the lady warmly.  "But he's walking after
+Ulrica.  It is not to be tolerated.  I was under the impression that I
+had given him his <I>congé</I>.  Lord Quorn&mdash;Mr. Gage," she turned fiercely
+upon Peckover, "as Lord Quorn seems content to endure this intolerable
+conduct rather than be man enough to protect his future wife from this
+tiresome person, perhaps you will go and intimate to the duke that his
+presence is undesirable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover's reception of the order did not suggest alacrity.  "No affair
+of mine," he protested with a resolution born of care for his own skin.
+"Don't believe in interfering in other people's business.  My motto
+is&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Motto!" cried Lady Ormstork scornfully.  "Is chivalry quite dead, that
+a lovely girl like dear Ulrica must be persecuted and victimized by an
+under-sized desperado, and two Englishmen stand by tamely and allow it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Notwithstanding this somewhat pointed appeal, the two Englishmen seemed
+still disinclined to sally out and try conclusions with the Spanish
+terrorist.  Luckily, however, the argument was diverted by the
+appearance on the lawn of three persons, the duke, Miss Buffkin, and
+Lord Quorn, all with looks of stress on their faces.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, here they come," said Lady Ormstork with her teeth set ready for
+battle.  "Who, may I ask, is that person with them?" she asked,
+lowering her eye-glasses and turning to the men who were for the moment
+preoccupied in weighing the merits of the respective courses of
+standing their ground or seeking a sanctuary in the wine cellars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That?  Oh, that's Jenkins," answered Gage, wondering what he was doing
+in the <I>galère</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jenkins?" Lady Ormstork echoed the name, as though it did not convey
+very much to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One of my people," Gage explained, in an agony of indecision as to the
+propriety of flight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By this time the approaching trio had reached the window, inside which
+Lady Ormstork stood grimly waiting for them.  Next instant the duke had
+thrown it open and was with a flourish and a bow inviting Ulrica to
+enter.  A similar though modified pantomime having been gone through in
+the case of Lord Quorn the three at length stood inside the room, with
+the irate Lady Ormstork facing them, and with Gage and Peckover within
+jumping distance of the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Duke," Lady Ormstork's sharp tone rang through the room like a defiant
+bugle-call, "this is most extraordinary, not to say unseemly, conduct
+on your part."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The representative of the Saloljas was, however, far too busy in
+distributing elaborate bows and extravagant greetings all round to be
+in a position to give heed at once to the lady's challenge.  In Spain
+punctilio gives way to nothing, not even to an angry old lady's
+impatience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently when Messrs. Gage and Peckover had been favoured with bows
+and compliments into which they were inclined to read their death
+warrants, the duke raised the top of his coercive head the whole of his
+five feet three inches from the floor and observed blandly&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ten million apologies, most noble lady.  I am ashamed to confess I did
+not hear the remark you did me the undeserved honour to make."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In no wise disconcerted, the most noble lady repeated the remark,
+slightly strengthening the language in which it had originally been
+couched.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah&mdash;h!"  The duke's grimace and pantomime expressed deprecation with a
+more elaborately hideous vim than that feeling had probably ever been
+clothed with before.  "Most illustrious lady," he protested, "what
+would you have?  The state of my unworthy heart is well known to you.
+And the heart excuses everything&mdash;everything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The repetition of the last word had a sinister sound in the ears of
+Gage and Peckover.  With its dire comprehensiveness it seemed to
+include their lives in its sweeping embrace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lady Ormstork, with sundry material reasons to influence her
+judgment, was far from accepting the proposition.  "It does not," she
+objected stoutly.  "To force your attentions where they are distasteful
+is inexcusable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," rejoined the duke, with the light of battle in his eyes,
+"clearly my duty to render acceptable the homage of my affection."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is quite hopeless," declared Lady Ormstork curtly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe not," insisted the duke with, under the circumstances, an
+admirable display of assurance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork glanced with equal confidence at her <I>protégée</I>.  "Miss
+Buffkin will bear me out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  It's no good, duke," said the young lady with discomfiting
+promptness.  "You are not my sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke accepted the verdict with a shrug, and at once proceeded to
+misread it.  "The Dukes of Salolja," he said with a touch of defiant
+pomposity, "have never permitted inequality of birth to be a bar in
+affairs of the heart."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork had also her personal rules of life.  And one was never
+to allow herself to be bluffed out of a possible advantage.  "You
+mistake, duke," she said suavely.  "Miss Buffkin wishes delicately to
+suggest that she does not return your affection, and therefore, the
+alliance you propose is out of the question."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can," replied the duke, in no way abashed, "afford to wait for the
+return of my affection."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he glanced significantly round at the three silent men he seemed a
+very monument of determination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," Lady Ormstork maintained, "we do not wish you to wait.  There
+would be no point in your waiting.  Miss Buffkin has made up her mind
+to contract a quite different alliance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah?"  The duke opened his mouth wide and emitted an exclamation in
+tone and mode of utterance worthy of a surprised hyæna.  Then shutting
+his mouth and opening his eyes whose light the facial contortion had
+absorbed, he added with, to certain of the party at least, disquieting
+significance, "Our Spanish proverb says, 'He who buys ground may rest
+under it before he can repose above it.'  May I, without offence, ask
+the ever gracious Miss Buffkin whether you correctly interpret her
+sentiments and intentions?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ever gracious Miss Buffkin looked as defiant as her questioner&mdash;and
+much less polite, as she answered, "That's right enough.  I'm going to
+marry an Englishman, for one thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah?"  Again the zoological grimace.  "Has the radiant Miss Buffkin
+honoured any particular Englishman with her much-to-be coveted
+preference?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The question, accompanied as it was, by a sweeping and minatory glance,
+had the immediate effect of making two Englishmen in the room try to
+look severely recusant and anti-matrimonial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And under the influence of that fell glance Gage took a desperate
+resolve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork, who believed in coming to the point where her own
+interests were concerned, answered with bold preciseness, "Certainly.
+Miss Buffkin is going to marry Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the declaration the duke made a face which raised his bristling
+moustache till his eyes glared through a fan-like screen of hair, the
+real Lord Quorn uttered an exclamation which conveyed no definite
+sentiment, Gage turned the colour of the fruit associated with his
+name, and Peckover, trying to persuade himself that the discussion did
+not touch him, whistled softly through his teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn!" repeated the duke in a tone of bland surprise.  "No.
+That may have been.  But I fancy, most illustrious lady, you are
+mistaken.  Milord Quorn has renounced all pretentions to the lady's
+hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn has done nothing of the kind," Lady Ormstork denied stoutly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke turned to Gage, polite yet threatening.  "Doubtless milord
+Quorn will do me the honour to confirm what I have stated."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn," interrupted the old lady, "will do nothing of the sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke raised himself on tip-toe and fixed the apprehensive Gage with
+his fiercest glare.  "Milord Quorn will do so&mdash;or lay himself open to
+the consequences," he insisted, with a truculent nod of command.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;er&mdash;of course I&mdash;I have no wish to stand in the lady's light," Gage
+stammered weakly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Light?" echoed Lady Ormstork in a high-pitched voice.  "I fancy, my
+dear Lord Quorn, we are the best judges of the quarter the light shines
+from."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It shines," observed the duke with grim imperturbability, "from Spain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It shines," retorted the dowager with haughty insistence, "from
+Staplewick Towers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am deeply grieved," said the duke, "to sound a discordant note in
+the symphony of your distinguished plans.  But I declare that the
+adorable Miss Ulrica shall never marry Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I say she shall," retorted Lady Ormstork defiantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She shall not&mdash;even if a regrettable necessity should dictate that
+there be no Lord Quorn for her to marry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus the duel proceeded; the passes growing hotter and keener every
+moment.  Miss Buffkin had subsided on a sofa and from her attitude
+might have been an uninterested and slightly bored spectator.  And all
+the while the three men who looked on said nothing, wisely, perhaps.
+But their interest in the encounter was not to be judged by their
+silence, as they watched their champion's efforts with mixed feelings.
+They were, all three, in love with the beautiful Miss Buffkin, but each
+was likewise consumed by an intense regard for his own safety.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not," said Lady Ormstork with dignity&mdash;and that aristocratic
+matrimonial agent could be very dignified when she chose&mdash;"the fashion
+among English gentlemen to indulge in absurd threats when their
+pretensions are rejected.  In this country we took leave of the Dark
+Ages long ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Absurd threats, eh?" the little duke repeated, with a laugh which fell
+chill and jarring on, at any rate, Gage's ear.  "We shall see.  Yes, we
+shall see&mdash;those of us"&mdash;he glanced fiercely round the room&mdash;"who are
+alive next week&mdash;how far my threats are vain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ridiculous nonsense!" Lady Ormstork exclaimed with a scornful and
+somewhat stagey laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke bowed.  "I have the honour, most illustrious lady, to receive
+your ultimatum, and to accept it.  It is horribly unfortunate that we
+find ourselves diametrically opposed.  But so it is; and I have no more
+to say&mdash;to you, except to bid you <I>au revoir</I>, with my most
+distinguished compliments."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He bowed very low to her, then to Ulrica, after which with a kind of
+fiendish politeness to each of the three men, taking Gage with marked
+intention last.  "Milord Quorn," he said, drawing back his lips till
+his moustache stood up like two wings against his cheeks, "I regret
+that my friendly hint has not been taken.  You have called the game.  I
+shall have the honour of playing it&mdash;as," he raised his voice, "as my
+honoured and distinguished ancestors have always played it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't talk nonsense, duke," said Lady Ormstork sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The representative of the distinguished and bloodthirsty Saloljas
+raised himself abruptly from a bow he was elaborating, and faced the
+lady.  "A Salolja," he said, with as much dignity as a short stature
+coupled with a long nose is capable of, "never talks nonsense."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you presume," she continued threateningly, "to annoy Lord Quorn&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Salolja," he interrupted, with a significant smile, "never annoys."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or threaten&mdash;' pursued Lady Ormstork.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A Salolja," he returned, with a Castilian gesture of deprecation,
+"never threatens.  It is only within the last hundred and fifty years
+that he has condescended to warn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We can warn too," retorted the lady doggedly.  "Warn the police."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke looked quite tickled.  "Most gracious lady," he replied,
+showing his teeth in a grin from which none of his male listeners
+derived any mirth, "you make me smile.  I think the question of your
+police we have already analysed, I and the excellent Lord Quorn.  If
+your graces have no more notable argument to put forth to arrest the
+traditions of the Saloljas I will ask your gracious permission to take
+my leave&mdash;for the present."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He accompanied the last three words with a glance which boded battle,
+murder and sudden death to at least one of his hearers.  Then, with a
+sweeping bow, he turned to the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stop!" cried Gage in a voice resonant with fear.  "You are all making
+a mistake.  I am not Lord Quorn!"
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap35"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXV
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+At the startling declaration the duke swung round and eyed Gage with a
+glance that seemed capable of penetrating an inch board.  Lady
+Ormstork, surprised for a moment out of her transcendent
+self-possession, stared aghast at the object of her designs; Ulrica
+looked half astonished and half relieved; Peckover's mien was one of
+abject discomfiture; while Quorn's showed grim expectation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not Lord Quorn?" screamed Lady Ormstork incredulously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?  Not Lord Quorn?" repeated the duke, prepared to resume the
+aggressive.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I'm not," Gage declared stoutly.  "If I ever was, I've had enough
+of it.  But I never was by rights."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not Lord Quorn by rights?" gasped Lady Ormstork.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never.  At least never no more.  So you'll please to consider me out
+of this little complication."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This," observed the duke, truculently thoughtful, "is very singular."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very," Lady Ormstork agreed.  "One would like to have some explanation
+of such an extraordinary statement."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must know how we stand," said the duke, who had assumed the
+attitude of a stunted bravo.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you," Gage maintained, "I am no more Lord Quorn than you are."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a short silence.  Then Lady Ormstork demanded pointedly,
+"Then who, may I ask, is Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage indicated the unwilling Peckover.  "This is Lord Quorn.  I am
+plain Peter Gage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn, the real Quorn, laughed scornfully, and seemed to see light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Buffkin clapped her hands.  "You Lord Quorn?  How lovely!" she
+exclaimed, beaming at Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Aha!  So you are Lord Quorn?" cried the duke transferring to that
+person his highly undesirable attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I'll be hanged if I am," protested the abnegating Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll be shot if you are," observed Gage half aloud, with a glance at
+the highly-stoked little Spaniard, who stood pulling his quill-like
+moustaches, and whose unswerving glance confirmed the forecast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ulrica had jumped up.  "There, we've settled it already, dear Lady
+Ormstork," she cried.  "Isn't it lucky!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lucky?" echoed Lady Ormstork, rather non-plussed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," Ulrica assured her.  "We've settled it between ourselves.  I
+like him.  He's my sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the duke came a deep, rumbling "Oom!" as a grim commentary on the
+reshuffle of the position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I'm not Lord Quorn," Peckover urged vehemently, beginning to be
+seriously alarmed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are!" maintained Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One of you must be," said the duke, as though merely anxious not to
+make a mistake in the selection of his victim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not me!"  To such a state of poverty was Peckover's vocabulary reduced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Percival!" Ulrica exclaimed reproachfully.  "Don't deny it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He can't," declared Gage, under the influence of the baleful Salolja
+eyes and moustaches which dominated the scene.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I ask," said Lady Ormstork with dignified severity, "how you came
+to call yourself Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," replied Gage frankly, "I thought I'd like to see how it felt to
+be a lord.  And," he added pointedly, "I don't care much for the
+feeling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And may I ask," continued the dowager, addressing herself to the
+bothered and daunted Peckover, "how it was you came to renounce your
+title?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I made it worth his while," Gage explained shortly, determined to be
+off with the galling honour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The real Lord Quorn in his corner gave a long whistle of
+semi-enlightenment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never had it," protested the unhappy Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke, bristling, took a step forward.  "Lord Quorn!" he snapped his
+fingers loudly and contemptuously.  "It is no matter.  You are at least
+a suitor of this lady?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Happily Lady Ormstock saved Peckover from replying to the delicate
+suggestion.  "Not unless he is Lord Quorn," she declared resolutely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you," cried Peckover desperately, "I am not Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you are a fraud," Gage asserted roughly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never said I was Lord Quorn," urged Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You never said you weren't," rejoined Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fiery blood of the Saloljas was beginning to weary of these
+polemics and to be impatient for its cue.  "It is no matter," he said
+with loud, painfully loud, authority.  "I take it"&mdash;to Peckover&mdash;"that
+you are Lord Quorn, and you have, for reasons inexplicable to a Spanish
+nobleman been pleased to divest yourself temporarily of your rank.  You
+have addressed yourself to this lady&mdash;as Lord Quorn or by a humbler
+name, it matters not.  I have the honour to request a few words with
+your excellency in the garden."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His excellency's countenance expressed a strong disinclination to any
+such <I>al fresco</I> conference.  Indeed, so far was he from complying with
+the duke's haughty and peremptory invitation that he sat down on a
+chair which stood handy.  "Not much," he said vernacularly.  "I'm not
+taking any just at present, thanks all the same."  He felt himself
+comparatively safe where he was.  Even a Spanish duke of vindictive and
+homicidal idiosyncrasies could scarcely have the face to murder him
+coolly in a room before four non-accessory witnesses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whether the duke realized that the refusal contained a certain
+admixture of defiance is uncertain.  Anyhow, he took two strides with
+his short legs, and, at uncomfortably close quarters, repeated the
+invitation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Peckover sat tight.  "I'm not Lord Quorn," he maintained doggedly,
+"and I've had as much fresh air as I want for one day."  His complexion
+was green with fear.  With the searching fire of those eyes upon him he
+felt it was as much as he could do to keep from shrivelling up; still,
+what mind panic had left him was dominated by the assurance that once
+in the garden it would be all over with his somewhat luridly chequered
+career.  The Salolja eyes held him.  He tried to glance round for
+encouragement, for a touch of companionship even, at the others in the
+room who, however, watched the scene in grim and more or less
+embarrassed silence.  But though for a moment his eyes sought them, he
+saw nothing, and next instant they were riveted again on the demon
+duke, now so near that he could feel his fiery breath.  But he kept his
+seat with a drowning man's desperation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will your grace come?" rang out the sharp, staccato tones.  "Or will
+it be necessary for me to drag your excellency out by the nose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The alternative was not attractive, and its proposer looked quite
+capable of putting it into execution.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I tell you I am not Lord Quorn, and never was," yelled the wretched
+Peckover, now simply beside himself.  "If you want him, there he is."
+He pointed to the corner where stood the real peer, looking, however,
+particularly unlike one, and in a high state of doubt as to the line he
+should take.  He compromised with the question by giving, in the first
+instance, a loud, derisive laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very pretty, Mr. Gage, or whatever your alias is.  So I'm Lord Quorn,
+am I, when it suits your book?  That's a rich idea.  Ho! ho! ho!"  And
+he laughed again with offensive resonance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who," demanded Lady Ormstork in a tone of disgust, "is this noisy
+person?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn," was Peckover's prompt reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" cried Gage in bewilderment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Milord Quorn, eh?" said the duke, transferring his bristling attention
+to the latest participant in that questionable distinction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Impossible!" exclaimed Lady Ormstork, obviously judging by appearance,
+which certainly did not go far to suggest a member of the peerage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn laughed again, less comfortably this time under the observation
+of the duke.  "Of course I'm not," he said, in a tone which lost in the
+utterance its original intention of irony.  "How can I be, except in
+these gentlemen's imagination?"  For he had a shrewd idea, as things
+were going, that, at the moment, the title carried certain unpleasant
+contingent liabilities with it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke pursed his face into a quizzical sneer.  "No, I do not think
+you are milord Quorn, my good fellow," he concluded, taking Lady
+Ormstork's view of the badly groomed object of his scrutiny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is Lord Quorn," Peckover insisted vehemently, "if anybody is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course," retorted Quorn with withering point, "I am Lord Quorn when
+it is necessary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke, manifestly tiring of the question of identity and resolving
+(possibly Castilian fashion) to settle the point for himself, was about
+to resume his somewhat drastic argument with Peckover when Ulrica
+interrupted the genial intention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe this person is Lord Quorn," she said, with pointed reference
+to the real man.  "He told me so himself just now in the garden.  He
+said the other was an imposter and advised me to have nothing to do
+with him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Ulrica!" cried Lady Ormstork, half doubtingly; then turned to
+Quorn with a face prepared to beam on the shortest notice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did I tell you?" exclaimed Peckover realizing it was a case of
+<I>sauve qui peut</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke, almost forgetting punctilio in his cumulative exasperation,
+turned again to Quorn, resolved to be at definite issue with somebody,
+while his jealousy was spurred by Lady Ormstork's evident readiness to
+establish as Miss Buffkin's suitor the right Quorn, if only she could
+get hold of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you are Lord Quorn, my fine fellow," he exclaimed with a mock bow
+(for, as we know, Quorn was shabby).  "You are eager to pay your
+addresses to this adorable lady, and are doubtless prepared to accept
+the consequences?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn, at a loss for a reply, stared stupidly at his fierce
+interrogator, while Peckover judged himself sufficiently reprieved to
+venture to wink at Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't do anything of the sort," Quorn at length said weakly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Lord Quorn," protested Ulrica mischievously.  "You know you said I
+was to marry the right Lord Quorn, and you were the man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?" cried the duke, with fell conviction that he had at last got his
+man.  "It is well.  You are Lord Quorn.  <I>Je l'accepte</I>.  May I request
+the honour of a private word with your illustrious lordship in the
+garden?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly," was that illustrious noble's pithy reply to the
+invitation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of the duke's Castilian stock of patience very little was left.  "It is
+necessary," he insisted with a ferocious grin.  "I am not to be denied.
+Your grace shall come&mdash;now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will not be so absurd as to go, Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork
+with time-serving sympathy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn did not look in the least like committing the absurdity.  He set
+his teeth and glared round at the other men in a sort of forlorn hope
+of assistance.  But they, though naturally deeply interested, made no
+sign.  The conditions were, at the moment, too complex for a clear line
+of altruism.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your excellency shall come," said the duke through his teeth.  "I am
+the Duke of Salolja, and a Grandee of Spain.  I will not be balked."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the representative of the British aristocracy still hung back.  "I
+insist," maintained the Spaniard, darting forward and seizing a
+reluctant arm.  The Englishman's counter move was to sit down on a
+chair which stood beside him.  Anticipating the move, the duke pulled
+him sharply away.  The consequence was that Quorn sat down on the
+floor.  Not quite seeing his way to conduct his adversary from that
+posture into the garden, the duke was fain, while seeking a feasible
+plan, to spurn the lowly nobleman with his foot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For shame!" cried Lady Ormstork.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you kick me I'll hand you over to the police," said Quorn unhappily
+and speaking at a certain disadvantage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke gave a crowing laugh of scorn, a favourite trick of his when
+"the force" was mentioned.  "The police!  Hah! hah!  Where are they,
+your police?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The question was answered by Bisgood, who at that juncture opened the
+door, and, subduing with difficulty all outward signs of a pardonable
+astonishment, announced&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Detective-Inspector Doutfire from Great Bunbury wishes to speak to
+your lordship."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap36"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire came in close upon Bisgood's announcement, and threw a
+severely professional eye round the company.  His manner, in fact,
+suggested, in a measure, that he was raiding a gambling den; but then
+the suspicious habit had become characteristic with him.  And indeed,
+the attitudes of the party might be said to have justified mistrust, or
+at any rate an inquisitorial curiosity on his part.  He bowed to Gage
+with a nicely adjusted balance between the homage due to a peer of the
+Realm and a due regard for the Law whose representative he was and
+which boasted itself no respecter of persons.  It is, perhaps, scarcely
+necessary to state that Peckover viewed his advent with an uneasy eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Beg pardon, my lord," Doutfire said in his consequential, witness-box
+manner, "sorry to intrude upon your lordship, but I considered it my
+duty to inform your lordship that a certain suspicious character has
+been noticed hanging about the grounds here, and I took it upon myself
+to just step up and warn your lordship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The somewhat tense silence which followed was broken by the duke's
+staccato tones.  "So this is milord Quorn, eh, policeman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire looked not merely scandalized, but ready at a moment's
+notice to take the representative of the lordly Saloljas into custody.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Detective-Inspector is my rank and appellation, sir, begging your
+pardon," he said severely.  "With regard to your question, sir, I have
+every reason to believe I am right in stating that this gentleman&mdash;I
+should say nobleman&mdash;is Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?  Thank you, detective," said the duke with a bow of acknowledgment
+for the information, and a smile for the futility of the police, once
+again preparing to focus his traditional aggressiveness upon the
+unhappy Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But that gentleman did not propose to sit again.  "It's all a mistake,"
+he protested loudly.  "I am not Lord Quorn.  There he is, so far as I
+can make out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pointed to the real Quorn, who had retained his seat upon the floor,
+and whom, owing to his position behind the door, Doutfire's eagle
+glance had so far not taken in.  That alert officer now, however, lost
+no time in wheeling round and fixing the lowly peer with a glare of
+more than suspicion.  "This?" he exclaimed incredulously.  "Why, this,"
+he darted his head forward and sideways with the sure air of a master
+of the art of criminal indemnification, "this is the party I have just
+mentioned to your lordship.  A suspicious character who has given us
+the slip as well as a lot of trouble.  A party known to us as Peckover."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, turning from the sedentary nobleman with
+a face of contemptuous disgust.  "I said it was impossible he could be
+Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know him as Peckover," Mr. Doutfire maintained with authority.  "A
+party against whom a charge of being in possession of and uttering
+counterfeit coin was lately preferred, but which charge the Treasury
+has now seen fit to withdraw."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!"  Peckover's face brightened at the news.  "But he is Lord Quorn,"
+he insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire, who had been keeping that nobleman under observation with
+a wary and scornful eye, looked as though quite unable to reconcile the
+statement with its object's position on the floor.  "Do I understand
+that he states he is Lord Quorn?" he asked severely, taking out a large
+note book with bodily contortions and ominous play with its broad
+elastic band.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On the contrary, I've said nothing of the sort," objected Quorn.  "Did
+I?" he added appealing to the company above him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire's look suggested that to his mind that assertion, even if
+correct, did not fully account for the suspect's position on the
+carpet.  "Well, bring yourself up," he commanded roughly.  "And let us
+get at the rights of the question."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus bidden, Quorn rose, and faced the officer of the law, defiantly
+reticent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall find out at once which of these gentlemen is Lord Quorn,"
+ordered the Duke of Salolja, folding his arms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By your leave, sir&mdash;&mdash;" began Doutfire in a tone of trenchant reproof.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir?" cried the duke, speaking very fast and staccato.  "My rank and
+appellation are the Duke of Salolja, I am, moreover, a Grandee of
+Spain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire covered the hit by a business-like action of putting the
+point of a stubby lead pencil in his mouth.  "I'll make a note of
+that," he said, to all appearances unmoved by the momentous
+announcement.  And he proceeded to do so, taking a subtle revenge by
+making the haughty Castilian spell his title, and furthermore
+suggesting that his pronounciation of the alphabet was suspiciously
+misleading.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your grace," he observed sternly, when the elaborate entry had been
+made and deliberately revised, "may trust me to take the steps, if any,
+necessary to clear up this matter."  He turned from the fuming
+Spaniard, and addressed himself pointedly to the rest of the company.
+"Do I understand," he asked approaching the extraordinary complication
+with an absence of emotion which suggested that the tackling of such
+questions was with him an every-day occurrence, "do I understand that
+there is some doubt as to the identity of Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Precisely," replied the duke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire by an authoritative wave of his notebook enjoined the
+Castilian despot to silence.  "I ask you, sir," he said, pointedly to
+Gage, "whether you are or are not Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not I," was the prompt and comparatively cheerful answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire accepted it with a suggestion of reserving all comment on
+the surprising statement till a later stage.  "Perhaps, then, you will
+be good enough to tell me who is," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage pointed with his thumb to Peckover.  "If it's not this gentleman,
+I don't know who it is," he replied indifferently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing of the nobility about me," Peckover declared in answer to
+Doutfire's interrogative glance.  "I tell you that is the individual,
+over there," indicating Quorn, who was now sufficiently recovered from
+the ducal onslaught to laugh jeeringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like that!" he exclaimed.  "Making me Lord Quorn when it comes
+useful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are Peckover?" demanded Mr. Doutfire confidently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you say so," was the reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do say so," said Doutfire, whose reputation clearly hinged on the
+correctness of the statement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew he was not Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He told me he was," observed Miss Buffkin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire turned a threateningly suspicious glance on the stolid
+Quorn, then pursed his mouth with a pitying smile of non-acceptance as
+he shook his head emphatically at the young lady.  "He's Peckover all
+right, miss," he assured her.  Then glared at Quorn as though
+challenging him to deny it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Quorn, although not overburdened with intellect, had sense enough
+to recognize that his game just then was to lie low and admit nothing
+if he could help it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dear Ulrica," said Lady Ormstork in her superior fashion, "how
+could you allow yourself to be taken in by such a transparent pretence?
+Does the person look in the least like Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or any other nobleman?" supplemented Doutfire, with menacing sarcasm.
+"Of course," he added, in a more uncompromisingly professional tone,
+"if he has been defrauding any of you ladies and gentlemen, under the
+false pretence that he is Lord Quorn, I'll take him now to Bunbury
+against your preferring a charge against him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His enquiring look round meeting with no response, save a scornful
+smile from Quorn, Doutfire proceeded, eyeing the suspect malevolently,
+"I don't know how he comes to be here, in this house, but&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He stopped my horse that was running away with me," Gage explained
+chivalrously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!"  Mr. Doutfire's face hardened, as though that in itself were a
+questionable circumstance, and made the doubtful record worse.  "Well,
+of course," he continued, not seeing his way to any active measures
+under the reprobative circumstances, "if you are satisfied, it is no
+business of mine.  I've merely done my duty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke of Salolja who had endured this discussion with ill concealed
+impatience, now spoke again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it is one of these gentlemen who is really Lord Quorn, eh,
+constable?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Detective-Inspector, if your grace has no objection," was the
+withering correction.  After giving the same time to take effect, he
+addressed himself to deal with the question.  "As to which of these
+gentlemen is his lordship, I do not, in the absence of any stated
+charge or legal reason feel myself called upon to decide.  Speaking
+unofficially and without prejudice, I should, if interrogated, incline
+to the opinion that this gentleman," he indicated Gage with a passing
+and casual wave of his pocket-book on the way to its resting-place in
+his coat-tail, "would answer to the description.  But I have no <I>locus
+standi</I> in the dispute, and therefore merely express an opinion, as a
+matter of courtesy, that if the question of identity should be gone
+into, the gentleman by the palm-stand may possibly be found to be Lord
+Quorn."  After which impressive and useful dictum he bid the party
+"Good evening," and took a somewhat abrupt departure, fearful, perhaps,
+of being led into giving an opinion which might at some future time be
+inconveniently used against him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the door closed on him Lady Ormstork said, in a tone of repressed
+and compromising exasperation, "This is altogether a most
+extraordinary, unheard-of proceeding.  Perhaps by to-morrow more
+sensible counsels will have prevailed, and we shall know who is and who
+is not Lord Quorn.  But," she added significantly, "I do not overlook
+the fact that each one of you gentlemen, and consequently whichever of
+you bears the title, has proposed an alliance between himself and Miss
+Buffkin.  Is that not so, Ulrica, dear?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; they've all said as much," replied that young lady casually.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?"  The Salolja growl reverberated through the room like the first
+muttering of thunder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And," concluded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the minatory rumble, "Miss
+Buffkin will marry whichever of you turns out, when this absurd mystery
+is solved, to be Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will she?" observed the duke from the depths of his thickset throat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Undoubtedly," was the determined and conclusive reply.  "Come, dear.
+We must be getting home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall," said the duke, suddenly galvanizing himself into his native
+politeness, "do myself the distinguished honour of constituting myself
+your graces' escort.  Have I the much prized permission?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will give you a lift&mdash;without prejudice," replied Lady Ormstork,
+with the laudable object of drawing him off from further exercise of
+his powers of intimidation upon whichever might be the prospective
+bridegroom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke bowed himself into a right angle.  "Your illustrious kindness
+transcends my poor deserts.  I am overwhelmed by this distinguished
+mark of your favour."  He straightened himself, pivoted on his heels
+till he faced the three men, and bowed to them, this time stopping at
+an angle of 45°.  "Your excellencies, I shall further do myself the
+supreme honour of returning to pursue my enquiry as to which of you I
+may have the inestimable privilege of addressing without fear of
+contradiction as milord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pivoted again till he faced the door, took a phenomenally long
+stride to it, recovered himself, flung it open, and with a ceremonial
+which had quite a mediæval flavour about it, and, indeed, had been
+probably handed down from one generation of the amiable house of
+Salolja to another, conducted the ladies to the hall, leaving the three
+men inert with gloomy anticipations.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap37"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+So paralysed were they that it was not till the crunching of the
+carriage wheels on the gravel roused them from their lugubrious stupor
+that they found tongue to discuss their situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nice let-in for my money and trouble," said Gage writhing in the
+Nessus shirt of that fatal peerage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At any rate you can't blame me for this pleasing little episode,"
+returned Peckover dispiritedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I like your swearing you are not the rightful Quorn," said Gage
+huffily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not, whoever else may be," maintained his late confederate with a
+glance at the real man, who met it by an irresponsive glare.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I only took it for as long as I fancied," urged Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A bargain's a bargain," observed Peckover.  "You can't take on a title
+and give it up as though it were a furnished house."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can't I?" his friend rejoined vehemently.  "Anyhow, I mean to.  I've
+had too much of it.  I didn't suppose it included Spanish bullies and
+Australian bush-rangers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can do as you like about giving it up," retorted Peckover.  "Only
+it don't come back to me I promise you.  I didn't sell it on appro."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn, who had been ruminating on the events just past in glowering
+silence, looked up quickly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sell?" he demanded suspiciously.  "What do you mean by sell?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mind your own business," returned Gage snappishly.  "That's the worst
+of men like you.  You do a fellow a service and then there's no end to
+the advantage you take of it.  Thrusting yourself in and talking absurd
+rot to the girl.  If you don't keep in your place I shall have to put
+you there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what I'm going to trouble you to do before you're much older,"
+retorted Quorn darkly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage looked puzzled.  "What was your reason," he demanded, turning to
+Peckover, "for sticking out that he was Lord Quorn?  Were you pulling
+that infernal little fire-brand's short leg, or did you mean it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover considered a moment, then replied with a nod at Quorn, "You'd
+better ask him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage did accordingly ask him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mind your own business," was the unsatisfactory answer.  "If you are
+Lord Quorn nobody else can be.  But it would be interesting to know how
+you came into the title."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What the deuce does it matter," Peckover protested.  "That conundrum
+will keep.  That little devil will be back here directly.  What we've
+got to talk about is how we are going to tackle him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The suggestion was so profoundly to the point that a depressing silence
+fell on the trio.  They all three jumped when Bisgood came in softly to
+announce that dinner had been ready half-an-hour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dinner?" cried Gage.  "No dinner for me.  I'm off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't be silly," Peckover remonstrated.  "We'll have our dinner first.
+A bottle of champagne is the stuff to bring us into condition.  Come
+on, Jenkins, old man.  You're dining with us to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An exacting afternoon had left the trio in a state so low that
+sustenance was imperative, wherefore they went gloomily in to dinner.
+The meal was taken hurriedly, and, with regard to the wine, copiously.
+So by degrees they began to feel in a less abject state of panic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why did we let that fool of a detective talk himself off the
+premises?" said Peckover regretfully.  "Anyhow, we had better have the
+local man up here in case that nuisance of a duke tries his 'Come into
+the garden, Maud,' again with us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What good will that chaw in uniform be against that little devil?"
+objected Gage drearily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's somebody," urged Peckover.  "And he's got the law behind him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the traditions of the Saloljas in front of him," rejoined Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nevertheless, to strengthen the garrison, the local constable was sent
+for, and the three resumed their repast with a slightly enhanced
+appetite.  They had arrived at the sweets stage, and Peckover was
+wondering whether it was the last apple-tart he was destined to taste,
+when a clangorous peal at the bell followed by a thundering knock at
+the door sent the diners' hearts into their mouths.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If&mdash;if that is the Duke of Salolja," said Gage, sick with fear, to
+Bisgood, "show him into the library.  Don't let him&mdash;that is, his
+grace, come in here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very good, my lord," responded Bisgood, whose imperturbability&mdash;and
+immunity&mdash;he would have given a fortune to possess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+None of the three men could sit quiet.  Gage, after a restless turn
+round the table, went to the door and listened.  As he did so a shade
+of relief came over his face.  "That's not the little brute's voice,"
+he declared hopefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't it?  He has got so many," Peckover said dubiously.  They
+scuttled back to their places as the men returned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Carnaby Leo, my lord," Bisgood announced in a tone which suggested
+a month's notice on his part.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has he gone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, my lord.  He said he must see your lordship, so I showed him into
+the library."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Leo is not with him?" Quorn asked anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, sir," answered the footman, the great Bisgood declining to notice
+the question.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better turn the key on him," suggested Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This unheard-of order Bisgood took upon himself to ignore likewise.  In
+the abnormal state of affairs the strain on his dignity was nearly at
+breaking point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A footman who looked like going to put the suggestion into practice was
+loftily, but <I>sotto voce</I>, rebuked by his superior, and abandoned his
+intention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll go and do it, by Jove," exclaimed Quorn, jumping up and leaving
+the room, at which action the scandalized Bisgood made no effort to
+hide his disgust.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn returned.  "Got him safe," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is the library safe, though?" Peckover suggested shrewdly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As if," remarked Gage bitterly, "we hadn't got our hands full without
+that great nuisance turning up to complicate matters.  Let's get on
+with the wine while we've got any taste left in us," he added, filling
+his own glass and sending round the decanters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Bisgood and his satellites withdrew, eager to find vent for their
+disgust in the servants'-hall, Peckover jumped up.  "An idea!" he
+cried, brightening.  "What do you say having this beast, Leo, in, and
+passing him off to the duke as Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a bad idea," responded Gage, thinking it out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dashed good one," Peckover insisted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How can you pass him off," objected Quorn.  "He'll say he is not
+Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We've all said that," rejoined Peckover shrewdly.  "All the same, one
+of us is that noble lord.  We'll tell the duke that he is incog. for
+certain private reasons, and let 'em fight it out between themselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If any one can tackle that little spit-fire it's Carnaby," said Gage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if any one can hustle Carnaby it's the duke," added Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whichever way it goes we shall be gainers," observed Gage.  "But how
+about Ulrica?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, we'll work her into it all right," Peckover replied confidently.
+"Let's have the ruffian in and give him some pop."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hark!" cried Quorn, holding up his hand.  As Gage opened the door
+there came across the hall from the library sounds suggestive of a
+domestic tornado.  Their obvious message was that Mr. Carnaby Leo had
+discovered, and was resenting, the fact that he was more or less in
+durance, and was communicating his state of feelings through the medium
+of double-soled boots to the furniture in general and to the mahogany
+door in particular.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let's buck up, and release the brute before he wrecks the place," said
+Peckover; "or he'll have no kick left in him for that Spanish beauty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked boldly to the door, and threw it open.  "Anything wrong?" he
+inquired, with what was, under the circumstances, an irritating
+blandness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anything wrong?" roared Mr. Leo, lashing out backwards and kicking a
+chair, quite futilely, to a remote corner of the room.  "No.  But
+there's going to be.  Lock me up, will you, you pair of skunks?"  For
+Quorn had withdrawn to a somewhat obscure position.  "I'll teach
+you&mdash;&mdash;!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The lock's out of order," Peckover explained with admirable
+plausibility.  "Slips forward when the door's banged.  See?  We were
+just coming to ask you to join us over a bottle of champagne."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The proposal had an immediately mollifying effect on the rampageous
+visitor.  "Lead the way, then," he responded thirstily.  "I've got a
+word or two to say to you from my sister Lalage, and I can talk better
+when the hinges of my voice-box are oiled."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They returned to the dining-room, and Mr. Leo began to pay an
+unremitting attention to the lubricant which, according to his
+statement, should have conduced to unusual eloquence.  Anyhow, he
+spoke, when at last he found time, if not rhetorically, at least to the
+point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I've come to say to you scallywags," he began politely, in a tone
+which made his hearers look round to be sure the doors were fast shut,
+"is that we, me and my sister, splendid girl, have just about had
+enough of this shilly-shally nonsense.  We want Lord Quorn, dead or
+alive, and, what's more, we mean to have him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He banged his great fist down on the table and glanced at the three
+men.  Gage and Peckover looked politely tolerant, while Quorn regarded
+his bugbear now for the first time at close quarters, with an attention
+bordering on fright.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As," proceeded the gentle Carnaby, "I have said before, and say now
+for the last time you'll have ears to hear it, I and my beloved sister
+have not come ten thousand miles to be made fools of."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage and Peckover made sympathetic responses, and Quorn exhibited signs
+of marked uneasiness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The man," their amiable guest resumed, "who tries to make a fool of us
+is a goner."  He caught up a large apple from a dish.  "I take the
+skunk in hand like this.  See?"  He twisted the fruit in halves which
+he casually threw over his shoulders.  They reached the sideboard,
+where one accounted for a tray of liqueur-glasses, while the other took
+effect upon the globe and chimney of a tall lamp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See?" he repeated, with a certain pride in the rather extravagant
+object lesson.  "See?"  He turned suddenly upon the much-impressed
+Quorn and thundered the somewhat superfluous question at him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye-es, I see," he answered, jumping half out of his chair and trying
+to look amused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then why the blazes don't you say so?" Carnaby demanded, ignoring the
+fact that the comment he looked for was clearly unnecessary.  "Who is
+this silly mug?" he added, with evidence of a natural antipathy to
+persons who received his feats in presumably unappreciative silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jenkins," answered Quorn hastily, rattling his wits together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jenkins?" echoed Carnaby in loud scorn.  "He looks it.  Well, now, see
+here, Jenkins Esquire, my beauty.  Just fancy yourself for the moment,
+if Jenkins is equal to the strain, fancy yourself Lord Quorn.  He's a
+skunk, so perhaps it'll come easy to you, Jenkins."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn could but smile uneasily at the pleasantry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, I should say to you," proceeded his urbane neighbour, making the
+most of a happy stroke of innuent personification, "Look here, Quorn,
+my dasher, the man, lord or lout, or both, who makes love to my sister,
+my lovely Lalage, and engages her affections has got to marry her.
+See?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The uncomfortable personator of himself signified promptly his entire
+comprehension.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you jib," continued the Antipodean Chesterfield, "if you kick, if
+you try to slip out,&mdash;well&mdash;you've got to settle with the strongest man
+for his weight in the continent of Australia; a man, mark you, whose
+trade is fighting, against odds for preference, and who means business.
+See?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fascinated Quorn signed his complete grasp of the speaker's meaning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A man, I repeat," Carnaby went on, after seeking fresh ideas in a
+further libation, "who sticks at nothing where his honour and the
+honour of his family are concerned.  Law?  What's the law to me?
+Nothing.  They know that out there.  The law where I came from gives me
+a wide berth.  It knows me.  When a slink calls himself a nobleman,
+he's got to act as a nobleman, or I'll make him act as a swab and scrub
+the place down with him.  See?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glared round at his three auditors who were listening to his
+edifying account of himself and his proposals with rapt attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've not seen the man I'm after, unless I see him before me now," Mr.
+Leo proceeded, waxing truculent.  "But I presume he has a nose."  This
+supposition remaining unchallenged, he took up a banana, and proceeded,
+"There it is."  He wrenched off the end of the fruit and tossed it in
+the air whence it came down plump into Quorn's forgotten glass of wine.
+Ignoring the episode, the pretty fellow continued, "He has, or as a
+nobleman, should have, two eyes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one had a word to say against the computation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here goes," said Carnaby, accompanying the words by a graphic
+illustration (using the remaining portion of the banana for the
+purpose) of the latest and most approved method of removing the human
+eye without having recourse to a surgical operation.  Then, the
+experiment having been brought to an eminently impressive conclusion,
+the performer playfully took aim with the residue at a portrait of
+Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, and was successful in hitting that nobleman
+in the middle of his somewhat vacuous face, and rendering the likeness,
+if any, for the time unrecognizable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Emboldened by the effect produced not only on the face of the family
+portrait but on those of his living hearers, Mr. Leo became even more
+ruthlessly virulent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn!" he cried in thick accents of withering scorn, "If Lord
+Quorn or any other man, noble or otherwise, plays fast and loose with
+my glorious sister, I'll just take him and twist his head off his
+shoulders.  Won't I?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glared round as though some one had had the temerity to contradict
+him, which, however, was not the case.  His question meeting with no
+material response, he next, in pursuance of his pomological method of
+illustration, snatched up a pineapple.  "Twist his head off his
+shoulders," he repeated somewhat unnecessarily, "like this."  With a
+frantic effort he tugged and twisted the cactus-like plume till it came
+away from the fruit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's the style," he roared exultingly, "I'll treat any man who gets
+in my light or annoys my sister.  See?  I'll scatter his carcass to the
+four winds of heaven.  See?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suiting the action more or less to the words he flung the fragments
+viciously into various corners of the room, where they did more or less
+damage, coming in their flight unpleasantly near his interested
+audience.  Then turning round with a ferocious action, he heaved the
+body of the pine in another direction.  This happened to be towards the
+door, which had just opened to admit an addition to the cheerful party.
+Next instant a cry of rage made it apparent that the heavy fruit had
+struck in the middle of his waistcoat no less a personage than his
+Grace the Duke of Salolja.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap38"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The hit was greeted by an offensive laugh of exultation by the thrower,
+with a gasp of subdued rage by the receiver of the spinous missile, and
+by the rest of the company with various indications of apprehensive
+curiosity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," murmured Peckover through his teeth, "we're going to see
+something."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An Englishman, under the same circumstances, would probably have picked
+up the weighty fruit and returned the shot.  Not so the little
+Castilian, whose dignity was in no direct ratio to his inches.  Quickly
+recovering from the discomposing impact, and forcing his sinister
+features as far into a smile as his mental attitude would allow, he
+bowed ceremoniously, although the full effect of the salutation was
+somewhat marred by the fact that, following close on the shot, it had
+rather the appearance of a doubling-up caused by physical derangement.
+However, he presently straightened himself and regarded the party with
+comparative, if delusive, serenity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your excellencies are pleased to be merry to-night," he observed, in a
+tone which seemed to promise a speedy end to the merriment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke now addressed himself to Mr. Leo.  "Your grace is an admirable
+shot," he observed pleasantly.  "If, that is, my poor person was chosen
+as the mark for your grace's aim."  Then suddenly changing his manner
+from the courteous to the terrific, till he became five feet three of
+incarnate bristling, scintillating ferocity, he added, "I too, as I
+shall hope soon to convince your grace, am a tolerable shot, although
+not with articles of dessert."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The pug-dogged look of aggressive impudence faded from Carnaby's face,
+giving way to an expression of foolish discomfiture.  Nevertheless he
+replied, with a not too convincing nod of assurance.  "All right, my
+prime bantam, I'll show you something."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But for the moment all he showed his challenger was his back as he
+turned and walked to the other end of the table, where he grabbed up a
+fistful of cigars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who," asked the duke, suddenly polite again, "may I inquire, is this
+distinguished gentleman?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For reasons best known to himself the distinguished gentleman seemed
+inclined to let the question of his identity remain in suspense rather
+than hold further communication with the questioner.  Apparently he was
+too deeply engrossed in lighting one of his raided cigars to notice the
+query.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But here the ever-alert Peckover saw and seized his opportunity.  With
+a pantomime of mystery he called the duke aside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's him; Lord Quorn.  The real man and no mistake," he said rapidly
+under his breath, "Calls himself Leo, for private reasons, you
+understand.  Threatens to kill us if we give him away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oho!  So?"  The duke turned an ominously interested eye on the latest
+idea of the interloping nobleman, his mind, meanwhile, rapidly running
+over the probabilities of the case.  Mr. Leo, having recovered from his
+late upset by the aid of a bumper of old port wine, was now lounging
+against the mantel-piece with that easy air of proprietorship which
+stature and muscle coupled with low brain power are apt to give.  He
+might, indeed, have fitted in very well just then with a foreigner's
+idea of a bucolic English milord, and as such his appearance commended
+him to the ferocious Spaniard's purpose.  The Duke glanced searchingly
+at his informant, however, as though determined to make certain before
+turning his polite attentions to the new candidate for a thrill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why did your excellencies one after another call yourselves milord
+Quorn?" he demanded pertinently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We had to.  He made us," was the ready answer.  "Says he'll twist the
+neck of any man who calls him Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke received the information with a grim elevation of his thick
+eyebrows.  "So?  We shall see.  But Miss Buffkin?" he asked sharply.
+"There is nothing between them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover made a grimace which might be understood to signify amusement
+at the suggestion.  "Isn't there?" he replied, "when she is brought up
+here every day to see him.  That's why he's keeping himself dark," he
+added slyly.  "There's another lady in the question; see?  And he's all
+for Buffkin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A roar came from the fireplace.  "What are you mumping about there, you
+little rats?  Speak up, and let's hear all about it before I shake it
+out of you.  I've got my say to finish when you've done croaking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The muttered conference therefore ceased.  Peckover resumed his seat,
+and the duke turned and regarded Carnaby with an attention which was
+doubtless somewhat irritating to that sensitive gentleman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you staring at, smallbones?" he demanded fiercely as though
+lashing himself into a fury to counteract the effect of the Salolja
+eye.  "When fools stare at me I scoop their eyes out to teach 'em
+better manners."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke accepted the interesting statement with a bow.  "Yes?" he
+responded appreciatively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I do," maintained Mr. Leo savagely.  "I'm a man, as I've been
+telling these scallywags, who stands no nonsense."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the duke bowed.  "I applaud your grace," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A horrible suspicion that he was being laughed at seemed to take hold
+of the doughty Mr. Leo.  "You applaud my grace, do you?" he cried,
+forcing his voice into a sneering squeak.  "Who asked for your
+halfpenny opinion?  You keep your sauce to stew that over-grown nose in
+when I've pulled it off."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant, at the dire insult, there was a flash of murder in the
+duke's eyes.  Then, with an air of storing up what he had received for
+cumulative repayment he inquired softly, with his eternal bow, "I have
+the distinguished honour of addressing milord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're an undersized liar," was the somewhat pointed reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think not," rejoined the duke confidently, "although it will be my
+duty to remember that your grace has called me one.  Lord Quorn&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My name's Leo!" came with a roar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I believe not," insisted the duke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn!  I'd like to catch him!" cried Carnaby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke smiled indulgently, yet with a homicidal preoccupation.  "I
+believe," he said coolly, "I have had the good fortune to catch him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is the skunk?" demanded Mr. Leo, with a noticeable falling off
+in the volume of his tone.  It was clear that his opponent's
+steadfastness was beginning to tell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I ask," observed the duke, "as a favour, that your grace will not
+make so much noise, but will accord your most humble servant the
+supreme privilege of saying a few words to you?"  His voice had begun
+to come out in bursts, in the fashion which had created such a
+disagreeable effect on Gage and Peckover at the first interview.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo, inclined to wilt, made yet a gallant effort to pull himself
+together.  "If you want to jaw," he replied with scarcely equal
+courtesy, "go into the next room and jaw your jaw off.  You won't spoil
+your beauty, for plain reasons.  I'm getting sick of you.  You spoil
+the flavour of this cigar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I intend to," was the hardly expected retort.  "Although it is a pity,
+as it is possibly the last your grace will ever smoke."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dark eyes were now fixed on his grace with all their scorching
+ferocity.  Mr. Leo looked as though the cigar or something else had
+indeed disagreed with him.  The three spectators of the duel wanted
+only the sense of complete personal immunity to enjoy it hugely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have not the honour of knowing," proceeded the little Spaniard,
+holding the big bully in his best rattlesnake fashion, "whether your
+grace is aware that I am the Duke of Salolja, and a Grandee of Spain,
+the present and, alas, unworthy representative of the noble house of
+Salolja, a family which has preserved its traditions and its honour
+intact from time immemorial."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The effect of the announcement on Mr. Carnaby Leo was not quite
+apparent, except that he seemed in two minds whether to crunch up his
+diminutive opponent or to give way to abject terror.  "What's all that
+to me?" he returned, in a voice that seemed to be getting rather out of
+control.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke shrugged.  "It is customary," he explained, "in my country,
+that in affairs of honour strict punctilio should be maintained.
+Further, I wish to do myself the honour of informing your grace that my
+family, the Saloljas, have never permitted an injury or an insult to
+pass unavenged."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Same with me," responded Mr. Leo, addressing himself, however,
+possibly for convenience' sake, to the men at the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," pursued the duke, intensifying his steady glare, "a matter of
+felicitation that our sentiments agree upon the point.  But enough.  I
+come, as you British say, to business.  I have the honour to be the
+aggrieved party.  Your grace is probably aware that I purpose to ally
+myself matrimonially with Miss Ulrica Buffkin?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The apparent irrelevance of the observation prompted Mr. Leo to pluck
+up a little courage.  "No," he answered with a touch of his old manner,
+"I don't know, and I don't care."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?"  The little man steadied his rage by tugging at his portentous
+moustache.  "Your grace refuses then to recognize my pretensions?" he
+demanded menacingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo gave a stupid laugh.  "You don't," he retorted with clumsy
+humour, "expect me to take off my hat to them, do you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke accepted the defiance with a bow.  "Perhaps not," he returned
+viciously.  "So we will leave that affair for the present.  It may be
+we shall never arrive so far together.  There are, happily, other
+matters which have the precedence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you mumbling about?" Mr. Leo inquired with characteristic
+politeness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I entered the room," continued the duke, ignoring the interruption,
+"I was struck on the&mdash;breast by a pine-apple thrown by your grace.  Is
+it not so?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo forced a laugh.  "Didn't see you coming," he explained weakly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke drew back a pace with every indication of astonishment.  "Is
+it possible then," he demanded severely, "that your grace asks me to
+believe that you scatter fruit about your room for amusement?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sometimes," Carnaby replied uncomfortably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His tormentor waved aside the answer as frivolous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Subsequently to that blow which only blood can efface," he resumed
+impressively, laying his hand on the spot where the shot took effect,
+"your grace was pleased to distinguish my poor self by certain
+opprobrious remarks and designations, in the hearing of these
+honourable gentlemen.  Your grace permitted yourself to allude
+disrespectfully to my stature.  Your grace will understand that the
+character and deeds of the Saloljas are not measured by inches," he
+added proudly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glad to hear it," Mr. Leo growled rashly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your grace was further led," proceeded the duke, raising his voice
+ominously, "to speak in unbecoming terms of my opinion and of my nose.
+It is a matter of regret that my judgment and my features do not meet
+with your grace's approval, but it is the judgment and it is the nose
+with which Heaven has been pleased to endow my poor self, and up to the
+present the noble house of Salolja has had no serious cause of
+complaint against Heaven in respect to its gifts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo tried to give sign of amusement, but the laugh stuck somewhere,
+and did not reach the surface.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your grace," the little demon went on, "also took upon yourself to
+cast an aspersion on my veracity.  A Salolja," he continued with
+pompous dignity, "does not lie.  No Salolja has cause to lie.  Pride is
+truth.  Lying is for slaves and shopkeepers.  Now when a man insults me
+it is something to pay for, when in my person he insults the most noble
+family of Salolja it is everything.  He shall pay with the last drop of
+his blood."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The somewhat one-sided conversation was evidently making for a climax.
+The interest of the three men had become breathless.  Mr. Leo,
+literally and metaphorically with his back to the wall, realized that
+his reputation was about to be put to the touch; also that he was, all
+things considered, in a somewhat parlous situation.  His dull brain
+became obsessed by a lively regret that he had addressed his diminutive
+adversary in terms which were conspicuous by their disregard for the
+noble duke's personal dignity.  Still something had now to be done.  He
+must assert himself and at once.  The instinct of the coward and the
+bully wrestled sharply within him.  But the promptings of fear were not
+to be followed, since retreat dignified or otherwise, was out of the
+question The tricks of his old trade were the only resource left him,
+and so he was forced blindly to fall back on them.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap39"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+With a prodigious effort Mr. Leo pulled himself together.  "We've had
+enough of your lip," he declared in a loud voice.  "I don't jaw, I
+fight.  Look here."  He caught up the fire-irons one after another and
+went through the rather too familiar business of twisting and snapping
+them.  The duke watched the performance with folded arms and a
+sarcastic smile.  Mr. Leo, lashing himself into as much of a fine fury
+as he could attain, and losing his head in the process, took a silver
+goblet from a niche in the overmantel and with a mighty play of muscle
+squeezed it out of shape, not altogether to the silent Lord Quorn's
+satisfaction.  "That's the way I talk," he cried, with gathering
+confidence, as he tossed the shapeless cup on the floor.  "Any man who
+argues with me knows what to expect.  It's too late to apologize when
+I've snapped your legs and arms for you and dislocated your neck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke intimated politely to his fuming opponent his entire agreement
+with the remark.  "I am sorry," he went on suavely, "if I have spoken
+in a language which has not appealed to your grace.  Perhaps I may yet
+be so fortunate as to be able to make myself better understood."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he spoke he took a candle from the table, and, flicking off the
+shade, set it on the side-board.  Then he pivoted round and stepped ten
+paces across the room, turned, whipped out his revolver, took instant
+aim and fired.  The candle stood as before, but extinguished.  The duke
+advanced and bowed with something, it must be confessed, of the air of
+a music-hall performer.  "That," he said quietly, "is how I reply to
+your grace's remarks.  I trust I have the good fortune to make myself
+understood.  No?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quite gratuitously imagining a negative on Mr. Leo's part, which that
+redoubtable fighter was far from expressing, the duke made a swift
+movement and tore down a rapier which hung as an ornament on the wall.
+After making a few passes, which seemed to have Mr. Leo's person for
+their ultimate destination, he spitted the shade of another candle,
+flung it aside, and drawing back, put himself in fencing attitude, and
+lunging furiously, after a grand flourish, just hit the wick and
+extinguished it likewise.  Then he favoured his impressed audience with
+a deprecating gesture intimating that his exhibition of skill was a
+matter of small account, after which, without waiting for comments or
+applause, he turned with startling ferocity upon Mr. Leo and in an
+unpleasantly resonant tone commanded him to take down the fellow weapon
+and defend himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo showed no sign of falling in with his desire, but made a
+ghastly attempt to laugh the order to scorn and then to treat it with
+the contempt due to such an out-of-date proposal.  But as it is
+difficult to preserve an attitude of dignified opposition in the
+neighbourhood of an aggressive and business-like hornet, so the
+Antipodean giant found it impossible to treat the duke with the passive
+scorn which prudence dictated.  For the little Castilian had now
+arrived at a stage when he considered he might fairly let himself go,
+and let himself go he did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He simply danced like a blood-thirsty Rumpelstilzchen before the
+anxious man of muscle, making his sword cut the air as though it were a
+riding whip, and describing inconvenient circles and passes with it in
+close proximity to the more cherished portions of his unwilling
+opponent's anatomy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo looked very unhappy, and in the deplorable condition of a man
+who is consumed by the knowledge that he ought to be very angry and
+retaliative, and yet dares not.  As he continued to hang back with a
+suggestion in his stupid face of how much he would give to be safe at
+<I>The Pigeons</I>, the duke's aggressiveness increased to the extent of
+prodding the massive frame before him with playful sword thrusts.  This
+was more even than the abject Mr. Leo could stand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant he looked dangerous; then with a roar, of rage or pain
+according to the fancy of the audience, he made a snatch at a decanter
+with the object of hurling it at his tormentor.  But before he could
+raise it for the fling the little rapier came down with a smart flash
+upon his wrist and the decanter fell shattered to the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That your grace's idea of fighting a Grandee of Spain, you abominable
+great hulks?" cried the duke viciously.  "You want a lesson, milord,
+you foolish breaker of tongs.  When shall you begin to snap my legs and
+arms and to screw my neck, you quaint elephant?  You shall go down on
+your knees and apologize to me or I will run you through your absurd
+body and let the saw-dust run out.  Shall I not, eh? eh? eh?"  He
+accompanied each note of interrogation by a stinging slash of the
+flexible steel, and Mr. Leo began to look very weary and unwell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Lord Quorn's face was beaming as though a load had been taken off
+his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant Mr. Leo seemed to be gathering himself together for a
+bull-like rush, then the intention died away in helplessness.  "It's
+all a mistake, I tell you," he blurted out in a quavering roar.  "The
+pine was not intended for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed?  So?" cried the duke incredulously, making the point of his
+sword whirl within two inches of the herculean thorax.  "And the
+allusions to my nose, the Salolja nose, which is historical, and to my
+stature and to my veracity&mdash;they were not intended for me?  Eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you touch me again with that beastly sword I'll have the police on
+to you, duke or no duke," Mr. Leo declared, falling back somewhat
+feebly behind the shelter of the law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with some consternation that he noticed that not only the duke,
+but the whole party seemed to derive genuine amusement from his threat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the little terrorist in his window-rattling
+tones.  "The police!  How rich!  How exquisite!  When a man insults a
+Salolja he does not call in the police, but the undertaker."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo's bronzed face had now that greenish tinge so much the fashion
+in modern sculpture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How are you going to send for your police?" laughed the duke,
+emphasizing his question by a playful prick in Mr. Leo's biceps.
+"Before you touch the bell or the door-handle you are a dead man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo looked as though he reluctantly accepted the probability.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, your grace will go down on your knees, won't you, you absurd
+hippopotamus, and make your humble confession and apology for having
+treated disrespectfully a Grandee of Spain and a Salolja, before you
+pay the penalty of your mistake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a painful flourish of the rapier, and a gentle stab on the
+lobe of Mr. Leo's large right ear.  With a howl he went down on his
+knees, with another he begged for mercy, and it was a third howl of a
+very different character which made the duke and the other men turn to
+the window, at which some one stood rattling.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-288"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-288.jpg" ALT="&quot;With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another he begged for mercy.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="476" HEIGHT="773">
+<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 476px">
+&quot;With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another he begged for mercy.&quot;
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The ever-alert duke opened it, as though nothing unusual were
+occurring, giving entrance to Miss Leo, who with a manly stride came in
+only to stand dumfounded before the abject spectacle of her brother's
+abasement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Carnaby!" she cried in a voice calculated to put fire into a lump of
+wet clay.  "You great oaf!  What fool's game is this?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke explained.  "It is simply the result of a slight personal
+difference between his grace and my humble self."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get up, you great booby!" Lalage commanded, naturally thinking that
+the slight personal difference between the two men should have reversed
+their positions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stay where you are," cried the duke in his most stentorian tones.  And
+Mr. Leo stayed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quorn!  At last!"  The cry came in a tone of menacing rapture from
+Lalage who had now found time to glance round the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold on!" was that nobleman's chilling response, as he rose and
+stretched out a fending hand in front of him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My Quorn!" repeated Miss Leo with native tenacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quorn?" cried the duke in a voice of puzzled exasperation, "Quorn
+again in that quarter.  I get tired of this Quorn here, Quorn there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is Lord Quorn," Lalage declared with an exultation which,
+considering the position her champion occupied at the moment, was
+scarcely justified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?  Are you sure?" the duke demanded searchingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure?  I knew him in Australia.  I have come over to marry him," was
+the convincing answer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?"  The fiery little Castilian turned to Quorn.  "You marry this
+lady, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he returned, ungallantly.  "I'm hanged if I do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Carnaby!" cried his sister in a ringing voice.  "You hear that?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Carnaby impotently from the floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let the poor fellow alone," recommended Quorn.  "He's a thing of the
+past."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But his crow was cut short by the duke.  "So, your grace thinks to
+marry Miss Buffkin?"  No answer.  "In spite of your engagement to this
+handsome lady?"  The duke's wry face was lost in a grin.  "May I
+request once again the honour of a few words with your grace in
+private?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You may, but you won't get it," was the dogged reply.  "I stop here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So?  I believe not," said the duke, turning on his vindictive glare to
+the full.  "I have been long enough made a fool of with your different
+Lord Quorns.  I am sick of Lord Quorn.  I put him away, and if I make a
+mistake&mdash;ah!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned swiftly with the cry of an enraged tiger.  Prompted by signs
+from his sister, Carnaby had taken advantage of the duke's back being
+turned to rise from his undignified position and stealthily approach
+his little adversary with the idea of taking him unawares from behind
+and trying what muscle would do.  But the Spaniard, whose energies and
+faculties were concentrated in a small space, was too wide awake for
+him.  With the turn he sprang back and whipping round his rapier
+brought it with a swift cut across Carnaby's ample countenance.  As Mr.
+Leo roared and danced with pain, and Lalage, throwing her arms round
+the duke's, shouted to the three to help her, if they were men, in
+disarming the wriggling Grandee, the door was thrown open and Mr.
+Doutfire came quickly in, followed by the local constable.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap40"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XL
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire with professional promptitude at once proceeded to adapt
+himself to the situation.  He planted himself in business-like fashion
+before the wriggling duke, and with a wave of both hands, suggested to
+his captor that she should release him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let go, ma'am," he said reassuringly.  "It's all right now.  I'll rake
+the fire out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus bidden Miss Leo relaxed her clasp, not however, before Mr.
+Doutfire had, with a practised twist, wrenched the sword from the ducal
+grasp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, then," he demanded in a tone of stern reproof, "what's this all
+about?  What's the trouble now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall not interfere," foamed the duke.  "You are not wanted,
+policeman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Detective-Inspector is my rank," Mr. Doutfire reminded him with a
+touch of severity.  "Looks as though I was wanted," he added with a
+curl of the lip and a confident glance round the company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are not," insisted the duke in his fiercest tone and with his most
+appalling glare.  "I am the Duke of Salolja, and I tell you you are to
+go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He might as well have glared at the spattered portrait of Everard,
+ninth Baron Quorn, on the wall for any effect his eyes produced on the
+uncompromising and unimaginative official.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should like that corroborated," was all the response he got from Mr.
+Doutfire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, don't go!" cried Mr. Leo with a subdued and, painful roar.  "He
+has assaulted me, stabbed me, threatened to shoot me.  I give him in
+charge.  Take him.  I&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has he got firearms on him?" enquired Mr. Doutfire severely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For answer the duke whipped out his revolver.  But swift as the action
+was, Mr. Doutfire's counter move was quicker.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With practised skill he clutched the dangerous wrist and with a
+business-like jerk held it in the air with the revolver pointing to the
+ceiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That'll do, my lord duke," he said with playful insistence.  "Better
+let me take care of that.  It's a dangerous plaything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the duke's characteristic under-estimation of the power of the
+British police system prompted him to resist and to struggle violently
+to release his hand.  Mr. Doutfire gave a well-understood nod to his
+subordinate, and that functionary smartly acting upon it, came behind
+the duke and pinioned his arms.  Next moment the revolver was detached
+by a knowing professional trick, and was in Mr. Doutfire's pocket.
+"You can let go, Tugby," he said with calm authority, and the raging
+noble was free to dance and gesticulate in a very tornado of rage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was understood to intimate that the insult put upon him, a Duke of
+Salolja and a Grandee of Spain, by a mere paltry English policeman, in
+not allowing him free vent for his display of <I>force majeure</I> and
+homicidal proclivities was one which would not only be the cause of
+private and personal bloodshed, but would in all human probability
+result in a devastating war between the two Powers, from which the
+least unpleasant outcome England could expect would be the loss of
+Gibraltar and the bulk of the British fleet.  Mr. Doutfire received the
+intelligence with a tolerant stolidity.  Custom had made him impervious
+to threats and sceptical of the practical value of vindictive
+utterances.  His scornful and unmoved attitude had the effect of
+raising to a still higher pitch the rage of the Spanish fire-eater, who
+seemed now to have lost all that self-control which before had been so
+telling.  He had, in fact, become inebriated with wrath and excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Scoundrel, villain!" he cried, shaking both fists in the air before
+the imperturbable Doutfire.  "You lay your ignoble hands on the Duke of
+Salolja!  I will have your life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Steady!  Steady!" responded Mr. Doutfire in a tone of gentle warning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall not steady," roared the duke, whose face had now assumed the
+look of the false nose, eyes and moustache of a carnival mask.  "You
+shall not defy me.  You shall go this moment, or I will run you through
+your wretched body."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a sudden dart he snatched up the sword from the floor and began a
+series of flourishes which threatened seriously to embarrass Mr.
+Doutfire.  "Steady, now," commanded that gentleman, but instead of
+complying, the duke seemed to be ferociously bent on selecting a
+suitable point of impact in the detective's thick-set figure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lay hold, Tugby."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke comprehending the order, jumped round swiftly, bringing the
+sword point in opposition to Mr. Tugby's advancing tunic.  But the
+diversion was enough for Mr. Doutfire's purpose.  He seized the
+Spaniard's flourishing arms from behind, then planting his knee in the
+small of the ducal back, by way of purchase, he held the heir of all
+the Saloljas trussed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take the sword away from him," he ordered his subordinate.  "Now,"
+when that was, after a short but fierce struggle, accomplished, "you
+had better slip on the bracelets."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Accordingly, with some difficulty and much explosive language the hands
+of a Grandee of Spain were, it is sad to relate, for the first time on
+record, fastened behind his back by a pair of vulgar English handcuffs,
+and the traditions of the Saloljas were, for the moment, rendered a
+negligible quantity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In his violent struggles the duke had stumbled backwards into a low and
+deep-seated armchair.  From this he was, from the fact that his hands
+were fastened behind him, unable to rise or regain his balance.  All he
+could do was to kick furiously and to make loud use of expletives
+which, although couched in the Spanish language, were obviously of an
+exceedingly florid, even ensanguined, character.  To quiet him and to
+prevent possible mischief, Mr. Doutfire and his underling, approaching
+the job on either side from behind, each seized a ducal leg, and tucked
+it in comparative harmlessness under his arm.  It may be doubted
+whether in the long and blood-stained annals of the house of Salolja
+any member of that distinguished and ruthless family had ever occupied
+quite so undignified a position before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dangerous party to deal with, my lord," remarked the panting Mr.
+Doutfire jerkily, owing to the convulsions of the Salolja leg,
+addressing himself impartially to the three men, any one of whom might
+be Lord Quorn.  "I'm afraid we shall have to see him safe to Bunbury
+and give him a night in the cells, in default of bail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The prisoner laughed in the very impotence of his rage.  "You shall
+have your absurd Great Bunbury pulled down about your ears if you do
+not instantly release me," he spluttered through his teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, my lord duke," Doutfire returned, with a wink at the
+company.  "We'll keep in the middle of the street in case the buildings
+should come down on our hats.  Now, when you're ready, sir, we'll make
+a move as it's getting late.  Sorry to have to put the bracelets on a
+gentleman of your position, but I take the responsibility.  In this
+country even dukes have got to behave themselves, and we don't allow
+tricks with these dangerous playthings."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled the duke up and set him on his feet, then took up the rapier
+and revolver and handed them to his subordinate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You shall release me at once," hissed the duke through his wolfish
+teeth, "or it will be the worse for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right.  We'll see about that," replied Mr. Doutfire in the tone he
+might use to a naughty child.  "I understand the prisoner threatened
+and assaulted you, Mr.&mdash;&mdash;?" he added to Carnaby, producing his note
+book.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," affirmed that valiant gentleman.  "I'm cut and stabbed all over."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tut!" cried the prisoner explosively.  "The fellow is a great coward.
+He cries if you prick him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will," continued Mr. Doutfire, unheeding the interruption, "charge
+the prisoner, I presume, with feloniously cutting and wounding?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it," replied Mr. Leo, regaining confidence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Carnaby, you great fool, why didn't you wring his neck and fling the
+little brute into the dust-hole?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carnaby failed to impart into his expression any regret that he had not
+endeavoured to forestall the suggestion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good job he didn't try it on, ma'am," observed Mr. Doutfire dryly.
+"Whether he succeeded or not, in either case it might have been awkward
+for him.  You'll attend at 10.30 a.m. to-morrow at the Court House,
+Great Bunbury," he added.  "And some of you gentlemen had better be on
+hand to give evidence if required."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He nodded to Tugby, and each taking an arm of the speechless duke they
+conducted him, with certain indications of unwillingness on his part,
+to the door.  This the representative of the Saloljas favoured with a
+mighty kick, by way of protest and also doubtless of letting off some
+of his compressed rage.  Mr. Doutfire pulled him unceremoniously back,
+then, as Tugby opened the door, shot him forwards, and in such
+humiliating fashion did the manacled Grandee disappear from the scene
+of his brief triumph.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Those who remained were now at liberty to take more precise and less
+preoccupied notice of one another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So I've got you at last, Lord Quorn," observed Miss Leo with somewhat
+menacing satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you haven't," objected that person, coolly lighting a fresh cigar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, haven't I?" the lady rejoined.  "You hear that, Carnaby dear?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't worry dear Carnaby," put in Peckover.  "He has got a headache."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Leo's stony stare of discomfiture did not relax to traverse the
+statement.  Mechanically he put forth a great hand and poured himself
+out, as in a dream, an overflowing glass of port wine.  He then, still
+in a state of mental apathy, sought, with cowed and lacklustre eye, the
+cigar-box and absently helped himself&mdash;to more of the contents than he
+could smoke at once.  But he made no other and more relevant answer to
+the bugle-call of his sister's question.  It was felt by the three men
+that the legend of his doughty deeds was a myth; as a terrorist he
+belonged to ancient history.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap41"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XLI
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The hour of 10.30 next morning saw the depository of the Salolja
+traditions, a defiant and fretful Castilian porcupine with quills
+erect, standing in the dock of an occasional court, composed of one
+alderman of Great Bunbury (incidentally a family grocer), one
+public-spirited local doctor, and a couple of fussy half-pay colonels,
+to answer the serious charges of threatening to murder divers of His
+Majesty's subjects, and also with feloniously stabbing and wounding
+another, to wit, one Carnaby Leo, described somewhat vaguely as of
+Australia.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Doutfire here saw an opportunity for more than regaining some loss
+of prestige which he had lately incurred, of course through no fault of
+his, but of a cheese-paring Treasury; and moreover for handing his name
+down with undying fame in the criminal annals of Great Bunbury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Duke of Salolja insisted upon regarding the whole business as
+beneath his serious notice.  His line of defence was to maintain a
+haughty and contemptuous silence, at the same time to shrivel up his
+very common-place judges by focussing upon them in turn his most
+ferociously fascinating glare.  Alas!  He misjudged the stuff of which
+British parochial authority is composed.  Even if he had succeeded in
+terrifying the retired colonels, there was still the florid general
+practitioner to reduce to a quite improbable state of collapse, and it
+is well known that a family grocer fears nothing in this world&mdash;except
+another family grocer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Evidence sufficient to justify a remand was taken, and the prisoner,
+who seemed to emit sparks of indignation was told that he would
+eventually be sent to Quarter Sessions.  Then in pursuance of a plan
+which Peckover had concocted overnight, Gage and Lord Quorn offered
+themselves as bail for the duke.  This was, after some demur and
+difference of opinion, accepted, the two colonels being dead against
+allowing a foreigner of homicidal tendencies to be at large, while the
+doctor and the grocer took a higher position and declared themselves in
+favour of doing no act that should endanger the <I>entente cordiale</I>
+between Great Britain and Spain.  So finally, bail was accepted for the
+duke's appearance on the following Saturday.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Upon his release from durance his sureties and Peckover sought an
+interview with the irate nobleman, and, ignoring certain dark and
+direful threats, gently but convincingly hinted to him that the only
+way to avoid a considerable term of imprisonment with its incidental
+tarnish on the scutcheon of the Saloljas was to lose no time in putting
+the English Channel and the republic of France, to say nothing of the
+Pyrenees, between himself and the Great Bunbury Bench.  At first the
+duke, pulsating with a sense of injury, declared that sooner than run
+away from a handful of English shopkeepers, he would put the whole of
+the inhabitants of Great Bunbury, as given in the last census return,
+to the edge of the sword.  On its being pointed out to him, however,
+that his plan, attractive in itself, was deficient in certain elements
+of feasibility, he consented to meet the objection by reducing the
+number of his intended victims, and intimated that his thirst for blood
+might be satisfied by the immolation of the mayor and corporation, the
+heads of the fire brigade and the police force, the town clerk, town
+crier, the station master and a picked half-dozen of the principal
+tradesmen on the altar of his vengeance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he was made aware of certain practical objections which stood in
+the way of the town of Great Bunbury falling in with this modified
+suggestion, the noble Castilian proposed as a last alternative that he
+should meet a selected dozen men of the township's best blood in a
+suitable arena, and should engage these representatives one after the
+other in a duel <I>à outrance</I>.  On this proposal being ruled out of
+order owing to the deplorably faulty state of the English law, the
+duke, glaring and bristling with suppressed vindictiveness, declared
+that he must do something to remove the stain that had been cast upon
+him and his house; whereupon Peckover suggested that the best thing he
+could do to prevent the said stain from spreading would be to disguise
+himself as the representative of a firm of Spanish claret merchants,
+and take the 1.15 train on the way to Dover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This plan did not, however, commend itself to the representative of a
+Spanish house, whose trade appeared to be, not the bottling, but the
+spilling, of claret of a very different type.  "It is very amusing,
+very clever of you, gentlemen," he objected in withering scorn.  "You
+wish to get me out of the way that you may pay court to Miss Buffkin.
+I am not an idiot."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll be a convict this day fortnight if you don't clear out,"
+remarked Peckover.  "Great Bunbury is not to be trifled with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke laughed discordantly.  "Great Bunbury!  It makes me laugh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You'll have plenty of time for laughing," observed Peckover, "in jail.
+You can do a lot of smiling in twelve calendar months if you stick to
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke snapped his fingers, but he looked uneasy, and the snap wanted
+tone.  Perhaps the fingers were clammy.  "I shall not go," he
+maintained, "till I have killed some one in Great Bunbury."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not good enough," argued Peckover.  "If you kill anybody here you'll
+be hanged.  And you couldn't kill anybody worth a duke's being hanged
+for.  Why, the best man you could select for the purpose in the town
+wouldn't rise above an auctioneer or a brewer.  It wouldn't be a fair
+deal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Still the duke was obstinate.  "I marry the adorable Buffkin," he
+declared, "in spite of Great Bunbury."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right.  Here she is," said Gage, pointing to an open carriage
+which was approaching.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A portmanteau shared the box with the driver.  Inside were three
+people, Lady Ormstork, Miss Buffkin and a middle-aged man with
+greyish-red hair and a face which partook curiously of the
+characteristics of the fox and the sheep.  He was a common-looking
+person, and, as such, had the air of being out of place in that company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork stopped the carriage and hailed the group on the
+pavement.  "My dear Lord Quorn, this is fortunate," she exclaimed,
+addressing her remark to the three possible holders of that title, with
+a leaning towards Gage.  "What absurd goings on at Staplewick!  How
+d'you do, duke?  I always said your wilful ignorance of our English
+ideas would land you in trouble.  Well, and how has the ridiculous
+business at the Court House gone off?  Laughed out of court, I presume."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the duke seemed inclined to impart no more precise information than
+could be gathered from a bow and a scowl, Peckover answered the
+question.  "Remanded on bail."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork threw up her hands in amused horror.  "A Salolja, a
+Grandee of Spain, remanded on bail by a bench of provincial
+cheese-mongers!" she cried.  "Really, it is the very acme of the
+ridiculous.  It is only fit for a burlesque.  My dearest Ulrica, do
+think of it!  Oh, dear me, it is too absurd for comment."  And she went
+off in a fit of rather stagey laughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is no laughing matter&mdash;for somebody," hissed the duke darkly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork's burst ended with an abruptness which suggested a doubt
+as to its genuineness.  "It is really so diverting," she said, "that I
+am forgetting to introduce Mr. Buffkin, dear Ulrica's father, to Lord
+Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The inference to be drawn from Mr. Buffkin's demeanour was that he was
+not in the habit of being suddenly presented to peers of the realm.
+Lord Quorn, however, relieved his embarrassment by seizing his hand
+with a cordial grip.  "Glad you've come down," he remarked, with his
+eyes on Mr. Buffkin's daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pleased to meet your lordship," responded Mr. Buffkin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork raised her eye-glasses in diplomatic caution.  "You don't
+mean to say you are Lord Quorn, after all?" she asked with a hedging
+smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm nobody else," was the confident reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's Lord Quorn right enough," corroborated Peckover, with a chastened
+confession of a truth which could no longer be kept in the well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How singular," murmured Lady Ormstork, only half convinced and
+wondering how, if it turned out to be true, she would stand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A professional-looking elderly man with a brief bag in his hand who had
+been regarding the group with some attention now came forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn?" he said, addressing the peer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn jumped round.  "What, Powler!" he cried.  "Just the man, in the
+nick of time.  Here, you can tell this lady whether I'm Lord Quorn or
+not.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is Mr. Powler, my lawyer, of the firm
+of Powler, Gaze and Powler, Lincoln's Inn.  Come down to see me, eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Getting no reply to our letters since your lordship left town, I
+thought I would just run down to Staplewick and see how things were
+getting on," Mr. Powler explained.  "Yes," he continued, "I am quite
+prepared to vouch for the identity of this gentleman as Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, "I always said so.  What a splendid
+practical joke, though, to try to take us all in.  How well you played
+the part," she said guilefully to Gage.  "Dear Lord Quorn," she
+continued gushingly, "this is all most interesting.  May we come up
+this afternoon us usual?  Mr. Buffkin is so anxious to see beautiful
+Staplewick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come as soon as you like," said Quorn promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How sweet of you," murmured Lady Ormstork.  "Dear Ulrica would be
+sorry to miss her daily ramble in the lovely park.  Wouldn't you, dear?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare say I should," responded Miss Buffkin indifferently, with a
+half grimace at Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have," the duke suddenly burst out, "a word to say to Miss Ulrica.
+I do myself the honour of following your distinguished carriage to The
+Cracknels."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please don't," both ladies protested.  "I fear," the elder continued.
+"I cannot, after this <I>esclandre</I>, undertake to receive you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke gave a mingled shrug, scowl and bow.  "It plunges me into
+despair," he said, with just a suspicion of sarcasm, "to be deprived of
+the supreme happiness of milady Ormstork's coveted society.  Perhaps,
+though, I may be humbly permitted an interview with the distinguished
+Mr. Buffkin?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Buffkin, whose distinction required the penetrating eye of the
+Spaniard to notice it, and whose conversational powers did not seem to
+be of a high order, looked aggressively uncomfortable.  "Is this," he
+inquired bluntly, "the Spanish gentleman who has been pestering
+Barbara&mdash;I mean Ulrica&mdash;with his attentions?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke made a prancing step on the pavement.  "Pestering?" he
+repeated hoarsely, pulling his moustache with nervous fury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," replied Lady Ormstork uncompromisingly, "is the person; the
+Duke of Salolja."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have," said the duke, with a flourish, "the honour to desire a
+matrimonial alliance with your gracious and adorable daughter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, thank you."  Mr. Buffkin's voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky,
+and quite common.  "We don't desire any foreign alliance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As Duchesse de Salolja"&mdash;began the duke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No good," interrupted Mr. Buffkin, with a decisive shake of his very
+commercial-looking head.  "Spanish titles are not a line I care to
+handle.  I've told Bar&mdash;Ulrica she can marry whom she likes, but if
+it's a foreigner, duke or fiddler, she'll have to do it on three
+hundred a year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Salolja lip curled.  "His excellency jests.  The renowned
+millionaire Buffkin allows his daughter, the Duchesse de Salolja, three
+hundred pounds a year!  It is rich!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Buffkin looked particularly irresponsive.  "Who says I am a
+millionaire?" he demanded shrilly.  The duke bowed and indicated Lady
+Ormstork.  "A <I>façon de parler</I>," that lady explained.  "Anyhow, a very
+rich man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Divide it by ten," said Mr. Buffkin with a twinkle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The duke looked suddenly chastened, not to say depressed.  "The
+glorious Miss Ulrica," he said with an obvious effort, "would be an
+inestimable prize without a penny of dowry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's about what she'll have if she marries you," returned Mr.
+Buffkin, whose eloquence, if not exactly copious, was considerably to
+the point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall we drive on?" suggested Lady Ormstork.  "<I>Au revoir</I>, Lord
+Quorn," she gushed.  "Till this afternoon, then.  <I>Au revoir</I>, Mr.
+Gage."  Not knowing Peckover's name, since the reshuffle, she
+discreetly left him out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But Ulrica's parting nod was for him alone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the carriage rolled away up the High Street the duke was the first
+to speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What time does that infernal train leave your unsavoury town of Great
+Bunbury?" he inquired.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap42"></A>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XLII
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+Sharnbrook had called at Staplewick for an authoritative version of
+certain blood-curdling rumours which had reached him, and he stayed to
+luncheon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wish I'd known you were having such a thrilling time," he said
+regretfully.  "I'd have come up and helped.  Well, I say, with this new
+twist of the Quorn title our fair friends at the Moat will get a nasty
+shake, eh?  I'm ever so grateful for the way you fellows have relieved
+the pressure of the fair dodgers; they've eased off wonderfully of
+late, and I've got my wind again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glad to hear it," observed Peckover.  "Always willing to oblige a
+sportsman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," said Sharnbrook in a gratified tone, "if I'd only known you were
+having fits with that little Spanish bantam, I'd have brought along a
+rare good bull-dog that would have reduced him to fragments and pulp
+inside three minutes.  A nailing beast, knows his business from A to Z
+and quite a picture when he's&mdash;&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The little devil of a duke would have put a bullet through him," said
+Gage, "and that would have been a pity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," Sharnbrook agreed, "that wouldn't have suited me.  I've only had
+the beggar a month, and have just got fond of him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Even a Spanish bluffer has his uses," observed Gage.  "He has knocked
+the stuffing out of Quorn's bush-ranger."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Quorn, "that brute has no more terrors for me; I suppose,
+though, I shall have him and Lalage hanging about the place till I can
+afford to send them back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better keep the fire-irons out of the way," remarked Peckover.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll send the precious pair back home for you, if you don't get the
+Buffkin money," said Gage magnanimously.  "After all, I owe you
+something.  I can't say I've had much fun out of your title, and hope
+you'll do better with it.  But it has been an experience, and I
+certainly shan't hanker after the peerage again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn thanked him.  "Hope you'll stay on here as long as you fancy," he
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gage shook his head.  "No thanks.  I'm off to-morrow.  Too much Hemyock
+about for me.  But I'll run down later and see what you're making of
+it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's going to become of you?" he asked Peckover.  "Got anything more
+to sell that doesn't belong to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You can't blame me," Peckover protested.  "I kept to my part of the
+bargain as long as you had any use for it.  And I couldn't help it.  If
+you hadn't made a bid for the title I should have had to take it on
+myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Right you are," responded Gage good-humouredly.  "Well, you had better
+come with me and show me round.  You can draw £300 a year as my
+secretary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm your man," said Peckover with alacrity.  "What I don't show you
+won't be worth seeing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork with Mr. and Miss Buffkin was announced.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dowager was full of gush.  "Dear Lord Quorn!  What an amusing
+incognito!  Quite like the lord of Burleigh.  One can quite understand
+your wishing to put people's real affection to the test."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We won't inquire how the article stood it," Quorn replied bluntly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite romantic, as dear Ulrica was saying," the lady proceeded, quite
+unabashed.  "May we, before going out, look round the picture gallery?
+Mr. Buffkin would so like to see the interesting family portraits and
+wonderful old armour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Mr. Buffkin's expression was meant to be corroborative it was a
+distinct failure.  Whatever sentiment might have been read in his
+commercial face, a yearning for the satisfying of an artistic curiosity
+was not there.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No objection to the proposal being made, the party proceeded to what
+Peckover called the ancestral showroom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't you look after dear Ulrica and show her round?" Lady Ormstork
+said pointedly to Quorn when the somewhat dreary gallery was reached.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quorn, nothing loath, attached himself forthwith to Miss Buffkin, who
+had somehow gravitated to the now negligible Peckover.  "Now, Mr.
+Peckover," he said bluffly, "you ought to know all about these fifth of
+November Johnnies.  Give us a bit of the showman.  Take us round the
+effigies, and don't be too long about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On account, perhaps, of Miss Buffkin's obvious preference, Peckover was
+in higher spirits than his lot seemed to warrant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," he responded, pulling a ramrod from an ancient gun for use
+as a showman's wand.  "Here goes!  Lord Quorn, ladies and gentlemen:
+with a view to combining instruction with amusement, I propose to give
+you some points concerning these noble effigies with which the spacious
+apartment is lined.  True, it is only the outer crusts of these
+distinguished warriors and sportsmen that I am able to bring to your
+notice.  The kernels are all gone, and the shells are&mdash;hem!&mdash;left
+tenantless.  But, as in these days the tailor makes the man, so we may
+say that in olden times the blacksmith made him, from which we may
+conclude that we have the best part," he tapped a suit of armour with
+his wand, "of the noble house of Quorn remaining with us to this day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hear!  hear!" cried Sharnbrook, with more appreciation than tact,
+while Miss Buffkin laughed sympathetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The clockwork has long since run down," continued Peckover finding the
+vocabulary of his former vocation coming in usefully; "the striking
+gear is out of order, on account of the dust getting into it.  The
+hands can point no longer, and the faces have lost their enamel.  But
+we have still the cases&mdash;some plain, like this,"&mdash;he tapped a suit of
+plate armour&mdash;"some engine turned, like that," pointing to an inlaid
+suit, "some with open faces, like this yawner," he rattled his wand in
+the cavity of a vizorless helmet, "some hunters, like this prancer,"
+indicating an equestrian portrait.  "To begin at the beginning."  He
+held up a dilapidated helmet in one hand and in the other a fragment of
+armour.  "Sir Guy de Quorn, founder of the family."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a laugh from everybody, although Lady Ormstork's was rather
+belated, that astute dowager's sense of humour being outweighed by her
+concern at seeing that Ulrica was paying more attention to the flippant
+little showman than to the more solid worth of Lord Quorn.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not much of him remaining," Peckover went on.  "Ladies and gentlemen
+of vivid powers of imagination may reconstruct in their minds from
+these scanty materials the noble mien, the imposing figure, of this
+doughty warrior.  Pass on to Sir Nicholas de Quorn," he pointed to the
+suit of armour that stood next, "in a high state of preservation.  A
+mighty man of valour, who had the advantage of living in times when he
+could knock a man out for sneezing in his presence without being liable
+to forty shillings or a month.  Sir Nicholas spent a useful life in
+trying his muscle and weight on other people, and was getting his name
+up nicely, when unfortunately setting out to attack the castle of an
+absent neighbour in a thunderstorm, his lance acted as a lightning
+conductor, and he was prematurely cremated.  Notice the aperture
+through which the electric fluid tunnelled its way to his knightly
+vitals, and the look of blank astonishment with a dash of 'uffiness on
+the champion's visage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The said visage being indeed a blank, this fancy seemed to tickle even
+the unimaginative Mr. Buffkin.  Peckover now directed attention to a
+weird-looking portrait.  "Sir Penning de Quorn, surnamed the Feckless.
+He never did anything distinguished, and only escaped being made
+Commander-in-Chief through one of the Royal Family fancying himself in
+a cocked hat."  He passed to another canvas.  "Sir Brian de
+Quorn&mdash;sometimes called the Buffer, as nothing made any impression on
+him.  He married four wives, three of whom survived him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sharnbrook guffawed, and Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sir Walter the Willing," proceeded Peckover, working up the showman
+business, as he pointed to the next portrait, "a distinguished
+advertising politician.  He pushed his way to the front and became a
+Cabinet Minister by his imitations of popular jesters, and by dyeing
+his raven locks crimson with a secret wash which he purchased from a
+bald Crusader who had no further use for it.  When at length the supply
+failed and the substitutes he tried to manufacture turned his hair
+green, and by their offensive odour left him alone on the Treasury
+Bench he was soon sent to the Upper House, becoming first Baron Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Buffkin, for an out-of-place, commercial Philistine seemed, to
+Peckover's gratification, to be taking in the lecture with genuine
+amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thus stimulated, the showman proceeded, "Harboro' de Quorn," he tapped
+a sporting portrait, "second Baron Quorn, and inventor of the Quorn
+Hunt.  He induced the noble Normans to abandon the shooting of foxes
+which they consented to, owing to gunpowder being in its infancy, guns
+taking a quarter of an hour to load and fire, and the wily animal being
+hard to hit with a bow and arrow.  He was the first M.F.H., and having
+an impediment in his speech he originated the expression, Yoicks!
+which, being interpreted, was his bovrilized way of cursing people who
+rode over the hounds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good man," ejaculated Sharnbrook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover, encouraged by Ulrica's animated interest, went on with his
+lecture in spite of Lady Ormstork's obvious impatience.  His next
+object was a big suit of armour on which he irreverently rattled his
+wand.  "We now come to the third Baron, Marmaduke, surnamed the Masher.
+His fatal gift of beauty was the cause of some anxiety&mdash;to the married
+nobility, clergy and gentry of his acquaintance.  He was, as you will
+observe, very particular about the cut of his armour and the shape of
+his helmet, which was constructed with an extra-size pigeon-hole, in
+order that the full extent of his handsome physiognomy might be
+utilized to dazzle the doting damsels.  His end, ladies and gentlemen,
+was, I regret to say, a somewhat melancholy and unusual one.  While
+drinking a stirrup-cup, and trying at the same time to wink over the
+brim of the goblet at the young lady behind the bar, a portion of the
+pick-me-up went down the wrong way; to correct which mistake his
+faithful squire seized a spade and smote him therewith on the back.
+The clang of the blow on his armour startled his horse, which took to
+bucking, and at the first attempt laid the coughing nobleman in the
+ditch.  He never wunk again.  Notice the rectangular impression of the
+shovel between the shoulders, also the extra-sized sliding kissing-trap
+of the helmet so contrived for the purpose of simplifying the process
+of osculation to which he was addicted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A marked diversion was here created by the entrance at the farther end
+of the gallery of Bisgood ushering in the entire Hemyock family.  Their
+arrival was not greeted with that cordiality which is usually desirable
+and customary; it was, indeed, anything but welcome to any except two
+of the party.  As Quorn, followed by the rest, went forward to receive
+the visitors, Peckover and Miss Buffkin lingered behind together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like to see the view from the Tower?" he suggested with a grin.
+Ulrica laughed and they slipped unnoticed through a covered door.  From
+an octagonal chamber a winding stairway led up to the tower.  "Come
+along," said Peckover elatedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ulrica with a mischievous laugh followed, and they soon emerged at the
+top where floated a tattered flag from a tall staff.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How lovely," Miss Buffkin exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind the view," said Peckover desperately.  "How do you like the
+new Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ulrica pouted.  "I don't see myself Lady Quorn," she answered with a
+certain amount of decision.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," Peckover agreed with conviction.  "He's not a bad sort, but he
+wouldn't be my fancy if I were a pretty girl."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He's too glumpy for me," Ulrica declared.  "And what's more I'm not
+going to have him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What'll the guv'nor say?" Peckover asked dubiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Buffkin laughed.  "Oh, father won't mind.  You see," she went on
+confidentially, "this coronet racket isn't his idea at all.  Not it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not likely.  It is old Ormstork's.  We ran across her at the Grand
+Oceanic at Harrogate.  She hung on to us like a stoat on a rabbit.  We
+couldn't make her game out, till one day she asked father what odds he
+would lay her that I didn't marry a peer.  And she has been dragging me
+about the country ever since, till it has fairly come to pall."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should think so," observed Peckover sympathetically.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know," she continued, "how many noble heads I've been thrown
+at.  But somehow I've always managed to rebound, and sometimes hit the
+old lady in the eye.  You see, I like a live man, not a stuffed peer,
+with about as much soul as a gramaphone."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish I was a peer," he said ruefully.  "I'm alive all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you are," she agreed, gazing round the depressing park.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," he said with a wistful touch, "you said you liked me once, when
+you thought I was something else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What was that?" she inquired naively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A rich chap; a millionaire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, aren't you?" she demanded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not exactly," he answered rather lugubriously.  "That dream's over.
+We've been playing a queer game, but it has come to an end sooner than
+I expected.  I'm a poor devil again now, and there's all about it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment Ulrica's violet eyes rested on him sympathetically.  Then
+they looked away and seemed to be interested in the distant figure of
+Mr. Treacher who was slouching across the landscape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If people are poor," she said presently in a low voice from which all
+feeling was rigidly excluded, "it doesn't make any difference with me,
+when I like them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Peckover jumped up.  He could do no less.  "Ulrica," he said and his
+voice trembled, "you like me?  Yes, you said you did once.  But I can't
+hold you to that for I was a regular fraud when I got you to say it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Miss Buffkin gave a little sigh, and with a lingering glance at the
+uninteresting Mr. Treacher, turned towards the stairway.  "All right,"
+she said with an affectation of indifference.  "I think I hear some one
+climbing after us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The steps were steep and awkward.  He had to take her hand, and at the
+touch his resolution (more honourable than many a better-bred man would
+have formed) gave way.  "Ulrica," he said with a diffident tremor, "you
+couldn't care for a little nobody like me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was gathering up her skirts for the descent.  "I always rather
+liked you," she confessed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wouldn't marry me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What would Lady Ormstork say?" she objected archly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ulrica, you are not fooling me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not much," she answered.  "By the way, my real name is Barbara.  Only
+the old lady thought Ulrica more classy, and so it had to be Ulrica."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In an instant he had sprung to the top step and his arms were round
+her.  "Barbara, my darling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hark!" she protested struggling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From below came Lady Ormstork's insistent call.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Barbara, quick!  Is it to be?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor old Ormstork."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bother her.  It's your father."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think he likes you.  You're rather his sort, and Q. isn't," she said
+over her shoulder as she went down the winding stairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the bottom stood Lady Ormstork looking properly scandalized.  Apart
+from her charge's escapade, her meeting with Lady Agatha had not been
+conducive to serenity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My dearest Ulrica," she said sourly, "how absurd of you to hide
+yourself away up in that horrid tower.  Lord Quorn is hunting for you
+everywhere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm so glad he hasn't found me yet," was the not very soothing reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you mad, girl?" cried the dowager.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not yet.  If I marry Quorn you may inquire again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork's indignation was so great that she could only glare,
+first at Ulrica, then at Peckover.  "Is this," she demanded in her most
+withering tones, "the sort of person you prefer to Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All things considered, it is," answered Ulrica boldly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You hear that?" screamed the irate dowager to Mr. Buffkin, who had
+just appeared in his flight from the embarrassing position of a target
+for the shafts of the Hemyock family.  "Your daughter actually refuses
+the ennobling alliance which I have been at such pains to arrange for
+her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not exactly surprised to hear it," was the unsympathetic reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps you will be to learn that your daughter has the unheard-of
+wrongheadedness to prefer a person of this most equivocal description,"
+Lady Ormstork indicated Peckover with a contemptuous wave of her
+glasses, "to Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness.  "I dare say she
+prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture,
+"do you call this person a good match?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless
+reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery,
+the others following at a safe distance.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The enlightenment of the Hemyock family as to the identity of the real
+Lord Quorn had been, for obvious reasons, delayed by the parties most
+interested in keeping them in the dark.  But now that the new-found
+peer was not to fall to Lady Ormstork's bag, that spiteful dowager
+determined to let the cat out of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I order my carriage, Lord Quorn?" she said in her most distinct
+and penetrating tones.  "It is getting late."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Quorn rose in his lumbering fashion and rang the bell, the Hemyock
+girls who had been gaily chattering to Gage became abruptly silent, and
+Lady Agatha looked stonily nonplussed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord Quorn?" she said, with a brave attempt at a successful smile.
+"Surely this is not Lord Quorn?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm nobody else," Quorn assured her bluffly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How very singular," said Lady Ormstork icily, "that you should not
+have known it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all," rejoined Lady Agatha promptly.  "We have for weeks past
+understood this gentleman was Lord Quorn."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I didn't like to contradict you," said Gage on being indicated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lady Agatha, for once too dumfounded for speech, could only give a
+significant look of appeal to her daughters.  And at the look John
+Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, who had taken the precaution to get near the
+door, opened it quietly and slipped out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the brown eyes of Miss Ethel and the black orbs of Miss
+Dagmar were fastened searchingly on Lord Quorn, and they transmitted to
+their owners the impression that he was not an attractive personage.
+In truth there was yet a good deal of the Jenkins about him.  His
+clothes looked as though he had been in the habit of going to bed in
+them, and his hair cried out for the barber.  For the moment, at any
+rate, he was not to be jumped at, and with that conviction the original
+impulse to spring was stilled.  Lady Agatha rose, with a lofty ignoring
+of Lady Ormstork's exultant smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If," she said to Gage, "you are not Lord Quorn, as you have all along
+thought proper to pretend to be, may one ask who you are?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Peter Gage," he answered with a touch of amusement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The eyes of Lady Agatha and her daughters met, and all that could be
+read in them was an indignant perplexity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is all very extraordinary."  Colonel Hemyock's thin voice sounded
+through the room, but his family heeded it not.  Their minds were busy
+with the enigma of the position which was too complicated, not to say
+suspicious, to be comprehended at once.  Only one thing in all the
+business seemed safe, and their minds jumped together to it.  They
+recoiled, as by a single impulse, from the unattractive personality of
+Lord Quorn, from the doubtful individualities of Gage and Peckover, and
+their eyes by common consent sought the spot where their sheet-anchor
+had lately rested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sharnbrook!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They ran a dead heat to the door, charged through it, and so out into
+the garden.  But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook's start served him well, and
+he was at that moment sprinting homewards down the drive with a canny
+smile on his simple face.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+Butler &amp; Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<HR>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+<A NAME="chap43"></A>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+<I>WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.</I>
+</H4>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MASTER SPIRIT
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+<I>Liverpool Post</I> says:&mdash;"The study of the prostrate man giving the best
+of his brains to the assistance of Herriard is beyond all praise.  It
+is one more variant of the 'double' theory, but it is one of the best
+achievements of its kind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Tribune</I> says:&mdash;"It must be admitted that Sir Wm. Magnay knows
+London life better than many novelists, that his men talk like
+gentlemen, and that his pictures of society are clever and truthful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Manchester City News</I> says:&mdash;"This well written and attractive
+story outlines a true picture of the vanities and insincerities of
+fashionable society in London."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Road</I> says:&mdash;"Few plots in even the best up-to-date novels of
+to-day are as strongly drawn as this one, which has all the freshness
+of absolute novelty to recommend it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Court Journal</I> says:&mdash;"The intensely interesting situation is
+developed with much ingenuity and power.  It is a capital story, told
+with far more literary skill than is usual.  A really fascinating
+story."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+FAUCONBERG
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Daily Telegraph</I> says:&mdash;"Good and well written, readable from
+opening chapter to finish."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Illustrated Mail</I> says:&mdash;"The story teems with incident, moves
+briskly and as a narrative is very readable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Field</I> says:&mdash;"The ultimate fate of Fauconberg is always in doubt
+from the beginning to the unexpected ending.  The book has grip and
+should be a success."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Aberdeen Journal</I> says:&mdash;"From start to finish the story is full
+of striking situations and Fauconberg will unfailingly appeal to all
+who love a vigorously told narrative."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE RED CHANCELLOR
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+<I>Lloyd's News</I> says:&mdash;"One of the most readable novels of the adventure
+type that we have taken up.  A story full of action with its characters
+strongly drawn.  Adventures and hair-breadth escapes abound, the style
+is refreshingly crisp, and the book altogether is one that can be most
+heartily recommended."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The King</I> says:&mdash;"A romance of stirring adventure.  Excitingly
+narrated, and the book in every way ought to prove one of the best
+reading romances of the season."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Swansea Gazette</I> says:&mdash;"A very thrilling and interesting book,
+and commands in every page the reader's attention."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Irish Times</I> says:&mdash;"A most thrilling story, well written and
+cleverly put together, the romance is a fascinating one."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Public Opinion</I> says:&mdash;"It positively bristles with adventure.  A
+capital book, wildly exciting."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Daily Telegraph</I> says:&mdash;"A story which is distinctly good."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MYSTERY OF THE UNICORN
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+An absorbing romance of modern life, depending for its interest quite
+as much on its vivid pictures of society as on its more sensational
+incidents.  Mr. E. F. Benson and Mr. Robert Hichens have more than once
+achieved the same effect in the weaving of stories of tense dramatic
+interest, and the present book is a strong and clever specimen of its
+class.  Without sacrificing the probabilities the author realizes with
+great skill the element of strangeness which often carries the
+circumstances of modern life even to the verge of fantasy.  It is an
+engrossing story, cleverly set forth.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A PRINCE OF LOVERS
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+<I>The World</I> says:&mdash;"This story is delightful; full of life and
+movement, genuine human nature, and the stir of love and grief, good
+fortune and evil with so much reality in the persons on the stage that
+they enlist sympathy or excite animosity as fully as the author needs
+to desire.  The stars which Sir William Magnay has selected and set
+shining for us in an atmosphere well suited for their radiance are very
+bright and particular indeed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Dundee Courier</I> says:&mdash;"We commend this book to any one on the
+look out for a thrilling, fascinating, and skilfully narrated tale.
+Each chapter abounds in exciting situations and daring deeds, one's
+anxiety to know what comes next increasing as the story unfolds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Portsmouth Times</I> says:&mdash;"A brilliant romance crowded with
+stirring incident and is never for a moment dull."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Morning Leader</I> says:&mdash;"The story is spirited and exciting and may
+be read with pleasure by all who enjoy a stirring romance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Scotsman</I> says:&mdash;"The story is full of exciting adventures
+skilfully narrated.  Swords are whirling in every page and so thrilling
+are the incidents that each chapter breeds anxiety to know the events
+of the next."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Athenæum</I> says:&mdash;"Sir Wm. Magnay wafts us away to the realms of
+pure romance, where the hard facts of a prosaic century are forgotten
+in the Hercynian Forest of two hundred years ago.  The princess is
+loveliest of the lovely, the villains craftiest of the crafty; gallant
+deeds are done and gallant words are spoken, and the whole flows
+smoothly on to a happy conclusion, leaving the reader under a debt of
+gratitude for a pleasing entertainment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Birmingham Post</I> says:&mdash;"The reader's enjoyment will be enhanced
+by delightful touches of humour which the author has interspersed among
+the many exciting and dramatic scenes of a stirring chronicle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Liverpool Post</I> says:&mdash;"A book that maintains interest at a high
+pitch from start to finish, and should command immediate success."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE MAN OF THE HOUR
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Aberdeen Free Press</I> says:&mdash;"Abounds in striking situations and is
+dominated throughout by strong dramatic power."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Court Journal</I> says:&mdash;"It is certainly one of the books of the
+hour, very interesting and distinctly clever."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Dundee Courier</I> says:&mdash;"The story is admirably constructed and
+highly dramatic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>Vanity Fair</I> says:&mdash;"A very remarkably good story, told with much
+force and lightened by some very humorous observations of life and
+people."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+COUNT ZARKA
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Bristol Mercury</I> says:&mdash;"A magnificent tribute to the author's
+power of imagination.  It is well written; the author keeping his
+characters in hand with marvellous skill, and works out an intricate
+plot to a dramatic conclusion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Yorkshire Herald</I> says:&mdash;"Full of excitement.  The plot hangs upon
+the disappearance of a Prince who has been kidnapped by Count Zarka,
+his foe, who condemns him to cruel torture, and imprisons him in a
+cunningly devised room in his castle.  The story of the discovery of
+the Prince and of the final defeat of Zarka is a stirring one, and
+there is a strong love interest throughout the romance, which is
+heightened in the scene where the heroine is induced to fight a duel
+with swords by Zarka's jealous mistress."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The World says</I>:&mdash;"Sir William Magnay's novel <I>Count Zarka</I> is a
+clever and entertaining story; it affords us glimpses of forest scenery
+which we like, and one remarkable departure from beaten tracks, a
+woman's duel in earnest."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+<I>The Dundee Courier</I> says:&mdash;"The story is brightly and thrillingly
+told, and holds one through all its three hundred odd pages."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poached Peerage, by William Magnay
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POACHED PEERAGE ***
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+</BODY>
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+</HTML>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poached Peerage, by William Magnay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Poached Peerage
+
+Author: William Magnay
+
+Release Date: October 16, 2010 [EBook #34088]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POACHED PEERAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: "'I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage,' said
+Lalage, with calm determination." (Page 171.)]
+
+
+
+
+
+A POACHED PEERAGE
+
+
+BY
+
+SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY, BART.
+
+
+  AUTHOR OF
+  "FAUCONBERG," "THE RED CHANCELLOR,"
+  "A PRINCE OF LOVERS," ETC.
+
+
+
+"There is a third party to all our bargains"
+
+
+
+_ILLUSTRATED_
+
+
+
+LONDON
+
+WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
+
+1909
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I
+  CHAPTER II
+  CHAPTER III
+  CHAPTER IV
+  CHAPTER V
+  CHAPTER VI
+  CHAPTER VII
+  CHAPTER VIII
+  CHAPTER IX
+  CHAPTER X
+  CHAPTER XI
+  CHAPTER XII
+  CHAPTER XIII
+  CHAPTER XIV
+  CHAPTER XV
+  CHAPTER XVI
+  CHAPTER XVII
+  CHAPTER XVIII
+  CHAPTER XIX
+  CHAPTER XX
+  CHAPTER XXI
+  CHAPTER XXII
+  CHAPTER XXIII
+  CHAPTER XXIV
+  CHAPTER XXV
+  CHAPTER XXVI
+  CHAPTER XXVII
+  CHAPTER XXVIII
+  CHAPTER XXIX
+  CHAPTER XXX
+  CHAPTER XXXI
+  CHAPTER XXXII
+  CHAPTER XXXIII
+  CHAPTER XXXIV
+  CHAPTER XXXV
+  CHAPTER XXXVI
+  CHAPTER XXXVII
+  CHAPTER XXXVIII
+  CHAPTER XXXIX
+  CHAPTER XL
+  CHAPTER XLI
+  CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+A pretty girl looked out of the low-silled coffee-room window of the
+_Quorn Arms_ at Great Bunbury, and threw a glance of roguish invitation
+at a watchful young man who was pretending to be busy in the courtyard.
+Then she disappeared.  The young man lost no time in throwing down his
+broom, and, with a manifestly assumed air of indifference, approached
+the window.  He looked in warily, then glanced round behind him, and
+next moment had thrown his leg over the sill and was in the room.  The
+girl, with her back to the window, was polishing a brass candlestick
+with a vigour which suggested that the occupation left no room for less
+material thoughts.  Also that she was, for a smart young woman,
+strangely unobservant of the fact that a man had entered by the window,
+until an arm round her waist brought the fact to her notice.  Even then
+she did not start or cry out, merely disengaging herself from the
+expected caress by a self-possessed and apparently well practised twist.
+
+"I can't stop a moment, Tom," she remarked coolly; "only I saw you
+outside.  Father's in the bar."
+
+"And I've been hanging about a good half-hour to see you, Mercy," her
+swain declared impressively.  "I say, as time's short, don't let's
+waste it.  Give us a kiss."
+
+For answer Miss Mercy Popkiss turned her head aside at a right angle as
+though suddenly attracted by something in the street.  An attitude of
+preoccupation does not, however, necessarily imply refusal; under
+certain circumstances it even stands for an invitation.  As such Mr.
+Thomas Sparrow unhesitatingly regarded it.
+
+"One more," he pleaded coaxingly, as Miss Popkiss bent away from his
+somewhat ravenous embrace.
+
+"Wait a bit," she said.  "I've something to tell you.  I'm going to
+leave here."
+
+"What, leave the _Quorn Arms_?" exclaimed Mr. Sparrow blankly.
+
+"Yes, truly.  I'm going to be still-room maid at the Towers.  You see,"
+she went on to explain cheerfully, "father doesn't like my being here,
+having to wait on the riff-raff as well as the gentry.  He says it is
+not the best training for a young lady; and when father says a thing,
+that thing's settled.  They are all swells at the Towers; lords and
+ladies and toffs from London.  It will be fine."
+
+But Mr. Sparrow was far from sharing her jubilation.  "The Towers!" he
+exclaimed disconsolately.  "Why, they be four mile off, or more.
+You'll forget me, Mercy, among all them fine folk; lords, flunkeys and
+valets and butlers and swells like that, with their dashin' London
+ways."
+
+"Oh, don't you look so silly," the girl remonstrated archly.  "Noblemen
+and butlers and all that sort aren't anything particular to me.  If
+you'd smarten yourself up a bit instead of looking like a ploughman,
+you might get a place there too.  Especially now the new Lord Quorn is
+coming home and Colonel Hemyock will have to turn out."
+
+Mr. Sparrow perked up a little.  "Ah," he observed with an air of
+indifferentism to the warmer subject, "Lord Quorn; he that has been
+found in Australy.  I suppose when her ladyship turns out you'll be off
+to London with her."
+
+"Time enough to think about that when she goes," Miss Popkiss returned
+evasively.  "Lordship or no lordship, he can't turn her out before her
+time's up.  And then it might suit me to stay on with him.  I wonder
+what he'll be like," she added, with a significant touch of feminine
+interest.
+
+Mr. Sparrow's prosaic face grew dark.  "Oh, Mercy," he cried, gloomily
+wrathful, "if I was to see another man, lord or lout, making love to
+you, I'd smash him."
+
+Her words having produced what was precisely the desired effect, Miss
+Popkiss proceeded to tone it down with a provocative smile.  "You can
+think of smashing when you see it, Tom.  And, I say----"
+
+"Yes, dear?" said Tom, inwardly despising himself for being so easily
+mollified.
+
+"I--I hear father in the bar," she suggested significantly.
+
+Mr. Sparrow took the hint and another kiss.  Perhaps his ruffled
+feelings were responsible for its being a louder osculation than
+prudence dictated.  Anyhow an approaching voice croaked--
+
+"Mercy!  Mercy!  What are you after?"
+
+"Quick, Tom," the girl directed in a hurried whisper, "slip out of the
+window."
+
+Mr. Sparrow was already there, with a foot over the sill.  Its passage
+to the ground was, however, prevented by the substantial back of some
+one who was crouching outside the window.  The disconcerted Philander
+swiftly drew his leg back again as though it had been stung, and made a
+slinking rush for the table under which he crept just as Popkiss
+_pere_, his rotund face coruscating with suspicion, filled the doorway.
+
+"What are you up to, I ask you?" he demanded of his daughter with what
+seemed unnecessary vehemence as his small eyes roved in puffy cunning
+round the room.
+
+"Polishing the candlesticks, father," she answered coolly.  "Is there
+anything else you would prefer me to do?"
+
+Not being ready with a suggestion, Mr. Popkiss merely fell back upon a
+snort of sagacity, and turned his portly person preparatory to waddling
+back to the bar.  "Come here, I want you," he commanded vaguely by an
+after-thought, in the hope that by the time he had reached his beery
+citadel a task might suggest itself to his sluggish invention.
+
+"All right, father," Miss Popkiss replied cheerily, as with more
+clatter than was absolutely necessary, she replaced the candlestick on
+its shelf.  Then she took a round-about route to the door, preferring
+it possibly on account of the variety its closer view of the courtyard
+afforded.  As she was about to pause at the window the man crouching
+outside suddenly raised himself and looked in with a knowing grin.
+Miss Popkiss, suppressing a start, deftly changed the amorous look she
+had prepared into one of haughty displeasure, and swept in a fine
+carriage of scorn from the room.  Whereupon the man surmounted the sill
+and entered.
+
+He was a curiously nondescript sort of person, with a short, round
+face, a short nose, short hair, short beard, short arms, short fingers
+and short legs.  His manner also was short, even jerky.  He looked
+round the room with a sharpness and vigilance which seemed quite thrown
+away upon its commonplace and unsuspicious contents, and absolutely
+futile in that they failed to detect Mr. Sparrow who lay snug
+underneath the table.  But then self-constituted keenness is usually
+ignorant of what is going on under its nose.
+
+"No stranger about," the man muttered.  Then he took a telegram from
+the side pocket of his light overcoat, where it had lain as though
+ready to his hand for consultation.  "My wire from the Yard is
+explicit.  Yet," he mused, as he methodically folded the telegram and
+dropped it back into his pocket, "if he left the train at Faxfleet he
+ought to be here by this.  It might take him an hour and a half, or two
+hours.  I must find out."  He walked softly towards the door.  "Better
+not let old Popkiss see me," he murmured, "he talks too much.  But," he
+chuckled knowingly, "there's the pretty daughter, if I can catch her
+that's the dodge; I don't know what Sarah would say, but it's all in
+the way of business."  From which observation it is plain that aesthetic
+shortcomings do not necessarily prevent a man from fancying himself
+irresistible.
+
+Peeping cautiously through the doorway he saw Miss Mercy alone in the
+bar, perfunctorily at work upon a task of supererogation which the
+paternal wisdom had set her.
+
+"Hist!" he signalled, and when she looked up in disdain he beckoned
+mysteriously and withdrew.
+
+Miss Popkiss, in no amiable humour, was forced as a matter of business
+to follow him.  "What is your order, sir?" she inquired, with a toss of
+the head.  But the man signed to her to come nearer still with such an
+air of mysterious importance that she was forced to drop something of
+her haughty manner.  "I did not see you come in, sir," she remarked
+casually, as a first step toward affability.
+
+For reply the man gave a knowing jerk of the head and indicated the
+window with his thumb.  "Hope you are well this morning, my dear," he
+observed inconsequentially.  "It is quite a pleasure to see any one
+looking so pretty and blooming."
+
+Ignoring the incongruity between the guest's mysterious prelude and his
+crudely outspoken appreciation of her charms, Miss Popkiss was not
+above accepting the tribute to her good looks.  "Oh, sir," she said
+with a touch of protest just sufficient to maintain her propriety; and
+so waited for the order to which the compliment would have been a
+natural preamble.
+
+The guest pursed his lips and kept his small eyes on her with
+business-like admiration.  "Very busy, eh?" he suggested, absurdly
+enough, since he appeared to be the only customer in the house.  "Any
+one fresh staying here?" he asked with an obvious affectation of
+indifference.
+
+"No, we've had no one fresh to-day, sir," Miss Popkiss answered,
+beginning to lose interest in the colloquy.
+
+"Oh," said the man, blinking his eyes suspiciously.  "Are you quite
+sure?  No one been here to-day?"
+
+His manner was so exaggerated in its significance that Miss Popkiss,
+with Mr. Sparrow's clandestine visit fresh in her mind, grew uneasy
+under it.  "No, sir," she answered, a trifle unconvincingly.  "Who
+should there have been?"
+
+A triumphant gleam shot through her questioner's eyes.  He dropped his
+cross-examiner's manner and said confidentially, "I thought I saw some
+one come in just now."
+
+So it was Tom.  Miss Popkiss flushed a little guiltily.
+
+"By the door?" she suggested evasively.
+
+"Or by the window," he hazarded, with noncommittal sagacity.
+
+Miss Popkiss concluded that further equivocation was futile.
+
+"Well, sir, and if you did, what about it?" she demanded defiantly.
+
+Her cross-examiner saw that he had made a lucky hit.  "Oh," he
+answered, assuming a careless manner "I only looked in to warn you, in
+case he has been making up to you, that he is a bad lot, a wrong 'un
+altogether; so don't you have anything to do with him."
+
+Had the speaker's searching little eyes not been attracted elsewhere
+they must have noticed a peculiar agitation of the table-cloth greater
+than the draught would account for.
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say he makes love to any one else," Miss
+Popkiss asked, between wrath and jealousy.
+
+"Dozens, dozens," the visitor replied cheerfully.  "Every girl he
+meets.  All that sort do."
+
+"Two can play at that game," the lady commented resentfully.
+
+"Yes," he agreed waggishly: "it takes two to play it properly.  Now,
+look here, my dear," he added with an abrupt return to business; "I'll
+talk to him.  You just tell me where he is."
+
+"Oh, no, sir," Miss Popkiss returned resolutely; "you just leave him to
+me.  I'll do the talking."
+
+But her interviewer did not seem content, for reasons of his own, that
+the matter should be taken out of his hands.
+
+"Now just let me see him, there's a dear," he urged coaxingly.  "Do,
+there's a little darling," he pleaded, becoming somewhat unreasonably
+affectionate.  "I'll put some salt on his tail."
+
+"Please, no; I'd rather you didn't, sir," returned Miss Popkiss with
+decision, as though feeling quite competent to perform the condimentary
+operation herself.
+
+"All in the way of business," the visitor persisted, rubbing his stubby
+hands together with anticipatory gusto.  Then, before the young lady
+could realize it, one of the stumpy arms had stolen round her waist.
+"Give me a kiss and tell me where to find him, and I'll knock the
+stuffing out of the rascal," he whispered insinuatingly.
+
+But Miss Popkiss was not so easily got round.  "Don't, sir!  What would
+father say?" she protested with a vigour which was likewise included in
+the action with which she released herself; an action performed with
+such adroitness as to give the impression that this was owed to its
+being frequently called for.
+
+"Where is he, my sweetie?" persisted the curious one, in no wise
+abashed by his repulse.
+
+Next moment the question was answered by a crash, as the table was
+overturned, and there rose, struggling with the hampering folds of its
+cover, the irate form of Mr. Thomas Sparrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+With a vicious kick at the encumbering and undignified table-cover, Mr.
+Sparrow, green with passion, advanced upon his supposed traducer, who
+backed away in a composite attitude of protest, authority, and
+apprehension.
+
+"Oh, Tom!" cried Miss Popkiss ruefully, but Mr. Sparrow had no eyes for
+her just then.
+
+"Scoundrel, am I?  Rascal, am I?" he hissed at the retreating stranger.
+"I'll show you.  I'll give you----"
+
+The other man had backed, by an oversight, into the corner and stood at
+bay, with an ugly look in his eyes and a thick-set hand stretched out
+in front of him.  "Don't you touch me," he exclaimed warningly, "an
+officer of the law in the execution of his duty."
+
+The words had a certain effect on Mr. Sparrow, since his threatening
+fist remained in the air.  "What do you want wi' me?" he demanded, with
+a quiver in his voice which was, perhaps, not altogether the result of
+righteous anger.
+
+"You are Percy Peckover?" the man suggested.
+
+"You are a liar!" was the ready retort.  "I am Thomas Sparrow."
+
+"Yes," corroborated Miss Popkiss, with a remorseful sob; "he is my Tom
+Sparrow."
+
+The other man began to look doubtful; then he pulled the telegram from
+his pocket and unfolded it with legal deliberation.  "Stop a bit," he
+said brusquely.  "Five foot seven," he glanced up uncompromisingly at
+the ruffled Sparrow--"You're five foot nine----"
+
+"And a half," put in the person under review.
+
+The other took no notice of the correction, but proceeded with his
+comparison.  "Pale--you are brick-dust; oval face--yours is round
+enough; dark moustache"; he moved his head quizzingly from side to side
+as though looking for something not easily distinguishable: "yours is
+sandy--what there is of it----"
+
+Miss Popkiss gave an hysterical giggle, and Mr. Sparrow, words
+evidently failing him, merely gurgled and showed his teeth in a
+discomfited grin.
+
+"Flash dress," read on the detective, outwardly ignoring the effect of
+his blunt differentiation, "yours is agricultural and shabby."
+
+"Shabby?" Sparrow cried furiously.  It was early closing day, and he
+had been at pains to smarten himself up in his best; added to which he
+would at any time have deprecated personal criticism in the presence of
+Miss Popkiss.
+
+But all the apology he got from his tormentor was the terse summing up,
+as the telegram was refolded, "Description don't tally.  You can go."
+
+Gathering that it was no half-forgotten peccadillo that had risen
+against him, Mr. Sparrow resumed his boldness and eased the curb upon
+his wrath.  "Go?" he cried witheringly.  "How about the stuffing?  I'll
+go for you!"
+
+He proceeded to do so in such unmistakable fashion that the arm of the
+law (being in this case one that was at a disadvantage in the essential
+of reach) found itself inadequate for its own protection, and was fain
+to invoke lay assistance which forthwith appeared in the portly form of
+Host Popkiss.
+
+"Hullo! hullo!" cried that worthy, his high-pitched croak sounding
+above the scuffle.  "What's the matter?  I won't have no row on my
+licensed premises," he protested in fussy indignation, proceeding to
+separate the combatants with a vigour which made up in authority what
+it lacked in physique.  "Why, Mr. Doutfire!" he exclaimed in horrified
+amazement as he recognised Sparrow's victim.
+
+"Yes, me, Mr. Popkiss," gasped that gentleman, keeping a vicious eye on
+his late assailant.  "Will you deal with this party, or shall I?"  As
+he spoke he produced and exhibited with a significance which was not
+lost upon Mr. Sparrow, a pair of highly-polished handcuffs, of a more
+elegant make than the usual vulgar "darbies" which festoon the
+blankness of a police-station wall; in effect these were of a pattern
+_de luxe_.  None the less had they the immediate effect of calming the
+aggressive Sparrow; to whom, with the severity of the outraged licensee
+of a highly respectable house of entertainment, Mr. Popkiss now
+addressed himself.
+
+"What have you come in here for?  In my coffee-room?"
+
+"I did not come for to be insulted," answered Mr. Sparrow sullenly, as
+preferring a negative handling of an awkward question.
+
+But Mr. Popkiss held on to the positive.  "I ask you what you did come
+for," he insisted, his severe eye suggesting how much more weight his
+tone might have carried had his bones carried less.
+
+"He was under the table."  Mr. Doutfire made the statement without
+heat, as though content to let the bare and damning fact speak for
+itself.
+
+"Most irregular," said Popkiss weakly, at a loss exactly what to do,
+and wishing, but for the slur on his house, that the law's
+representative would take the matter out of his hands.  "Look here," he
+went on, with an ill-timed and coldly received wink at the detective,
+"if you want to play under the table, stop at home and play under your
+own; if I catch you under mine or anywhere on my premises where there
+is no call for you to be, I'll pull your wing feathers out, Mr.
+Sparrow.  Now, hop off."
+
+Under other circumstances Mr. Sparrow might have been ready with a more
+or less pertinent rejoinder to the stout inn-keeper's _brutum fulmen_;
+as it was, with the glittering symbols of durance dangling before his
+fascinated eyes, he was glad enough to find himself in a position to
+depart even with his repartee unspoken.
+
+"Mercy," commanded her father, dropping the jocular element in his
+severity; "go into the bar, I'll talk to you presently."
+
+And Miss Popkiss, with the uneasy conviction that she had made a fool
+of herself, was glad to obey.
+
+"Now, Mr. D., what gives us the pleasure of seeing you here to-day?"
+inquired the host, lapsing without an effort into affability.  "I
+didn't notice you come in."
+
+"No," replied Doutfire, as he dropped the minatory tokens of his office
+into his pocket; "I made free of the window--just in the way of
+business, you understand.  Fact is," he continued in a more
+confidential tone and with a quite unnecessary repetition of his trick
+of glancing round the room in search of impossible eavesdroppers, "I've
+had a wire from town.  You are likely to have a queer customer to-day."
+
+The fat face of Mr. Popkiss showed no tangible sign of the effect the
+news had on him.  "What, coming here, to this house?" he asked
+futilely.  "For Bunbury Races to-morrow, I suppose?"
+
+"Maybe," Mr. Doutfire agreed, in the tone of one who could say more if
+he chose, "young swell-mob, I reckon.  Travelled by nine-thirty train
+from Waterloo, alighted at Faxfleet and inquired the way here.  I was
+ten minutes late at the station and got a lift on here, calculating to
+overtake him.  He must have gone by the fields."
+
+"What has he done, Mr. D.?" Popkiss inquired huskily.
+
+"Serious case; counterfeit coin," Mr. Doutfire answered with
+importance.  "One of a flash gang.  Now look here," he said with a
+touch of authority, "The party I want is sure to turn up soon.  Don't
+you allow yourself to do anything calculated to rouse that party's
+suspicions: serve him with what he calls for, and leave the rest to me."
+
+"I'd better leave the bill to you as he pays in wrong money, eh?"
+suggested Mr. Popkiss, with true trade waggishness, and becoming purple
+with enjoyment of his own joke.
+
+Mr. Doutfire permitted himself no more than a faint smile.  "Treasury
+won't see you out of pocket, Mr. Popkiss," he declared with importance,
+as one fully competent to answer for the liberality of that notoriously
+niggardly office.  Then, as having settled the point, he thrust his
+hand into his trouser pockets and strutted complacently to the window.
+"I hope to make a neat job of it this time," he announced.
+
+"Ah, you're a cute one, you are, Mr. D.," said Popkiss knowingly.
+
+"Well," assented Doutfire, still looking out of the window and rattling
+the money in his pockets, "I flatter myself I have done a few pretty
+things in my time.  Yes," he continued introspectively, "I've got a
+good bit of the fox in me--natural and acquired in the profession"--he
+turned suddenly on his heel, confronting Mr. Popkiss--"only in the way
+of business, mind you."
+
+The sudden _volte face_ so startled the worthy host that all he could
+put forward by way of comment was the trite formula, "You'll have a
+glass of me, Mr. D.?"
+
+Possibly Mr. Doutfire took the offer as a tribute to his professional
+sagacity; all the same, he declined it.  "No, thank you.  Must keep my
+head clear.  Can't drink."
+
+"What, not in the way of business?" chuckled Mr. Popkiss with another
+sub-apoplectic seizure.  "One glass," he urged, perhaps wishing, in the
+ticklish position of proprietor of licensed premises to stand well with
+the representatives of the law.
+
+"Well, just a small one," Mr. Doutfire consented, in a tone which
+suggested that the blandishments of all the publicans in England should
+not persuade him to exceed his modicum or his duty.
+
+As they turned towards the bar, Mercy met them.  "Father," she said
+breathlessly, "the carriage from the Towers has just driven into the
+yard.  Colonel Hemyock is asking for you."
+
+"Eh?  All right," exclaimed Popkiss, turning down his cuffs in a
+flurry.  "Here, Mercy,"--he ran back--"draw Mr. Doutfire a glass of
+anything he fancies."  And so he bustled out, a quivering jelly of
+importance and servility, into the courtyard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Colonel Hemyock, the temporary tenant of Staplewick Towers, was a
+somewhat blatant specimen of a retired military man with an unbounded
+sense of his personal dignity and importance, which sense he derived
+from an aristocratic wife.  Never in this world was there anybody more
+starchily dignified than the gallant Colonel looked as he sat bolt
+upright in his phaeton; a tall, thin, thread-paper of a man, with his
+sharp aquiline nose, and brushed out white whiskers, whiskers of which
+not a hair was ever seen out of line.  But that was all.  For the rest
+he might have been a figure from Madame Tussaud's with a phonograph
+inside.
+
+As behind the horseman is said to be invariably seated Black Care, so
+behind the gallant driver of that phaeton were sitting the Colonel's
+two-fold cares, his two daughters.  People who affected to know
+everything--and such are occasionally met with in the country--asserted
+that it was with a view to getting her daughters off that the scheming
+Lady Agatha Hemyock had insisted on the family's taking up its abode at
+the missing Lord Quorn's somewhat derelict place.  And the policy had
+not been entirely without result.
+
+But now with the discovery of the new peer the tenancy came to an end.
+It was simply left for the Hemyocks to close it pleasantly, and, some
+critics said, designingly, by entertaining the new owner for a few
+days, introducing him to his property, such as it was, and the Misses
+Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, such as they were, and then leaving him to
+his own devices, and the result of theirs.
+
+"Ah--ah, Popkiss," Colonel Hemyock said in his high, thin voice,
+acknowledging the bustling innkeeper's salute with a limited flourish
+of his whip.  "I just looked in to say that--ah--Lord Quorn" (he spoke
+the name with absurd emphasis, shaping his mouth into an O twice as he
+pronounced it) "is expected to arrive here this afternoon."
+
+So impressed was Mr. Popkiss by the stiff and immaculate Colonel's
+pomposity that all he could ejaculate was, "Dear me, Colonel!  Lord
+Quorn?"
+
+"Yes," responded the Colonel freezingly, as he stared straight in front
+of him over his horses' ears; "his lordship has just arrived from
+Australia."
+
+"I have heard something of it, Colonel," said Mr. Popkiss, regaining
+his composure; perhaps because his noble visitor suggested by his
+attitude that he admitted him to no more human fellowship than the
+mounting block in the yard.  "The late peer's cousin, is he not,
+Colonel?  I trust you will not be giving up the Towers?" he added
+hypocritically, since the Hemyock establishment could hardly be said to
+bring two-and-sixpence per annum into the coffers of the _Quorn Arms
+Hotel_.
+
+"I--ah, don't know," the buckram personage answered, still staring
+foolishly over his horses' heads.  "Anyhow, his lordship will stay at
+the Towers for some time as my guest."
+
+"Curious; in his own house, Colonel," fatuously remarked Mr. Popkiss,
+as feeling called to make some comment on the situation.
+
+"It is my place as long as I pay for it," snapped the Colonel loftily.
+
+"Certainly, Colonel; no doubt, Colonel; I beg pardon, Colonel," Popkiss
+protested abjectly.
+
+A few heavy drops suddenly came pattering down on the glass roof of the
+yard.
+
+"It is going to rain," Colonel Hemyock observed in a tone of irritated
+surprise at the outrage.  "We shan't get over to Babbleton this
+afternoon."  This to his daughters, who looked, in anticipation of harm
+to their finery, more discontented, if possible, than before.  "We had
+better put up till Quorn arrives.  You can wait here and I will look in
+at the club."
+
+There was a waiting-room adjoining the archway for the accommodation of
+the county people who put up their carriages at the _Quorn Arms_ while
+they shopped in the town.  Shown in, with much obsequiousness, by Host
+Popkiss, the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock here proposed to spend a
+tedious and highly uninteresting half-hour.  The prospect did not tend
+to lessen the grievance they entertained against the world in general
+and certain unappreciative persons of the male sex in particular.
+
+"I wonder," observed Ethel, taking up and throwing down again the
+current number of the _Bunbury Bulletin_, "if father finds Sharnbrook
+at the club, whether he will have the sense to let him know we are
+here."
+
+"It strikes me ignorance is bliss in Sharnbrook's case," replied Dagmar
+cuttingly, as she stood at the window, peevishly regarding the rain.
+
+"Oh, shut up, Dagmar," her sister returned, with a surprising lack of
+dignity in one so highly born.  "If it clears up we might take him over
+to Babbleton with us."
+
+"If he'll come," said Dagmar sarcastically.
+
+"He must come," Ethel declared emphatically.
+
+"He has fought shy of us since he proposed to you," Dagmar remarked
+maliciously.
+
+"And was accepted," put in Ethel decisively.
+
+"Trust you," sneered her sister.  "He has the bad taste to put down the
+proposal to the champagne.  Mrs. Wyrley-Byrde told mother so."
+
+"All right," snapped Ethel.  "Not even father's champagne ever made any
+man propose to you."
+
+"A man," retorted Dagmar pointedly, "requires to be in his sober senses
+to appreciate me.  And if he proposed under the influence of Heidsieck,
+I should not accept him."
+
+"Oh, wouldn't you?" returned Ethel with somewhat over-emphasized
+incredulity.  "Anyhow, I am not going to let John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook
+slip through my fingers."
+
+"Trust you," Dagmar laughed scornfully.  "You'll hold him as tight as
+he was when he proposed to you."
+
+"As he says he was," Ethel corrected.
+
+"As he must have been," Dagmar maintained unfeelingly.  "After all,"
+the amiable young lady continued, with a yawn, "who is John Arbuthnot
+Sharnbrook that he should be exempt from matrimony?  Better men than he
+have submitted to it.  Julius Caesar was married--and----"
+
+"And Alexander the Great," Ethel supplied as her sister paused for
+another notable victim of the marriage tie.
+
+"Yes, I think he was," pursued Dagmar indifferently.
+
+"If he wasn't, he----" she yawned again.  "And Maryborough, and Edward
+the Black Prince were married men."
+
+"So was Henry the Eighth," observed Ethel sententiously.
+
+"Certainly.  And Napoleon, and pretty well everybody worth mentioning,
+and heaps not worth it.  And who, pray, is John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook
+that he should cry off and plead Mumm?  Nobody!"
+
+"He has four thousand a year," Ethel remarked in mitigation of her
+recalcitrant suitor's total extinction.
+
+"And a pretty taste in fox terriers," supplemented Dagmar, with an air
+of making every possible point in the unhappy Sharnbrook's favour.  "If
+he jilts you----"
+
+"Impossible," Ethel cried heroically.
+
+"Fish have been known to wriggle back into the water after they were
+hooked, played and landed," Dagmar observed sagaciously.  She turned to
+the window.  "Here he comes," she remarked coolly.  "I advise you to
+fling him a little farther from the bank."  She raised her voice to
+greet the half-hearted Philander.  "Here we are, Mr. Sharnbrook.  Come
+in!"
+
+Mr. Sharnbrook thereupon came in, somewhat with an air of looking as
+though he would much rather not.  He was a florid young man, of no
+strikingly apparent intellectual powers: he had straw-coloured hair
+parted in the middle, and a downy moustache to match.  Apart from an
+aggressive riding suit his appearance was diffident to the verge of
+chronic apology.
+
+"Left off raining," he remarked, in a vain desire to meet his enemies
+in the open.
+
+"Has it?" replied Dagmar, indifferently doubtful.  "Fancy your finding
+us here," she added disingenuously.
+
+"Quite a surprise," he observed, with equal dissimulation.
+
+"A pleasant surprise, I should hope.  Aren't you going to speak to
+Ethel?"
+
+Thus prompted, Mr. Sharnbrook was fain to advance and greet the lady
+whom for the last week he had been dodging.  "How do you do?" he said
+with timid cordiality.
+
+"How awfully gushing," laughed the voluble Miss Dagmar.  "Of course,
+I'm in the way," she added significantly.  "All right; I'll look out of
+the window."
+
+"Oh, not at all," protested the miserable Sharnbrook.  "Please don't."
+
+"Oh, but I shall," she insisted.  "I am interested in that delightful
+old market woman who has just driven in.  Tell me when I may turn
+round."
+
+"Now," said Sharnbrook, desperately bold.
+
+"Dagmar, don't be absurd," protested her sister, with a provocative
+glance at her jibbing lover.
+
+"I can't see behind me," Dagmar observed casually.
+
+"None of your tricks, Dagmar," said Ethel, facing the wretched young
+man, and then turning her head as though to look at her sister, which
+manoeuvre had the intended effect of giving John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook a
+magnificent oscillatory opportunity.
+
+But though the way was plain the will was absent.  "No, no," protested
+the gentleman, hanging off; "I'm up to her game.  You won't catch me,
+Miss Dagmar.  She has only got to turn her head," he pointed out
+confidentially to Ethel.
+
+"Oh, she won't--just yet," the lady murmured softly.  "She had better
+not," she added, with a meaning smile.
+
+"We had better not," suggested the harried Sharnbrook at his wits' end,
+desperately determined not to compromise himself before a witness.
+
+"Oh, just as you please," returned Miss Ethel, with a disgusted toss of
+her head.  "If you are so frightened."
+
+"Oh, well," he urged feebly; "I don't want to make a fool of myself."
+
+"Oh, it is not necessary," the disappointed maiden returned with scorn.
+"You may look, Dagmar."
+
+"I didn't see anything," remarked that lady, with a malicious twinkle
+in her sharp eyes.
+
+"No," said Sharnbrook, manifestly relieved; "I don't see how you could.
+So the new Lord Quorn is coming down to the Towers," he added, eager to
+change the subject.
+
+"Yes," replied Dagmar glibly, wickedly rejoicing at Ethel's
+discomfiture.  "We are expecting him now.  Of course we haven't an idea
+what he is like.  Frightfully colonial, no doubt."
+
+"We've heard nothing of Lady Quorn," remarked Ethel, determined not to
+be behindhand in chatter, and so show her indifference to the love
+passage that did not come off.
+
+Sharnbrook gave a smile of superior knowledge.
+
+"There is no Lady Quorn," he said.
+
+The effect of his announcement was startling.  "No Lady Quorn?" the
+eager sisters cried in chorus, their expressions indicating design
+tempered with incredulity.
+
+"Quorn's a bachelor," Sharnbrook maintained, beginning to see light
+behind the dark cloud which for the past fortnight had hung over him.
+
+Miss Ethel turned to her sister with indignant reproach.  "Dagmar!  You
+said he was married."
+
+"I--I understood father to say he was," that disingenuous young lady
+replied unblushingly.
+
+Ethel, well acquainted with her sister's resourcefulness, turned from
+her in evident disgust.  "Are you quite sure, Mr. Sharnbrook?" she
+inquired with purposeful determination to clutch the truth.
+
+"I saw it in the paper," the now brightening youth answered.  "There
+certainly was a report that he was married, or engaged, or something of
+that sort; but it turns out to be a mistake.  He's a young chap, about
+thirty."
+
+"How interesting!" Ethel murmured.
+
+"Is he good-looking?" Dagmar inquired, with a suggestion of
+appropriating the new-found peer if he should be fortunate enough to
+touch her standard of beauty.
+
+"Can't say," Sharnbrook smirked.  "Sure to be if he's a lord," he
+added, with cheap sarcasm.
+
+Dagmar crossed to Ethel and slapped her on the shoulder.  "My chance,
+my dear; you're booked," she said in a determined undertone.
+
+Ethel gave a repudiatory "Pooh!" and pushed her away.  Dagmar walked
+serenely to the window.  "I wonder if that is his lordship coming up
+the street?" she exclaimed suddenly.
+
+Ethel ran to the window.  "Where?  Which?"
+
+There was no one in view at the moment who could be supposed by any
+stretch of imagination to come up to even an unconventional idea of a
+peer of the realm, nevertheless the sanguine Dagmar pushed her sister
+away.  The first sight of the waiting coronet was for her alone.
+"Never you mind, Ethel," she said roughly, "I am quite competent to
+look out for him.  You amuse yourself with Mr. Sharnbrook."
+
+Mr. Sharnbrook meanwhile was experiencing some difficulty in arranging
+a decent veil over his satisfaction.  "By Jove, they've jumped at
+Quorn," he told himself gleefully.  "If only--I say, Ethel," he said
+with sudden affection, to test the new phase of the situation.
+
+Ethel pushed away the arm which had recklessly found its way round her,
+until lately inviting, waist.
+
+"Don't be absurd, Mr. Sharnbrook," she protested snappishly.
+
+"I shouldn't have been absurd just now," he retorted pointedly.
+
+"You didn't take your chance, and you've lost it."  The fact that she
+turned haughtily away prevented her seeing an uncomplimentary look of
+joyful relief in her recalcitrant lover's face.  If only this Lord
+Quorn were a decent fellow and would back him up.
+
+"What a time father is at that stupid club," Dagmar exclaimed
+impatiently.  "And we have got to go to Babbleton.  We've no excuse for
+not going now the rain has so provokingly stopped."
+
+"Let's go and rout father out, and get back soon," Ethel suggested, not
+a whit behind her in eagerness.
+
+"Come along, then, dear," said Dagmar, giving a preparatory look at
+herself in the glass.  "Aren't you going to take your young man with
+us?" she added with a view to her sister's annoyance.
+
+"Oh, you don't want to come, do you, Mr. Sharnbrook?" Ethel said with a
+somewhat obvious lack of cordiality.
+
+"To Babbleton?  Not exactly," replied the wary Sharnbrook with so much
+fervour that Dagmar laughed unpleasantly.  His principal desire now was
+to get into the middle of a ten-acre field and sing a paean.
+
+"Come on, then, Dagmar," his _soi-disante fiancee_ said with a toss of
+the head.
+
+Dagmar drew back, however.  "Say good-bye to your dear Jack," she
+suggested with ill-timed humour.  "I won't look."
+
+Ethel's face, under the fun, made Sharnbrook rejoice more than ever at
+the chance which, properly worked, might obviate any claim on his part
+to that ungratifying physiognomy.  "Dagmar!  How absurd you are; Mr.
+Sharnbrook does not appreciate the joke."
+
+"Indeed!" her sister retorted in a voice which might, without violating
+the fitness of things, have been pitched somewhat lower.  "I thought he
+was the only person who tried to see a joke in your engagement."
+
+"Ethel!"  He called her back mischievously, secure in his good fortune.
+"I was going to Carter's about a ring."
+
+"Oh," she replied with a not very gracious nod, "that can wait.  Catch
+me," she said to herself as she hurried after Dagmar, "catch me wearing
+an engagement ring while there is a bachelor peer in the house."
+
+"Quorn's the man to save me," Sharnbrook murmured jubilantly as he
+strolled into the yard to see the designing fair ones off.
+
+Mercy ran in to have a sight of her new mistresses from the window.  A
+groom with a gold band round a weather-beaten hat, who looked as though
+he occasionally sought distraction from the monotony of stable-work in
+the more Arcadian occupation of gardening, came by, touching his hat to
+the ladies, then signing more familiarly to the landlord's daughter
+that he had a communication for her.
+
+"Oh, Miss Popkiss," he said, as she opened the window.  "Mrs. Dixon
+will be glad if you will come to the Towers to-morrow, as the other
+young lady is leaving to-night.  One of our chaps will be in town and
+he'll drive you over."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Tootal," she said archly.  "I'll be ready."
+
+Mr. Tootal glanced round and dropped from an official to a confidential
+tone.  "I think you'll like us," he ventured to predict.  "Our people
+are rather frauds, and stiff as boot-tops, but Lord Quorn is coming to
+stay, and we've hopes we shall wake up.  Well, I mustn't keep old
+Wax-work waiting.  O revoire."  With a wink and an amorous flourish
+suggestive of future blandishments, Mr. Tootal ran off, while Miss
+Popkiss turned to the glass and contemplated her charms with much
+satisfaction.  The magnificent possibilities of a life in a novel
+sphere were before her, and she meant to make the most of her chances.
+And, after all, as she told herself with her head held critically on
+one side, there is no knowing what a pretty girl may do if only she
+sets her mind to it.
+
+So engrossed was she in the contemplation of her face and its probable
+effect upon the denizens of Staplewick Towers that she did not hear her
+father's approach.
+
+"Do you hear, Mercy?" he cried in a tone of testy importance.  "We are
+to have a distinguished visitor?"
+
+"A distinguished visitor?" she repeated rather disdainfully.  "Mr.
+Gillions, the big commercial, I suppose.  It is about his time."
+
+So far as an expansively fat face can express anything, that of Host
+Popkiss indicated withering scorn at such a suggestion.  "Gillions!
+Commercial!" he repeated, in croaking contempt of even that potentate
+of the road.  "I tell you the new Lord Quorn is going to stop here on
+his way to the Towers."
+
+Miss Popkiss at once became interested.  "When is he coming?" she asked
+with all the animation her father could desire.
+
+"To-day," he spluttered,--"any minute.  So just get things a bit smart,
+and let's show his lordship our best face," and he bustled off.
+
+"Lord Quorn!  Our best face!"  Miss Popkiss, with the nearest approach
+to a flutter of which her free and easy nature was capable, yet found
+time for another glance in the mirror.  The result was clearly
+encouraging.  "It's the only one I've got," she observed knowingly;
+"but I guess it will do."
+
+Not being, however, quite satisfied in her mind as to the rival effects
+of pink ribbons in her cap, or blue, she ran off to her room to
+institute a comparison, thereby just failing to notice the entrance of
+a strange guest.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+The man who, avoiding the bar, made his way straight into the
+coffee-room, entered with an air in which jauntiness and limpness were
+curiously combined.  His get-up showed that curious caricature of the
+prevailing fashion which dressy young men of depraved, or at least
+untutored, judgment are prone to affect, and was, from his patent
+leather boots to his aggressive diamond tie-pin, in singular contrast
+to his dusty and rather forlorn appearance.  His clothes, in spite of
+their over-smart cut, had the stale, creased look of garments that have
+been worn for several days continuously.  They were, indeed, in keeping
+with the wearer's hunted look, resembling in character the coat of a
+fox after a stiff run.
+
+With a half yawn, half sigh of exhaustion, the man dropped into a
+wooden armchair, and flicked with his partridge cane a bell on the
+table by him.
+
+"Heigho!  My last fling.  Now for a good one," he muttered.
+
+Miss Popkiss, more than usually on the alert, and postponing for the
+moment the respective claims of blue and pink, lost no time in
+presenting herself.
+
+"Well, my dear, what have you got in the house?" the man inquired,
+pulling himself together and speaking jauntily, partly from policy,
+partly from the natural instinct ever roused by the propinquity of a
+pretty girl.
+
+"Nice cold sirloin, sir," Mercy answered mechanically, regarding the
+new guest with expectant eyes.
+
+"Beef?  Is that the best you can do?" he asked, with a dissatisfied
+laugh.
+
+"Fowl, sir," Miss Popkiss suggested in a preoccupied tone, trying to
+adjust the customer's appearance and manner with her preconceived ideas
+of the peerage.
+
+"Fowl; that's better.  No game?"
+
+"Game's not in season, sir."
+
+He gave a loud mirthless laugh to cover his mistake.  "No, I suppose
+not in the country," he retorted with cockney wit.  "Now, look here, my
+dear," he went on, impressively tapping her arm with the crook of his
+stick; "to cut it short, I want the best dinner you can serve me;
+regardless of expense, several courses--as many as you like--you
+understand?  Tell cook to do her best, and to hurry up with it."
+
+"Yes, sir," responded Miss Popkiss, having now little doubt as to the
+guest's identity.  "Will you take anything to drink, sir?" she asked,
+lingeringly, calculating the social advantage to be derived from being
+the first in the place to see the long-lost and newly-found Lord Quorn.
+
+"Will I take anything to drink?"  He whistled scornfully at the
+suggestion of a doubt in the matter.  "Where's your wine-list?"
+
+Miss Popkiss roused herself from her contemplation, and brought it.
+
+The guest ran his fingers quickly down the column devoted not to the
+brands but to their prices.  "Look here.  A bottle of number eleven and
+a bottle of twenty-four pop."
+
+The oldest port-wine and the most expensive champagne.  The order
+settled any lingering doubt in Miss Popkiss' mind.  "Anything else,
+sir?" she asked with an excess of assiduity as she took back the list.
+
+The half-admiring attention with which she was observing him could not
+fail by this to have its effect upon the visitor.  "Well," he answered,
+with a leer, which was evidently intended to be killing.  "I shouldn't
+mind a sip of something--just to keep me going."
+
+If his words were equivocal, his manner left their meaning
+unmistakable.  Nevertheless Miss Popkiss made a spirited attempt to
+ignore it.  "I suppose you mean a bitters, sir?" she suggested
+disingenuously.
+
+The guest went through an exaggerated pantomime of scrutinizing the
+lady's tempting lips.  "No; they look anything but bitter," he
+returned, waggishly amorous.
+
+"A glass of dry sherry, sir?  What number would you like?"  Miss
+Popkiss hastily ran to where she had replaced the wine-list, and with
+the same movement took the opportunity of looking out of the window.
+Mr. Thomas Sparrow was not in evidence: in fact, the yard seemed empty.
+Satisfied of this she took the list demurely to the still leering guest.
+
+"Number four," he said, with a world of cheap blandishment in his
+winking eyes.
+
+"Number four?"  Miss Popkiss nearly succeeded in a look of
+mystification.  "Number four is a claret, sir."
+
+"That's more like the colour," he replied significantly.  "Here!"  He
+took a step to her, disregarding her feeble attempt to hold the
+wine-list as a barrier between them.  "Don't you know what make four?"
+
+"What, sir?" she asked with a giggle now; preferring his working out of
+the arithmetical problem as likely to be more racy than her own.
+
+"Why"--taking the obnoxious wine-list with one hand, and slipping the
+other round her waist--"four is two and two together, like this."  And
+he followed up the proposition by oscular demonstration.
+
+"Oh, my lord!  Don't do so, my lord!" Miss Popkiss affected to protest,
+without, however, raising her voice to a pitch that would reach the
+bar, or making more than the most perfunctory efforts to release
+herself from the encircling arm.
+
+"That's a good sample," he grinned amorously.  "I should like a dozen."
+
+There was no doubt about him, Miss Popkiss concluded, the episode
+entirely falling in with her preconception of aristocratic ways.  "Oh,"
+she giggled, "you are a naughty nobleman."  Then, releasing herself,
+this time by a business-like effort, she ran off, doubtless with the
+idea, after the manner of her kind, of doling out her favours and
+spreading the lordly caresses over as long a period as circumstances
+permitted.
+
+Perhaps it was as well; for, scarcely had she turned her back on the
+dusty Philander when the lips which had just been pressed to hers
+opened wide in a very unromantic yawn.  Then their owner threw himself
+wearily back into the chair and laughed languidly.  "Nobleman!" he
+murmured, with a puff of amused scorn at the provincial greenness.
+"And she called me my lord when I kissed her."  The idea seemed to
+tickle him in spite of his weariness.  "She knows their ways," he
+commented languidly as he took out a silver cigarette-case, flashily
+enamelled with a spirited representation of men's three popular vices
+in combination, and lighted up.  "Is it my appearance, or the swagger
+dinner I have ordered, or both?" he murmured, dropping now to a rueful
+tone.  Opposite to him, filling up the space between the windows, was a
+long mirror.  With what was evidently characteristic conceit, the young
+man put himself into a photographic attitude, with the cigarette held
+effectively after the fashion he had noted in certain royal and
+theatrical portraits, and regarded himself with rueful complacency.
+"Percy Peckover, my boy," he murmured, "you are going to deprive the
+world of an ornament.  There is plenty of fun in the world, but not for
+you; so the sooner you are out of it the better.  Ah!" he continued
+with a shudder, "that young woman little thinks that the warm lips just
+pressed to hers will soon be cold."  With a quick, almost despairing
+action, he put the cigarette in his mouth and then drew a small phial
+from his pocket.  "Yes," he said under his breath; "this will do the
+business in a jiffy."  He shivered, and, as though to pull himself
+together, puffed vigorously at the cigarette.  "By George, I should
+hope so," he muttered grimly.  "Ekin would not play me a trick.  Yes,"
+he rambled on reminiscently, "I said--didn't I?--now, mind, no pain,
+Ekin, old man.  None of your strychnines or antimonies.  You've got the
+whole shop to choose from; let me just go off to sleep and wake no
+more.  Yes, there were tears in poor old Tom's eyes; he was so upset he
+could hardly give me the bottle, telling me to rely on his professional
+skill.  Let's see; he said, 'mix it in a glass of anything you like,
+and you'll drop off as comfortable as an Archbishop.'"  He took out the
+stopper and sniffed at the phial.  "It smells like Westminster Abbey,"
+he said with the irrepressible jocularity of his type.  "Well, it's
+better than----" he shuddered at the unspoken alternative.  "It only
+wants a little courage; just five seconds' pluck," he told himself, as
+he slipped the phial back into his waistcoat pocket.  "The champagne
+will give me that.  'Ang the future, let me fair enjoy myself for the
+few moments that are left me."
+
+He lighted a fresh cigarette, got up and stood admiringly before the
+mirror, pulled down his soiled cuffs, settled his necktie, setting the
+diamond pin straight, smoothed his hair with a hand that seemed to
+tremble, then turned away with an exclamation of impatience, and stood
+looking vacantly out of the window.  The feeble humours of the inn-yard
+seemed to amuse him: anyhow, he did not notice Mr. and Miss Popkiss who
+had come to the door and stayed there regarding him with intense
+curiosity and satisfaction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+"There he is, father; I'm sure it is Lord Quorn."
+
+Perhaps it was the recollection of the procedure which had led her to
+that conclusion that surprised her into the laugh, not so low but that
+it reached the object of their attention.
+
+He turned quickly, suspiciously, and, seeing the two interested faces,
+in an instant had assumed his air of jaunty swagger.  "Well, landlord;
+is my dinner coming to-day, or are you waiting for the chicken to
+hatch?"
+
+Popkiss advanced, purple and radiant, laughing his best laugh at the
+lordly joke.  Mr. Popkiss, as became an innkeeper who knew his
+business, had a series of nicely graduated tokens of appreciation, from
+the superior half smile with which he discounted the poor wit of the
+yokel who was good but for a pint of small beer and took a whole
+evening to discuss it, through the qualified guffaw with which he
+stamped with his approval the heavy jokes of his regular market-day
+customers, up to the apoplectic and wheezy roar with which he would
+greet the sallies of a really important guest, whose bill bade fair to
+overrun the shilling column.  Twice in one short hour had he, Samuel
+Popkiss, been on speaking terms with different members of the upper
+classes; small wonder was it that all thought of Mr. Doutfire's
+expected "party" had been centrifugally dispersed by the whirl in which
+he found his brain.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he chuckled, rubbing his hands as he advanced with his best
+reception manner.  "No, sir, that is to say, my lord, dinner is just
+ready, and I think we shall please you," he suggested unctuously.  "You
+will want something to keep you up for the last part of your journey
+here."
+
+The words sounded full of ominous significance; Mr. Peckover went a
+shade paler, while his swagger for an instant sagged visibly, as he
+wondered whether his host could have seen him sniffing at the
+euthanasia now lying snug in his waistcoat pocket.
+
+Miss Popkiss was busy laying the cloth in a style most effective both
+as to the decoration of the table and the showing off of certain
+personal graces.  For that young lady's methods of laying a table when
+alone and when being--as she hoped--watched during the operation were
+widely contrasted.
+
+"After so much buffetting about, as I may say," observed Popkiss
+genially, as he panted round the table, laying unnecessary forks in
+places where their usefulness was not obvious, "you will be glad to
+settle down comfortable yonder."
+
+He pointed with a fat hand vaguely and tentatively in the direction of
+Staplewick Towers, being perhaps anxious to put beyond doubt the
+question of his guest's identity.  Peckover, with, doubtless, the idea
+of a somewhat different stronghold in his mind looked quickly towards
+the point indicated.  His glance, however, travelled no farther than
+the church tower; anyhow, it could hardly have reached the other
+landmark which was five miles off.
+
+But the church which shut in his view was enough.  The cigarette
+slipped from the lips that parted convulsively with the dropping jaw.
+The churchyard!  "Glad he has arranged it," he muttered shakily.
+
+"And you may be sure of a warm welcome from the old gentleman," Popkiss
+added, stopping to beam upon his guest in the midst of his superfluous
+bustle.
+
+"The devil!" Peckover exclaimed aghast, scrutinizing the expansive face
+for a sign of "kidding."
+
+"Oh, yes," maintained Popkiss, proud of the office of herald of welcome
+between two august personages; "he has been here already to look for
+you, and very anxious he is to carry you off to the place which,
+begging pardon, is yours by rights."
+
+This was too much for Peckover, who stood staring at his obese
+tormentor utterly bereft of speech.
+
+"Of course," continued Popkiss with a mitigating chuckle, "he can't
+help showing the cloven hoof sometimes, they say; but he's not so black
+as he is painted."
+
+"Come, I'm glad of that," ejaculated Peckover, wide-eyed and staggered.
+
+"But," the landlord observed, as rounding off the subject, "we must, as
+I always say, give the devil his due; and as you are going so soon to
+make his acquaintance, you will be able to judge for yourself."
+
+Peckover turned away from what he could only consider as a corpulent
+and highly objectionable jester, and passed a shaking hand across his
+clammy brow.  "I must stop these funniments," he told himself, "if I
+want any appetite for my last dinner."  With a supreme effort he pulled
+himself together, and faced the fatuously grinning host with a dash of
+his native impudence.  "Don't let me keep you, landlord," he said with
+a wave of condescension.  "Nothing suits me so well as a pretty girl
+waiting on me.  That's the relish for this customer, it beats all your
+Worcesters and Harveys."
+
+Popkiss rubbed his puffy hands appreciatively.  "My daughter, sir, that
+is, my lord; she shall look after your lordship."  Then in a tone of
+deferential confidence, he added, "She will follow later on where you
+are going to."
+
+"The deuce she will!" cried the guest, now fairly bewildered.  "What
+has she been up to?"
+
+The rotund landlord, not quite seeing the appropriateness of the
+inquiry, and perhaps feeling that it was a form of snubbing for undue
+familiarity, abruptly changed the subject.  "I hope you'll like your
+dinner, my lord," he said with unctuous confidence as he waddled
+towards the door.  "I know one thing," he chuckled.
+
+"What's that?" Peckover asked half apprehensively.
+
+"Your lordship won't want any supper."  With which parting and
+equivocal witticism the expansive joker vanished.
+
+"Whew!  There he goes again," gasped Peckover, dropping limply into the
+nearest chair.  "He has made me tremble all over."  He gave a wild
+glance at the grey church tower looming--frowning, it seemed--cold and
+depressing.  "George!  I've a good mind to stop alive and risk it."
+
+The entrance of Miss Popkiss with an array of dishes which might have
+elucidated the landlord's parting remark, and with a new bow in her
+hair, brought the guest up to attention again.  Hungry, tired and
+especially thirsty, he lost no time in falling to, and so intent was he
+upon the good cheer before him that for a time the Hebe became
+aggrieved at the thought that the extra attention to her personal
+appearance had been thrown away, and the aid of curling tongs and smart
+ribbon been invoked to no purpose.  However, with the second glass of
+champagne, the guest manifestly began to take more interest in things
+in general and of the expectant handmaiden in particular.
+
+"Ah!" he exclaimed with a lengthy expiration of quasi-content, as Miss
+Popkiss deftly and with a flourish of the bangle on the wrist that was
+more in evidence, removed the fish and set the fowl before him.  "I'm
+beginning to feel better."  He tossed off another glass of champagne.
+"I say, my dear, your father is a cheerful person.  His conversation is
+enough to make a boiled cod-fish shiver."
+
+"Yes, sir--my lord," responded Miss Popkiss, abandoning the discussion
+of the parental characteristics in favour of a subject of more
+immediate interest, namely, herself; "it is a bit dullish here.  That's
+why I am leaving."
+
+"Oh, you are leaving?" remarked Peckover, taking as polite an interest
+in the statement as was consistent with having his mouth full.
+
+"Yes," she informed him.  "I am going to the place you are bound for."
+
+The bubbling glass was half-way to his eager lips, but he set it down
+again.  "The devil you are?" he exclaimed.
+
+"It must at least be as lively as this," Miss Popkiss hazarded, with a
+pretty affectation of ennui.
+
+"A good deal more so," the guest declared, pausing in his eating to
+stare blankly in front of him in utter mystification.  The result of
+his hazy cogitation was that if the people of the inn were labouring
+under some absurd delusion it would be as well not to disturb it.
+"Well, there's no accounting for tastes," he remarked, falling back on
+that non-committal, if unoriginal aphorism, and redirecting his
+attention to the roast chicken.
+
+"Some folks," gossiped Miss Popkiss, by way of a running conversational
+accompaniment to the dinner, "who don't fancy the place, would say it
+was out of the frying pan into the fire."
+
+Number twenty-four had steadied the guest's nerves.  "Yes," he agreed
+grimly, "most people would say that.  Now," he muttered, "she's at it.
+What's that?" he inquired, pointing with his knife to a side dish.
+
+"Curry, sir--my lord," the waitress answered, moving the dish towards
+him.  "Curried goose, my lord."
+
+He gave her a suspicious glance, and then pushed the dish away.  There
+seemed too much of the personal and anticipatory element in the pungent
+dainty.
+
+"Oh, it's not very hot," she protested, with the ready word for the
+credit of the cuisine.  "Nothing like what you may find it elsewhere."
+
+These jokes, it seemed to the guest, if jokes they were, grew
+monotonous, while their bad taste was undeniable.  As a cockney
+sybarite in a cheap way, he liked to have a good-looking waitress to
+chatter to while dining, as he liked to chaff a barmaid over a "small
+scotch and polly", or a gin and ginger beer; but this was not the sort
+of thing the occasion seemed to call for.  Accordingly he proceeded to
+eat and drink in silence.  After all, the one solid tangible
+fact--presumably the last--that the world held for him, was the
+first-class dinner he was recklessly enjoying.
+
+Piqued by her failure to maintain the interest she had so auspiciously
+begun to excite in the distinguished guest, Miss Popkiss turned in a
+huff to the window, and affected a melancholy interest in the heavy
+shower which had come on, to be roused suddenly from her air of
+indifference to things in general and the preoccupied gourmandizer in
+particular by catching sight of the adventurous Mr. Thomas Sparrow
+sheltering under a lean-to a few feet from the window.  Evidently on
+the watch, he came quickly to the window, heedless of the downpour.
+Miss Popkiss, with a guilty conscience, received him graciously; put
+her finger to her lip and pointed with an air of importance to the
+still voracious Peckover.  Sparrow looked, and his damp face clouded
+with jealous doubt.  "Lord Quorn," whispered Miss Popkiss behind her
+hand.  Even if Mr. Sparrow had seen that affectionate passage he could
+scarcely expect his sweetheart to withhold an occasional kiss from a
+real, if newly discovered, peer of the realm.
+
+Whatever attraction a noble _bon-vivant_ might have had for Mr. Sparrow
+at any other time, he was just then in too close proximity to a
+gutter-spout and a tempting pair of lips to devote more than a critical
+glance and a nod of surprised comprehension to the person indicated.
+Then, eager to catch the fleeting opportunity, he put forth a moist
+hand, pulled Miss Popkiss a thought nearer to him, and so steadying her
+for the operation and obviating a possible retreat, he kissed her.
+
+Whether caused by the unusual electricity in the air or the eager hurry
+with which it was performed, the osculation created more noise than is
+considered desirable by well-bred lovers.  Peckover, dining steadily,
+silently, jumped round, uncertain for the moment whether the report was
+that of a drawn cork, or some trick of the neglected waitress to
+attract his attention.  He was alert enough and man of the world enough
+to comprehend the situation; indeed, had he been aware that a man was
+so near it would never have been in question.  As it was he turned just
+in time to see Mr. Sparrow's gratified countenance drawing back into
+the unsympathetic rain.  The sight gave him an uneasy thrill.
+
+"Hullo!" he cried sharply.  "Who was that?"
+
+"Only a friend of mine," answered Miss Popkiss, with an air of showing
+herself not dependent for amatory attentions upon casual customers.
+
+Her manner scarcely reassured the visitor.  "It wasn't--I mean--" he
+stammered uneasily, "he looked like a policeman."
+
+"Oh, no, sir; how could you think so, sir!" Miss Popkiss protested with
+a touch of offended dignity.
+
+"I thought I heard a kiss," Peckover suggested, still unsatisfied.
+
+"Other people can kiss besides the police," Miss Popkiss declared, with
+a toss of the head, too exasperated by the banal suggestion to deny the
+act.
+
+Peckover began to think it was all right.  "So they can, my poppet, so
+they can," he exclaimed more cheerfully, regarding the young lady with
+a leer which owed much of its _empressement_ to the champagne.  As it
+occurred to him that a little philandering might form a not unpleasing
+diversion between the courses, he rose with the leer intensified and
+approached Miss Popkiss with the recognizable intent of sharing with
+Mr. Sparrow the charmer's osculatory liberality.
+
+But the young lady was astute enough to realize the unseasonableness of
+what at another time she would have welcomed.  Accordingly she
+retreated before Peckover's advance, taking care to keep to that side
+of the room least visible from the window.  "Oh, sir, no, sir; I'd
+rather you didn't, my lord," she protested, in quite a virtuous fluster.
+
+But Peckover's knowledge of human character did not incline him to
+believe in the coyness that will sometimes try to stiffen the market
+for notoriously cheap kisses.  He manoeuvred Miss Popkiss into a corner
+and then pounced upon her.
+
+Whether it was that Mr. Thomas Sparrow, waiting discontentedly in the
+rain, had had his suspicions aroused as to the real sentiments existing
+at the moment between his lady-love and the noble customer, or whether
+he was merely anxious, now that the intervening attraction was removed,
+to take a more curious and leisurely survey of the interesting addition
+to the peerage, anyhow, he again, in a lull of the storm, sidled to the
+window and looked in.  Not seeing the guest where he expected to find
+him, he boldly put his head in the window and glanced round the room.
+To observe in a corner, Miss Popkiss, coyly--or as it seemed to him,
+invitingly--protestant, at bay before Peckover, who was making a
+playful feint attack upon her with his serviette preparatory to getting
+to close quarters.
+
+Whatever effect the sight had upon Mr. Sparrow, words utterly failed
+him to give adequate expression to it.  All he could emit was a choked
+half-cry, half-growl of rage and warning.  At the sound Peckover gave a
+great jump and for the moment stood scared and paralysed.  Miss
+Popkiss, profiting by the respite, gave a scream just loud enough to
+justify herself and preserve her character for fidelity without
+arousing her father, and fled from the room, possibly to avoid awkward
+explanations.  Peckover stood, staring blankly at the wrathful Sparrow,
+who, emboldened by his rival's limp attitude, shook his fist at him
+viciously.
+
+"All right, my lord!  Wait till I get at you, my lord!" he foamed.
+
+His air was so menacing that when Peckover found his voice the first
+use he put it to was to call, "Landlord!"
+
+Throughout the vocabulary he could not have chosen a word which would
+have had a more immediate and electric effect on the qualified
+aggressiveness of Mr. Sparrow.  That love-sick functionary seemed
+instantly to collapse and recede from the window which had been the
+frame round a picture of rustic fury.  Only with his retreat, certain
+words, like Parthian arrows, floated in from the storm to Peckover's
+hypersensitized ears.
+
+"Wait till you come outside, my noble lord.  I'll teach you to dance."
+
+"You'll be very clever if you do," their object commented grimly as
+with a sigh of relief he turned to the smilingly inquisitive face of
+the landlord who had now appeared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+"Did you call, my lord?" was, considering the tone of the summons, Host
+Popkiss' unnecessary enquiry.
+
+"My lord!" repeated Peckover irritably.  "How you country fellows do a
+joke to death.  Yes; I did call.  Who was that absurd person intruding
+through the window?"
+
+Mr. Popkiss went to the window with what promptness his bulk would
+allow and looked blankly out into the rain-swept courtyard.  "I don't
+see any one," he said.
+
+"I can't eat my dinner with a Jack-in-the-box fooling behind me,"
+Peckover complained suspiciously.
+
+"No, certainly not," the host agreed with professional severity.  "It
+must have been Doutfire."  Satisfied with the conjecture he went up
+confidentially to his guest.  "I'll tell you, my lord.  It might have
+been Mr. Doutfire, our detective from Long Rixon."
+
+Peckover with an effort arrested his jaw in the act of falling, and
+snapped it to with a rattle of the teeth.
+
+"De--detective?"
+
+"Yes," Popkiss explained, with a touch of importance, as one who, in
+his responsible calling, is permitted to share the Treasury secrets;
+"he is expecting a chap down here that is wanted by the London police.
+He missed him at Faxfleet railway station, and has now gone back to
+Rixon, but if he don't hear of him there he is coming back here again.
+He is a clever man, is our Mr. Doutfire," he proceeded, warming with
+local pride and at the same time justifying any eccentric methods to
+which the eminent officer of the law might have thought proper to
+descend; "cleverest man in these parts by a long chalk, and we are a
+bit proud of him."
+
+So full of admiration and pride was Host Popkiss that he failed to take
+notice of his guest's ghastly face.
+
+"Thank you, that will do," said Peckover hurriedly, with an effort to
+appear loftily satisfied.  "If it is only the detective, I don't mind."
+His one and feverish desire now was to be left alone.  The crisis was
+at hand, and it must be faced without witnesses.
+
+As Popkiss with corpulent strut left the room, somewhat disgusted at
+having failed to excite interest in the artful Doutfire, Peckover went
+hastily to the door and shut it upon the retreating mass of licensed
+importance.  Then he turned, almost in a state of collapse.  The
+champagne bottle caught his eye; he staggered to the table, poured out
+a glass blindly, and swallowed it.  "It's all up," he muttered in a
+hoarse whisper.  "It has come to amen.  That was not the detective, but
+he's not far off.  Clever man: back directly."  He laughed miserably,
+then subsided limply into the chair, and sat with his head resting on
+his clammy hands.  He was caught.  If the local police, headed by the
+nailing Mr. Doutfire, had got wind of his presence in the neighbourhood
+there was clearly no escape but one.  "Ugh!"  He shuddered as in
+imagination he heard handcuffs click and felt the cold embrace of the
+steel round his wrists.  He sat there with head erect now, his hands
+pressed against his cheeks, his eyes staring fascinated by the scenes
+which his imagination, coloured by the study of police reports,
+pictured before him: he saw the magistrate committing him; then himself
+in the dock at the Old Bailey; the Treasury counsel unfolding a black
+case against him, his flash pals, the real culprits, grinning at his
+misery from the gallery; the jury shaking their uncompromising heads in
+all a small tradesman's Pharisaical virtuousness; he heard the verdict,
+guilty; he saw the judge, unrelenting and terrible in scarlet and
+ermine, mouthing at him before coming to the point--five years, ten,
+fifteen!  He started up trembling, with beads standing on his forehead
+and with despairing eyes.  "I couldn't stand it!" he moaned.  "I'll
+never go through it.  They shan't take me alive."
+
+Feverishly he felt for his pocket, in his agitation missing the opening
+more than once.  He took out the phial, gave an apprehensive glance
+round at the window, emptied the contents into the glass and filled it
+up with champagne.  Then, with the means of escape ready to his hand,
+he seemed to steady himself.  "Now," he said, with a grim smile; "five
+seconds' courage, and I can snap my fingers at 'em all.  It's only like
+a sleeping draught."  He raised the glass to his lips, held it there
+for two or three seconds, and then set it down.  Perhaps there was no
+hurry for five minutes.
+
+"Now, I'm going off," he soliloquized dreamily.  "I wish I'd had a
+fairer fling while I was at it.  It has been a poor, middle-class
+rollick after all," he continued ruefully.  "It's too late now.  But I
+should like to have done the real swell, if only for a week; gone in
+for thousands instead of a few paltry pounds; Belgravia instead of
+Camden Town; Monte Carlo instead of Herne Bay and Yarmouth;
+high-steppers; Hurlingham; Henley; a real lady or two mashed on me
+instead of--ah, well, she wasn't so bad; it wasn't her fault she wasn't
+class: she'll be the only one to be sorry.  Champagne," he took up the
+glass, "I might have had this sort all along if I'd had the nerve."
+
+Suddenly recollecting, he set down the glass hastily.  "I forgot."
+Curiously he seemed to shudder at his narrow escape.  Then, as though
+impatient with his temporizing, "Bah! let me get it over," he muttered,
+and lifted the glass again, only to set it down once more.  "I wonder,"
+he said, as making an excuse for delay, "what the bill for this little
+dinner comes to.  Poor Fatty will have to apply to my executors.
+Wonder if he will see a joke there."  He laughed at his touch of
+Cockneyfied humour.  Then relapsed into the morbid state.  "Will the
+pretty little daughter be sorry?  Perhaps.  Not she; no one will.  The
+sooner I'm off the hooks the better.  Here goes for the last time."  He
+took up the glass.  "I'll count three, and then toss it off."  He shut
+his eyes, hesitated a moment, then began.  "One, two, thr----"
+
+The glass was but waiting for the last word to leave his lips when the
+door opened with an impatient, unceremonious burst, and a man came in,
+flinging it to behind him.  Another dusty, worn-out man, who stared for
+a moment at Peckover, and then, turning a chair from the table, just
+let himself fall into it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Peckover, arrested in his intent, had opened his eyes, and now stood
+staring half dazed at the new-comer.
+
+"Hullo!" yawned that person genially.
+
+"Eh?" ejaculated Peckover hazily, eyeing him with suspicion, and not
+quite able to realize the situation.
+
+"Excuse me if I disturb you," said the man, with another tremendous
+yawn.  "If I don't sit down somewhere I shall drop on the floor."
+
+Peckover told himself that this was scarcely the detective, and even if
+he were his condition gave colour to a wild hope of escape.
+
+"Tired?"  The superfluous question was put tentatively.
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Dry?"
+
+"Always."
+
+"Have a glass of fizz?"  In Peckover's situation even that unusual
+hospitality was a matter of indifference.
+
+"Thanks," answered the man, smothering a third yawn in recognition of
+his fellow-guest's civility.  "You are a brick.  Got more than you care
+to drink there?" he added to qualify his somewhat grabbing acceptance
+of the offer.
+
+"Yes," answered Peckover with grim significance.  Then checking himself
+as he was about to offer the drugged glass to the stranger, he
+exclaimed hastily, "Oh, that won't do."
+
+"Short of glasses?" said the other accommodatingly.  "I don't mind a
+tumbler to save time."  He spun one across to Peckover who emptied the
+remains of the bottle into it.  The stranger poured the wine down his
+throat without the action of swallowing.  "Ah, that's better!" he
+declared with a great sigh of enjoyment.
+
+"Walked too far?" Peckover suggested listlessly.  "Not used to it,
+p'raps?"
+
+"Got out of the way of it," the man explained.  "Three months aboard
+ship."
+
+"Australia?" Peckover suggested.
+
+The stranger nodded.  "That's it.  Come from London this morning.  Got
+out at Faxfleet to walk over here.  Lost my way in the woods."
+
+"Didn't come straight, then?"  Peckover had an indistinct recollection
+of having seen this fellow at the station, but had been too much
+flurried to take more than passing notice of him.  Were they companions
+in bad luck, he wondered.  "Have a glass of port," he said, warming
+towards his fellow-guest.
+
+"Your wine?  Thanks.  Good chap.  Crime to refuse old crusted, eh?"  He
+emptied the glass which Peckover promptly refilled.  Then put on a
+mysteriously significant look.  "No, I didn't come straight here, and
+for a good reason."  He sank his voice.  "Fact is, I'm dodging a
+bush-ranger."
+
+"What?" exclaimed Peckover, disinclined to take the statement seriously.
+
+The stranger pulled his chair close up to his companion, and tapped him
+with his forefinger on the knee.  "Look here," he said confidently.
+"You don't belong to these parts?  Nothing of the chawbacon about you.
+Town man?"
+
+"Slightly," answered Peckover, with a chastened pride in the
+undisputable claim.
+
+The other grasped his hand.  "I can trust you?"  Peckover, recovering
+from the cold thrill which the somewhat demonstrative clasp occasioned,
+nodded impressively.  "You are a smart Londoner," the stranger
+continued, "I'll tell you my situation, and get your advice.  Mind,
+though, it's a dead secret."
+
+"It soon will be with me," thought Peckover miserably, as he assured
+his companion on the point.
+
+Host Popkiss, glancing in at the door, saw the two in close confidence,
+and with the cocksureness usual with men of limited sagacity concluded
+that the "party" wanted by Mr. Doutfire had arrived and was trying the
+confidence trick on the new-fledged member of the peerage.  And having
+so settled it, he strolled out to keep a watchful eye for the detective.
+
+"It's downright romantic," the thirsty stranger was saying with an
+apologetic smile.  "Now, you wouldn't think it to look at me, but I'm a
+peer of the realm."
+
+"Jehoshaphat!" commented Peckover, more frank than polite.
+
+"Just the remark I made when I heard I was Lord Quorn," said the other
+pleasantly.  "Been sheep-farming in New South Wales for the last twelve
+years.  Not much luck of any sort, though, till the other day.  Got a
+letter to say distant cousin dead, and I had succeeded to the title.
+Not much trimming with it, they tell me.  Bit of tumble-down family
+property near here, Staplewick Towers, let to some grand lady."  He
+pulled out a letter and looked at the signature.  "Lady Agatha Hemyock,
+that's it," he said, exhibiting the letter as documentary evidence of
+his veracity.  "So I have just trotted down to take stock."
+
+"And where does the bush-ranger come in?" was Peckover's not unnatural
+inquiry.
+
+Lord Quorn wagged his head knowingly, and drank off another glass of
+port-wine without apology, as though the privilege of being made the
+recipient of a peer's confidences was in itself ample payment for the
+refreshment in question.  "Out there," the vague wave of his hand was
+understood to be towards New South Wales, "I used up my spare time
+flirting with a fine woman who had a figure and a will of her own.  She
+would not have me, though; refused me more than once: but hearing one
+fine day that she had said no to a real live lord she felt pretty sick.
+However, I wasn't going to give her another chance; not likely, seeing
+that, besides being somewhat off her, I knew I could have my pick over
+here.  Thereupon she accuses me of playing the giddy deceiver, and
+threatens to bring me to book for breach of promise.  Well, I smiled at
+that, but it rather sent me up a tree when she trotted out her brother,
+the bush-ranger."
+
+"My eye!" observed Peckover, interested in spite of himself.  "Fighting
+man, eh?"
+
+Lord Quorn nodded seriously.  "I saw him for the first time over here
+with her last night.  A desperate chap, I tell you," he went on
+anxiously, "who will stick at nothing--except your favourite vital part
+with a bowie knife."
+
+His auditor made a wry face to evince his sympathetic attention.
+
+"He keeps on show," Quorn continued, growing more and more dismally in
+earnest, "fire-irons he has snapped, gun-barrels he has tied in knots,
+crown pieces he has bitten through, eyes he has gouged out, preserved
+in spirits of wine, and pickled ears he has wrung off just for fun.
+I'm not exactly a coward, but what can you do against a man whose
+favourite pastime is twisting bullocks' heads off, and squeezing
+cannonballs out of shape."
+
+Peckover drew down the corners of his mouth and shook his head, finding
+himself fully in accord with the other's policy of non-resistance.
+"Awkward customer to tackle," was all the encouragement he could
+suggest.
+
+"Awkward!" repeated Lord Quorn in impatient contempt for the inadequate
+adjective, "You'd be the one to feel awkward with your nose divided in
+two, and your left ear in a piccalilli bottle on an amateur
+bush-ranger's mantelpiece.  Oh, I know," he continued in an exasperated
+tone, anticipating a trite and obvious piece of advice, "I could have
+the law of him, but there is precious small satisfaction in seeing a
+man go to prison out of your one remaining eye, and to know that when
+he comes out it will come out too.  Got any more liquor?"
+
+His apprehensive indignation left no room for the common courtesies of
+even coffee-room life, he was seething with the angry sense of
+impotence before this critical and grievous position.
+
+Peckover emptied the bottle into his glass.  "The last," he said, in a
+tone of sympathetic gloom; "and you're quite welcome."
+
+"Good Samaritan!" was Lord Quorn's casual acknowledgment as he tossed
+it off.  "Fact is," he proceeded to explain by way of tardy apology,
+"though I'm a swell and all that I am cleared out just now.  Drew a
+tidy sum for my travelling exes, but spent a few days in London, and a
+few pounds--you know what that means?"
+
+Peckover nodded a rakish appreciation.
+
+"Well," Quorn resumed darkly, "who should I clap eyes on last night at
+the play but my Australian girl and her infernal brother.  Followed me
+over, and on my track like an insurance agent.  Luckily she didn't see
+me, and he doesn't know me by sight.  Thinks I, best thing to do is to
+make a bolt down here and lie low till that bush-whacking nuisance eats
+his head off in London and has to go back to his happy hunting grounds.
+So, first thing to-day, sent a wire to Lady What's-her-name, and then
+found only just enough cash left in my pocket for third class to
+Faxfleet.  So I've tramped over.  That's the chronicle."
+
+"You've given your friends the slip?" Peckover suggested encouragingly.
+
+"Hope so," replied Quorn, doubtfully.  "But they'll track me like
+kangaroo hunters.  A woman has a fine scent for a title; a coronet is
+like a red herring.  But I say," he broke off, as though a trifle
+ashamed of having monopolized the interest of the colloquy; "what does
+a smart chap like you want in this dead-alive hole?  You are not in a
+mess?"
+
+Peckover's expression swiftly changed from altruistic interest to
+lugubrious self-pity.  "I am, though," he replied.  "Got Scotland Yard
+after me.  Don't be afraid," he protested hastily, as Lord Quorn's eyes
+opened wide with suspicion and he gave himself a slight, but
+significant, set-back in his chair; "I'm only half a criminal: the
+victim of circumstances.  Look here, confidence for confidence.  I'll
+tell you all about it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+"You may rely on my keeping my mouth shut," said Lord Quorn, giving a
+tremendous yawn which for the moment seemed to cast a doubt upon his
+ability in that direction.
+
+"It doesn't much matter," Peckover responded mournfully.  "Well," he
+proceeded, with a touch of chastened self-glorification, "you must know
+I've been flinging myself about in London."
+
+"Painting the town red, eh?"
+
+"Painting myself black, more like it," he retorted.  "Very pleasant,
+though, while it lasted.  You see," he explained conceitedly, "I always
+had ideas above my position, and some time back I thought I'd emerge
+from the grub state and do a bit of butterflying."
+
+Quorn nodded; so far in sympathy.
+
+"But," continued Peckover, "to be a butterfly in town you want a lot of
+dust on your wings; and when it comes to dressing a bit toffish,
+treating your friends, especially the ladies--and they've been my
+ruin"--he interjected with complacent self-reproach--"doing the Halls
+regular, and tooling your best girl out to Richmond or the Welsh Harp
+of a Sunday, why, five-and-thirty bob a week don't go far."
+
+Lord Quorn shook his head sleepily, as being in complete, if drowsy,
+accord with the estimate.
+
+"That figure," Peckover declared impressively, "was my blessed screw
+at--well, at an eminent firm of auctioneers.  Things were looking a bit
+bluish, a writ or two out against me, my tailor showed me no mercy, but
+his patience got shorter even than his thirteen bob trousers, in which,
+though too tight, as usual, I was ready to skip, when Jimmy Cutbush, a
+friend of mine in the racing world, put me on to a good thing which
+came off.  Jimmy drew my winnings and paid them over to me, promising
+plenty more tips of the same sort, till I began to understand how
+Rothschild feels; but, what do you think?"
+
+Lord Quorn was obviously not thinking anything worth mentioning just
+then, but, roused by the intensity with which the question was put, he
+rattled his ideas together and replied, "Ah, what?"
+
+"Cutbush drew good money," said Peckover, knitting his brows, and
+throwing into the statement all the impressiveness which a
+five-and-thirty shilling clerk and voluptuary has at command, "and paid
+me in bad; and there was I, swaggering about and paying my way, with a
+lot of wrong 'uns in my pocket.  That was pretty steep, eh?"
+
+Words failed Lord Quorn, in his present condition, adequately to
+characterize the situation; he contented himself by receiving it with
+an absurd grimace which was intended as an effective substitute for
+verbal comment.
+
+"Well," pursued his companion, accepting the distortion of feature in
+the spirit in which it was produced, "day before yesterday I drove down
+to Kempton to round proper on my pal, having likewise backed Cockalorum
+for the Great Comet Stakes."
+
+"Did that come off?" Quorn inquired with an effort.
+
+"No, but his jockey did, and landed me in a nice hole.  Then when I
+tackled Cutbush, all he had to say was to call me a Juggins, and ask me
+what I took him for.  'Well,' I says naturally, 'I've won this oof, and
+can't spend it'; 'well,' he says,'buy a moneybox and save it.'  Then,
+as if that wasn't enough, as I was driving home, rather down in my
+luck, I had the misfortune to run over a noble duke in Piccadilly.  His
+Grace was in the middle of the road, looking for his balance, but of
+course the police took his side--a duke is never drunk, only deaf.
+Having left them my name and address, as well as my blessing, I drove
+on, when suddenly my beast of a horse took it into his head to say his
+prayers; result, both knees damaged.  When I left the stables, after a
+little friction with the proprietor, my landlady meets me and says I
+had better not go home, as the police have been waiting for me all day.
+Now you know why I am here."
+
+Inspirited by realizing that his companion's personal narrative had
+come to an end, Lord Quorn was able to rouse himself.  "Hanged if you
+aren't worse off than I am," he declared with a yawn.  "Don't think I'd
+change place with you.  Rather run the risk of being chawed up by that
+bush-devil.  Well, what are you going to do?" he asked, with lethargic
+sympathy.  "Slip across the water?"
+
+For a moment Peckover debated with himself whether he should declare
+his expedient.  To conclude that it would serve no practical end.  "Oh,
+I've got a proper way out of my troubles," he answered enigmatically.
+
+"Glad to hear it," Quorn replied indifferently.  "They are rather
+unkind to people who enter into competition with the Mint, aren't they?
+Well," he concluded, taken with a fresh access of yawning, "I hope
+you'll give 'em the slip.  Wish I could help you, but," he added
+waggishly, as giving a cheerful wind-up to the somewhat depressing
+mutual confidences; "you see it is more than I can do at present to
+help myself."
+
+To drive home his double meaning he reversed the empty bottle, and then
+began sleepily to fill his pipe, humming a comic song the while.
+
+"He's cut out for a lord," was Peckover's mental comment as he sat
+watching his companion with some contempt.  He was perhaps a little
+disgusted and disappointed that the story of his chapter of ill-luck
+and present critical position should have had no deeper or more lasting
+effect upon the man who had been so glad of his hospitality.  Peer or
+no peer, he might know better than to sing "Peculiar Julia" by way of
+dirge for one whose minutes of life, or at any rate, liberty, was
+numbered.  So he sat in disgust, watching the drowsy nobleman strike a
+match, and being too sleepy to apply it to his pipe, hold it, nodding,
+till the flame touched his fingers and brought him to with a start and
+a smothered word of objurgation.  "A pretty addition to the peerage,"
+he muttered with a sneer.  "Lord Quorn, indeed!  A fellow who hadn't
+the sense to keep awake when he had a lighted match in his hand.  And
+here was Percy Peckover--"  Suddenly a circumstance which the
+companionship had driven out of his mind recurred to him.  Both the
+landlord and his daughter had called him my lord.  It had seemed a
+feeble provincial joke, but it was now in a flash made intelligible.
+"Of course," he exclaimed under his breath as he started up at the
+thought, "I understand now.  They have been taking me for him.  That's
+what they meant by their silly my-lording.  And if that's the case, why
+shouldn't they go on taking him for me!  If they only would till I can
+get clear out of this, I might give that precious detective the slip
+and get clean away."
+
+With eyes full of the hopeful project he stood looking at the noble
+slumberer, then suddenly turned and tip-toed to the door.
+
+Quiet as it was, the movement half roused Quorn.  "Jul-i-ah, Jul-i-ah!
+Why are you so very pecu-li-ah?" he sang sleepily.
+
+Peckover stopped and looked back.  "I'll try it," he muttered.  "It's a
+bold stroke, but--where's that mug of a landlord?"  He opened the door
+softly, and stole out.
+
+A sudden gust caught the window, and the rattle woke Quorn with a
+start.  He sat up, staring round stupidly, and found himself alone and
+thirsty with a full glass of champagne on the table before him.  He
+stared at it, then round the room again.
+
+"Gone?" he exclaimed.  "Flash little coiner chap gone?  Sin to waste
+good liquor."  With the word he took up the wine and tossed it off;
+then set down the glass with a wry face.  "Queer brand!" he ejaculated.
+"Faugh!  Filthy stuff--or else----"  He got up with a shiver of
+disgust, and faced the doorway just in time to see his late companion
+peep in.  "I say, Mr. Ooff-merchant!" he called out, pointing to the
+empty glass, "What's the matter with this stuff?"
+
+Occupied with the strange chance of escape, Peckover had for the moment
+forgotten all about his drugged wine.  As his eye followed Quorn's
+unsteady finger, he went cold, and his knees knocked together.  In a
+flash he saw his effective way of escape cut off and--what was
+worse--his own predicament intensified a thousand-fold.  "You've never
+drunk that?" he gasped, when his dry tongue could articulate.
+
+"I have though," Quorn replied, regarding him with fearful suspicion.
+
+Peckover clasped his head and staggered forward.  "You're a dead man,"
+he exclaimed hoarsely.
+
+"Scott!  What do you mean?" cried Quorn, going pale.
+
+"It was--doctored," stammered the other, hardly knowing what he said.
+
+"Poison?" demanded Quorn in a horrified tone, clutching fiercely at
+Peckover who dodged, as frightened as he.
+
+Then he gave a laugh of desperation.  "Well, yes, if you like to call
+it so.  It's as good as murder," he assured himself in a woeful
+whisper.  "What am I to do?"  He ran to the window, but was arrested by
+a cry from his companion, and turned to see him collapse in a chair.
+"Here, wake up!  Stand up!  You'll be all right," he cried, desperately
+shaking him.
+
+"Oh, I do feel queer," muttered Quorn.  The irises of his eyes seemed
+to turn up into his head, and he fell forward on the table insensible,
+with his too liberal entertainer standing over him aghast.
+
+What was he to do?  If he called for help, everything would come out,
+and he would be taken red-handed.
+
+"He's done for, poor fellow," he told himself in a terrified whisper,
+trembling in every joint.  "He's a dead man.  I'd better follow him."
+He caught up the fatal glass, but it was empty.  "Not a drop left.  Ah,
+there will be another sort of drop for me," he whispered through his
+chattering teeth.  "What shall I do?"  Then his face sensibly
+brightened as the idea of his desperate expedient, which had been
+frightened away, came back to him.  "Ah, that's it!" he muttered.
+"That's my only chance.  They think I'm Lord Quorn.  Now is my real tip
+to be Lord Quorn.  No one here knows him, and he's not so very unlike
+Percy Peckover.  Quick!"  He ran to the window and pulled the curtains
+across; then hurried back and began feverishly searching the lifeless
+man's pockets.
+
+"Any papers to identify him?  Ah!"  He pulled out a packet of letters,
+and transferred them to his own pocket, replacing them by some bills
+and a writ.
+
+[Illustration: "He pulled out a packet of letters, and transferred them
+to his own pocket."]
+
+"That's it," he muttered.  "They're of no use to him now, and may save
+an innocent man from the gallows."  He set the empty phial into Quorn's
+limp hand.  "There!" he exclaimed, as with a long drawn sigh of
+desperate relief he surveyed the position.  "Percy Peckover is dead.
+Long live Lord Quorn!  It's a fair desperate shift; but I can't be
+worse off than I was, and I may be better."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+The shuffling of feet sounded outside the door, and Peckover had just
+time to throw himself into a chair at some distance from Lord Quorn and
+snatch up a newspaper when the landlord came in accompanied by Mr.
+Doutfire.
+
+With a well simulated yawn, Peckover threw down the paper wearily and
+nodded at Popkiss.  "Any one from the Towers yet, landlord?" he asked
+in his best off-hand style.
+
+"Not yet, my lord," the host answered, ceremoniously important, to
+impress Mr. Doutfire and to show that official that he was not the only
+eminent personage of his acquaintance.
+
+Peckover yawned again, and affected to consult his Waterbury with as
+much flourish as was consistent with the necessity for concealing the
+fact that it was not a hundred guinea repeater.
+
+"Beg pardon, my lord," observed Popkiss, indicating the renowned
+representative of the law who already had a severe and suspicious eye
+upon the collapsed form at the farther end of the room; "this is the
+gentleman I spoke to you about."
+
+"Oh, ah, good evening," Peckover said, acknowledging the interesting
+introduction as airily as the critical nature of the situation
+permitted.
+
+Having dealt with the social side of the detective's presence, Mr.
+Popkiss' fat face became stern as he proceeded to justify it from a
+business point of view.
+
+"Is that your man?" he observed, somewhat superfluously, indicating
+Quorn.
+
+The alert Doutfire already within pouncing distance of his quarry was
+unfolding the telegram.  "Five foot seven."  Quorn's doubled-up
+attitude made an accurate estimate of his inches somewhat difficult and
+untrustworthy.  Mr. Doutfire, glanced under the table, taking in his
+legs, allowed for turnings and swiftly added the measurement to the
+body and head, mentally straightened out for the purpose.  The total
+was evidently not inconsistent with the official dimension, since he
+passed on.  "Dark hair," he nodded, availing himself of a certain
+latitude which the somewhat vague adjective allowed.  "Slight
+moustache," Quorn's was clipped like to a toothbrush, and the
+description held.  "Flash dress."  For a moment Mr. Doutfire looked
+doubtful.  With all a true police official's desire to make description
+tally, it was plain that a very considerable point would have to be
+stretched before that Colonial get-up could be classed as flashy.  In
+search of some hidden evidence of the toff in apparel, Mr. Doutfire
+drew aside the lappel of Quorn's coat.  Some papers sticking half-way
+out of the breast pocket were thus disclosed.  Deftly Mr. Doutfire
+whipped them out, glanced at them, and a gleam of satisfaction shot
+across his face.  "My man," he announced, with a touch of pardonable
+triumph which thrillingly communicated itself to Peckover, whose
+principal employment during the process of identification had been to
+keep his teeth from chattering.  "Here!  Wake up, my man!" the
+detective cried, roughly shaking the irresponsive form.  "Wake up,
+Peckover, you're wanted."  Then suddenly as he turned the limp body
+over, his face fell from complacency to blank disappointment.  "Why,
+burn me, Popkiss," he exclaimed savagely, "if I don't think he has
+given me the slip."
+
+"What?" cried that worthy, as resenting his implied complicity in the
+fiasco.  "Not dead?" he added, with as much awe as a quadruple chin can
+express.
+
+"Or next door," replied Doutfire, clinging to the shadow of a hope
+which experience belied.
+
+"Next door," echoed Popkiss, losing the man in the innkeeper.  "I wish
+he was.  I don't want no suicide in my respectable house."
+
+"Well, you've got it, Popkiss," retorted Doutfire, as he picked up and
+sniffed at the phial which had fallen from the lifeless hand.  "Poison,
+if I know anything.  Send for a doctor."
+
+The exigency of the situation roused Mr. Popkiss' sluggish faculties
+into prompt action.  "Here, Mercy!" he bawled.  "Mercy!  Quick!  Run
+for Dr. Barton directly.  Gentleman taken bad."
+
+"Now Mr. D.," he proceeded, puffing with excitement, when Miss Mercy,
+in a state of disgust at the contingencies to which licensed premises
+are liable, had gone off through the rain with such haste as was
+compatible with due care for her personal appearance, "if you don't
+want to ruin me, for heaven's sake keep this unfortunate business as
+quiet as you can."
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Popkiss," the detective replied, assuming at once the
+mastery of the situation, "certainly, so far, that is, as is compatible
+with the due requirements of the law."
+
+"Can't you take him out of here?" Peckover suggested, as he began to
+feel the strain on his nerves.
+
+"Ah, we might do that, Mr. D., with your permission," the landlord
+begged submissively.  All his importance was gone now; the last five
+minutes had turned him into a fat, abject slave, ready to grovel at any
+man's feet.
+
+"Don't care to move him till the doctor arrives," objected Doutfire,
+less by way of conforming with legal procedure than of asserting his
+authority.  Mr. Popkiss had thrown open an inner door.  "Only just
+through here, Mr. D.," he whined spasmodically.  "Nice snug little
+room; better for the doctor and--and all parties," he urged.
+"Gentleman, I mean nobleman there," he sank his wheezy voice and jerked
+his head towards Peckover; "Lord Quorn, on his way to the Towers.  Very
+distressing for his lordship as it is for me.  You'll oblige an old
+friend, Mr. D.!"
+
+The appeal was so abject that Mr. Doutfire felt he was losing nothing
+of his importance by yielding.  "Lend a hand, then," he said, having
+first judicially inspected the room in question.  Between them, with
+much puffing and wheezy mutterings, they carried out the limp form, and
+as the door closed upon them Peckover's air of lofty indifference fell
+from him as a garment, and resting his elbows on his knees and bowing
+his head on his hands he collapsed into a state of utter fear and
+misery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+From this flaccid condition he was roused by a somewhat obstreperous
+knocking and whistling in the passage dividing the coffee-room from the
+bar.  In a moment he had sprung up and run to the window, which he
+threw open, and stood there ready to bolt through it if necessary.
+
+"What ho!  Anybody alive here?" a voice called out.  "Hi, yi!  Where do
+I come in?"
+
+As the invocation and inquiry seemed reassuring.  Peckover turned back
+into the room as the door opened and a man in a dripping mackintosh
+appeared looking in.
+
+"Hullo!" he exclaimed.  "I can't find anybody worth mentioning.  Bar
+empty as a mortuary chapel.  Young lady in the cellar hiding from the
+thunderstorm, eh?  You don't happen to be the proprietor of the
+establishment?"
+
+"Not exactly," Peckover answered, wondering what kind of customer he
+had come across now.
+
+"That's near enough," said the man in the mackintosh.  "You're alive at
+any rate.  Well, somebody has looked after you all right," he remarked,
+eyeing the remains of Peckover's last dinner.
+
+"Oh, yes, I've dined," Peckover replied loftily.
+
+"You bet.  Like a lord," assented the stranger cheerfully.  "By the
+way"--he scrutinized him curiously, much to that gentleman's
+uneasiness--"by the way, you don't by any chance happen to be a lord?"
+
+Something in the man's manner suggested a reason for the inquiry other
+than mere chaff.  "Suppose I am?" returned Peckover, with his best
+attempt at an enigmatical smile.  The newcomer stared at him as though
+unable to make up his mind to risk a question, and as he hesitated, the
+dripping mackintosh made a circle of water round him.  "Well, if you
+are----" he stopped, and abruptly changed the subject.  "Staying here?"
+he asked; "or just waiting till the rain stops?"
+
+"That's it," Peckover answered, scarcely knowing how to take the fellow.
+
+"Far to go?"
+
+"Few miles, I'm waiting for the carriage," said Peckover casually,
+remembering what Quorn had told him.
+
+"H'm!"  The man looked at him as though stoked to blowing-off point
+with curiosity.  "Not going Staplewick Towers way?"
+
+The problem as to whether it were better to say yes or no was too
+complex for Peckover's present state of mind.
+
+"That's my way," he declared, and chanced it.
+
+The stranger's face brightened with anticipation.  "Going to the
+Towers, perhaps?" he asked with hopeful persistence.  Peckover nodded
+in as non-committal a fashion as he could command.  "Why," cried the
+other, "I do believe I'm in luck after all.  You hinted just now you
+might be a lord.  You don't tell me you are Lord Quorn?"
+
+"You've guessed it."
+
+With another word the stranger turned and walked energetically to some
+pegs at the end of the room, unbuttoned the humid mackintosh and hung
+it up; also his hat.  Then, with business-like action, he came back and
+favoured the astonished Peckover with a long stare of gratified
+curiosity.  "Excuse me," he said, "but it's more than curious that the
+man I have been hunting all the week should run across me like this."
+
+Instantly Peckover remembered Quorn's amateur bush-ranger.
+
+"You're from New South Wales?" he faltered.
+
+"Wrong," the other declared cheerfully.  "You're not quite as good at
+guessing as yours truly.  I'm from Tasmania, I'm proud and happy to
+say."
+
+It struck Peckover that the dapper, well-knit man with the keen
+hustler's face set in straight black hair could hardly be Quorn's
+bully.  He could not quite imagine the man before him spending even his
+leisure time in trying feats of strength on his long-suffering
+neighbours who chanced to displease him, to say nothing of cattle and
+fire-irons.
+
+Just then Mr. Popkiss appeared, and approached Peckover with a mien of
+deferential apology.  "Beg pardon, my lord," he said confidentially,
+"but I'm glad to say that Dr. Barton has had that unfortunate mishap
+removed to his surgery, which is a great relief to me, and I must
+apologize to your lordship for the unpleasantness occurring on my
+respectable premises.  We've never had anything of the kind occur
+before."
+
+"Oh, you couldn't help it," Peckover replied graciously, his wits more
+keenly about him.  "He ought to have known better, but people, I
+believe, are very careless about these matters.  I didn't see what the
+poor fellow was up to."
+
+"No, my lord; naturally, my lord."
+
+"Now, landlord, since you've seen fit to come to light, bring us a
+bottle of your best champagne," directed the stranger.
+
+Mr. Popkiss, who had been inclined to disregard the new customer, at
+once became exceedingly attentive and bustled off on his errand, since
+a hungry guest is worth twenty full ones.
+
+No sooner was he gone than the man drew his chair up to Peckover's and
+said quietly: "Now that I know I'm really right and you are Lord Quorn,
+I've got a proposal, a genuine business proposition to make to you."
+
+"Have you?" replied Peckover, wondering what in the world was coming,
+and cursing Popkiss who came in just then with the wine and so delayed
+the explanation of the mystery.
+
+The stranger's quick eye had caught the similarity of the labels on the
+bottles.  "Why you've been having one of the best too," he remarked.
+Then added in an undertone as the fussy Popkiss left them, "I thought
+in your case the title didn't carry exactly a million with it."
+
+"No, not exactly," Peckover replied equivocally.  "But I don't see what
+business that is of yours," he added by an afterthought, to maintain
+his dignity.
+
+"You will directly, though," the other retorted.  "Till then I beg to
+apologize.  Now look here," he touched glasses with his companion,
+"luck; and may we both get what we want, which is assured if we come to
+terms."  They emptied their glasses, and the stranger, refilling them,
+leant forward to whispering distance.
+
+"No time to lose, if this matter is to go through," he said in a
+business-like undertone.  "So I won't beat about the bush.  This fat
+publican"--he jerked his head backwards towards the bar--"knows you are
+Lord Quorn.  Does any one else know it in these parts?"
+
+The question was put so purposefully that Peckover had no hesitation in
+answering it frankly.  "No one but the barmaid.  I've not been here
+more than two hours."
+
+"That's all right.  Now for my proposition."  He drew up yet an inch or
+two closer to Peckover.  "First of all it is necessary for me to state
+I am a rich man; well, practically a millionaire."
+
+Peckover pushed back his own chair.  "I say; no room for the confidence
+trick here, old man," he exclaimed suspiciously.  "Try next door."
+
+"Pouf!" the stranger contemptuously blew away the suggestion.
+"'Confidence trick?'  It's the other way on.  It is I who am going to
+place the confidence in your lordship.  Now, look.  Here is my proposal
+in a word.  You're a poor man, or at least a poor peer; I'm a rich man.
+We are both of us practically unknown over here.  I want you to sell me
+your title."
+
+"What?" cried Peckover in amazement.
+
+"Don't make a noise," said the other quietly.  "If this transaction is
+to go through, as, if you are not a fool, it will, the less attention
+we call to ourselves for the moment the better.  Just hear what I've
+got to say.  My name is Gage.  Come into property down under from my
+father.  Now I'm, as I say, a millionaire.  But the devil of being a
+millionaire is, when you are nobody in particular but a millionaire,
+that you don't and can't get value for your money."
+
+"Ah!"  Peckover nodded sagaciously as he began to comprehend.
+
+"Now," pursued Mr. Gage, "an ordinary person would imagine that a man
+with an income nearer forty than thirty thousand could have for the
+asking--and the paying for--the best of everything this world has to
+offer.  All rot.  An outsider like myself with the income I have
+mentioned doesn't have nearly such a good time as a smart young sprig
+of good family, who's been born and bred in the swim, can get with a
+beggarly fifteen hundred a year."
+
+"That's right enough," Peckover assented with an air of endorsing from
+experience that profound truth.
+
+Mr. Gage took out a coin and laid it on the table.  "There's a
+sovereign," he said, tapping it impressively, while his companion eyed
+it covetously.  "There it is.  Coin of the realm.  Value fixed and
+accepted all the world over, you'd say.  Yet it's a strange thing, as
+society is constituted, that, according to the value to be got out of
+it, to one man it will be worth, say, five and thirty shillings, and to
+another about six and sixpence.  You follow me?"
+
+Mr. Peckover intimated by a knowing nod that not only did he follow the
+argument, but that, as a member of the aristocracy, he was prepared to
+back it by getting the enhanced value from the coin in question.
+
+"The reason is," continued Mr. Gage, "that when you are what what's
+called an outsider you have to pay, and pay double and treble for
+everything.  And when you've paid, and paid till you're sick of
+shelling out, you find you haven't got half what, if you'd only been
+'class,' you'd have got gratis for nothing."
+
+"That's so," Peckover assented dogmatically.
+
+"The millionaire business has been overdone," Gage proceeded, warming
+feelingly as he got into the swing of his grievance.  "Men like myself
+have been in too much of a hurry to buy up all the cake in the
+universe, consequently the price has gone up for it, and now, instead
+of a good substantial slice for a reasonable sum, we get only a few
+crumbs at famine prices."
+
+"No doubt," Peckover agreed, getting impatient of the preamble and
+anxious to come to the gist of the offer.
+
+"The fact is," Gage went on, hammering one fist on the other
+emphatically, "money by itself is a delusion and a daily eye-opener.
+Money with a title like yours is quite another pair of shoes.  If you
+reckon its purchasing power, and that's what justifies its existence,
+the golden sovereign in a millionaire's pocket dwindles to the size of
+a threepenny bit, and in a peer's it expands to the size of this."  He
+held up a dinner plate.
+
+"Inconveniently bulky," observed Peckover with a grin.
+
+"That's merely my illustration of the fact," said Gage severely, as
+deprecating cheap witticism in business discussions.  "Anyhow, I am
+content to put up with the inconvenience.  I want to have a good time.
+Fate has given me money with one hand and with the other prevents my
+getting value for it.  I don't want to waste time in building up a
+social position for myself; I want one ready-made, now; when I can
+enjoy it.  You want to have a good time, a better time than you'll get
+living on an empty title which means starving at Staplewick Towers.
+You're just the man I have been looking out for.  When I heard of your
+being found in Australia, I determined to do business with you if I
+could catch you soon enough, before you got known."
+
+"Well, what do you propose?" Peckover asked, a vista of escape and the
+enjoyment of a snatched opulence opening before him.
+
+"I propose," Gage replied impressively, "that you should allow me to
+assume the title, the identity and privileges of Lord Quorn.  After
+all, you did not expect to come into it; you are a backblocksman, like
+myself; only my father made it pay, and you hadn't begun to when you
+were sent for to join the House of Lords.  So far as any one outside
+our two skins is concerned it doesn't matter a rush whether you are
+Lord Quorn, or I.  So far as the British constitution goes there's no
+divine right about you, visible at least to the naked eye, that I don't
+possess.  You don't feel anything like it inside, do you?"
+
+"Can't say I do," answered Peckover, with more instant conviction than
+the other could possibly give him credit for.
+
+"No," resumed Gage; "we are of the same make, I guess; and if it suits
+us to make a fair exchange, why nobody's hurt."
+
+"Just so," assented Peckover.  "Well, what's your offer?"
+
+"Four thousand a year, paid monthly, as long as you let me hold the
+title undisputed."
+
+Four thousand a year!  It was as much as the
+thirty-five-shillings-a-week clerk could do to refrain from an
+astounded whistle at his luck.  But he did repress it, and, shrewdly
+grappling with the overwhelming proposition, replied, after what seemed
+a calculating pause, "Make it five thou., and it's a bargain."
+
+Five thousand had been the figure of Mr. Gage's willingness; only, in
+accordance with a well-established business method, he had offered less
+than he was ready to give.
+
+"All right," he replied.  "Five thousand while I'm Lord Quorn.  We
+shan't need a written contract.  It will be as much to your interest to
+keep quiet as it will be mine to write you a cheque on the--let's
+see--the ninth of every month.  So that's settled, eh?"  He refilled
+the glasses.
+
+"Yes, my lord, that's settled," responded Peckover with a grin, and
+feeling happier than at any time during the past twenty-four hours.
+"Here's health and the best of luck to your lordship."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+"I don't quite see ourselves bluffing all and sundry that you are Lord
+Quorn," Peckover said doubtfully, as they finished the bottle.
+
+"My good sir," replied Gage, "I don't see how we can help taking them
+in if we make up our minds to do it.  Just think; what man is there
+alive who could really, logically prove his own identity if he were put
+to it.  Not one of us.  We are just accepted by the world as William
+White and Henry Black, John Thompson or Thomas Johnson; and in most
+cases correctly so.  In one case in ten thousand the world makes a big
+mistake, but it doesn't count for much."
+
+"Suppose not," observed Peckover, wondering whether he would not have
+plenty of enforced leisure for counting if the world should find out
+its mistake about him.
+
+"Very few people know us over here," argued Gage; "and the few who do
+can be easily bluffed, if it comes to that.  If we both swear to the
+same thing, who can stand against us?"
+
+"No, that's right enough," Peckover agreed.
+
+"Now I've been thinking," continued Gage, "that it won't do for us to
+part company till this little arrangement of ours can run along without
+pushing.  You must come over to these Towers with me and see how the
+land lies.  We shall want to spend some money, at least I shall, so you
+had better be a rich friend I picked up on the voyage, and we can
+pretend the ready comes out of your pocket."
+
+"But only Lord Quorn is asked," Peckover objected.
+
+"Oh," replied Gage, "a rich man is always sure of a welcome.  He may be
+expected to pay for it, but there it is, all ready for him, if he asks
+for it cheque-book in hand."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Perhaps it may not be a very genuine article; a sort of rolled-gold
+welcome for which you are expected to pay as though it were twenty-two
+carat all through.  But it will wear long enough for our purposes, and
+the adulteration won't be all on their side."
+
+Host Popkiss looked in.  "Rain clearing off, my lord," he announced.
+"I expect Colonel Hemyock will be here directly to welcome your
+lordship."
+
+"All right, landlord," replied Gage.  "In the meantime my friend and I
+are quite comfortable here."
+
+Popkiss stared at him, in mind to resent what he considered an
+irreverent liberty.
+
+"Still, I shan't be sorry to find myself at the Towers," Gage observed
+casually.
+
+This was rather more than Popkiss could stand.  He did not approve of
+casual customers (even if they ordered champagne) playing unseemly
+jokes with noble guests in his coffee-room.  "Beg pardon, sir," he said
+with puffing severity, "I was addressing myself to Lord Quorn."
+
+"Then," returned Gage, "you were addressing yourself to me."
+
+In consequence of the superincumbent fat which circumvallated them Mr.
+Popkiss could not open his eyes very wide, but, as far as the muffling
+flesh permitted, his spacious face was understood to express an
+electrifying astonishment amounting almost to incredulity.  "Lord
+Quorn?  You, sir?" he gasped.
+
+"Look here, my venerable joker."  Peckover beckoned the bewildered
+Popkiss to him by a backward jerk of the head. "You've been tying
+yourself up in the wrong bag all the afternoon.  I've let you go on
+because I never spoil a good joke, but now my friend and
+fellow-traveller, Lord Quorn, has appeared, it is about time your folly
+was pointed out to you."
+
+"I'm sure I'm very sorry, my lord," the discomfited Popkiss apologized.
+"But as this gentleman did not deny it when I addressed him as my lord,
+and as we were expecting your lordship to honour my poor house, why,
+the mistake was only natural."
+
+"That's all right," replied Gage.
+
+"You're forgiven," grinned Peckover.
+
+Wheels sounded under the archway of the courtyard, and Popkiss was glad
+to bustle out.  "I had my doubts about him all the time," he told
+himself in extenuation of his error.  "If I'd seen them both together
+at first I should ha' known at once that 'tother was the lord."
+
+Meanwhile the two confederates were laughing at each other over the
+success of the first step on the path that promised to be so pleasant
+for both.
+
+They composed their faces as the door was thrown open and Colonel
+Hemyock and the Misses Ethel and Dagmar Hemyock, accompanied by John
+Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, were ushered in with breathless ceremony by the
+egregious Popkiss.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" the Colonel inquired in a tone of pompous cordiality.
+
+Popkiss unctuously indicated Gage, who came forward with plausible
+aplomb.
+
+Then the ladies were presented, and Sharnbrook noticed gleefully the
+dead-set that lurked in their eyes.  His escape, he told himself, was
+now assured.
+
+"May I present my friend, Mr. Percival Gage?" the supposititious Lord
+Quorn said, as, taking the permission for granted, he brought up
+Peckover, whom, however, the Hemyock trio regarded a trifle doubtfully.
+"Made a fine position for himself out in our part of the world," Gage
+continued half confidentially, "and has come over to the old country to
+enjoy the fruits of his good fortune."
+
+The ladies instantly thawed.  The golden sun easily gets through
+snobbery's thin coating of ice.  They looked at his aggressive diamond,
+excused his vulgar flashiness on the ground of Colonial ignorance, and
+received his advances with as much gush as was left over from the
+lavish expenditure on the _soi-disant_ Lord Quorn.
+
+"A millionaire," Gage observed to the colonel, sinking his confidential
+tone yet a little.  The highly starched Colonel became almost limp
+under such a shower of good fortune.
+
+"I--ah--hope Mr. Gage will do us the honour of staying at Staplewick,"
+he said, and there was no doubt that he meant it.  "Lady Agatha will be
+charmed.  Any friend of Lord Quorn's will be more than welcome."
+
+So after a few more flourishes, it was settled.  Mr. Gage's luggage had
+unfortunately gone astray, but his costume would be excused that
+evening by Lady Agatha, and next day a complete outfit, the visitor
+declared, would be a mere question of the resources of Great Bunbury.
+
+Presently the neglected but chuckling John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook was
+noticed, and casually, as a matter of grace, introduced.  He lost no
+time in getting on easy terms with his prospective deliverer.
+
+"I'm the tenant of your shooting, Lord Quorn."
+
+"Hope you get good sport?" Gage replied politely.
+
+"Birds thick as cabbages," Sharnbrook assured him.  "I hope you will
+come out with me and see for yourself.  Of course you and your friend
+shoot?"
+
+"I should just think we did," Peckover chipped in with an eagerness due
+to the near realization of one of the dreams of his life.  Hitherto his
+shooting had taken place under cover at the rate of seven shoots for
+six-pence, and the presentation of a cocoa-nut if by luck or
+markmanship he rang the bell.
+
+That so bucolic and provoking a person as Sharnbrook at present clothed
+in the contempt woven of familiarity should be allowed to monopolize
+the distinguished guests by his stupid sporting chatter was
+intolerable.  Accordingly he was promptly snubbed and thrust aside.
+Then, amid much smirking and exhibition of the best side of everybody's
+face, a move was made for the phaeton.  Gage surreptitiously slipped a
+bank note into Peckover's hand, with which, and with a grand flourish,
+that unexpected plutocrat settled the somewhat exorbitant demands of
+Mr. Popkiss, and bestowed a liberal guerdon, accompanied by a wink, on
+Miss Mercy.  Then with what excitement and the nearest approach to
+cheers a country town on a wet evening can furnish the distinguished
+party drove off to Staplewick Towers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+"It is too bad of you, Ethel.  I do wish you would mind your own
+business and confine your attentions to either old Sharnbrook or Lord
+Quorn.  The way you try to flirt with Mr. Gage is disgraceful.  Even
+you ought to be ashamed of it."
+
+"My dear Dagmar," her sister replied blandly, "Sharnbrook is, as you
+always said, after finding he preferred me to you, an idiot.  Only fit
+to be a keeper at the Zoo, or curator of a Natural History museum.
+Four thousand a year is utterly wasted on him."
+
+"No reason why it should, or should not, be wasted on his wife,"
+returned Dagmar shrewdly.
+
+"Lord Quorn," pursued Ethel, "falls to you by right.  A coronet, when
+he can afford one, will no doubt suit your style of beauty."
+
+"Thank you," retorted Dagmar, "I happen to prefer reality to mere show.
+Quorn hasn't a penny to speak of, Mr. Gage is as rich as anybody need
+be."
+
+"He is hopelessly vulgar, and has an unhappy knack of making himself
+ridiculous," Ethel argued.
+
+"All millionaires are vulgar and absurd," her sister rejoined.  "It is
+expected of them.  People wouldn't believe in their money if they
+didn't bound and make fools of themselves.  Mother says Mr. Gage's
+vulgarity is as good as an auditor's certificate--whatever that may be.
+And if he has taken a tremendous fancy to me----"
+
+Dagmar flared up.  "What conceited impudence!  You want everybody.  You
+are the elder and Lord Quorn properly falls to you.  Failing him,
+Sharnbrook."
+
+"John Arbuthnot," said Ethel dreamily, "has the bad taste not to be
+very keen, and Gage is."
+
+"Quorn's all right," Dagmar suggested.
+
+"Then you have him, dear," her sister retorted.  "Plain Percy Gage is
+good enough for me."
+
+As Ethel was clearly holding to her point, and that not a point of
+honour, Dagmar saw that a mere appeal to her better feelings was
+futile.  "Tell you what it is, my dear," she said, changing her
+tactics.  "If you go on like this we shall lose Quorn and the
+millionaire bounder and old Sharnbrook into the bargain.  We must have
+the coronet and the million in the family."
+
+"All right," Ethel agreed, after a few moments' calculation.  "Let's
+compromise and give each other a fair chance with Gage.  Suppose we
+take it in turns to bring him to the scratch."  She took a pack of
+cards from a box.  "Cut for first innings.  First knave; two out of
+three."
+
+"Why knave?" Dagmar objected, "Gage is more of a f--the other thing."
+
+"Perhaps," Ethel agreed.  "Anyhow, the knave is the nearest approach to
+him in a pack of cards' catalogue of humanity."
+
+They began to cut with business-like eagerness.  Presently Ethel held
+up the desired card.  "Hurrah!  Knave!" she cried exultingly.
+
+From the amiable Miss Dagmar's protracted lips came the sound of an
+exclamation not unlike that which profane men are said to utter when
+the last match is puffed out with the pipe still unlighted.  "Two out
+of three," she insisted, and with the next turn cut a knave also.  But
+fate favoured Ethel, who cut the third.
+
+"My first try," she cried.
+
+"Wish you joy of Gage," said Dagmar spitefully.
+
+"Now, Dagmar," her sister protested, "it's a bargain.  Half an hour of
+uninterrupted running."
+
+"All right," replied Dagmar hopefully.  "Then I relieve guard, and you
+turn out.  I take up the running and so on alternately, till one of us
+lands him."  "Which shall not be so very long first," she promised
+herself.
+
+"Let's find out where he is."  Ethel, with business-like promptitude,
+sprang to the bell and rang it.  "Of course," she observed
+complacently, "whichever of us does not bag Gage will have the
+reversion of Quorn or old Sharnbrook."
+
+"Of course," Dagmar agreed with a suggested determination that the
+privilege in question should not be hers.  "Fancy Sharnbrook!  Ferrets
+in one's bedroom."
+
+"Rats where you least expect them," Ethel chimed in, hilarious at what
+she was resolved should be her sister's fate.
+
+"That idiotic one-legged partridge," cried Dagmar.
+
+"Pet mice asleep in your boots," responded Ethel.
+
+"Pattern of the carpet undecipherable for fox-terriers."
+
+"Wouldn't I put my foot down on them," declared Ethel grimly.  "Is Mr.
+Gage visible yet, Bisgood?" she inquired of the butler who now appeared.
+
+A very faint film of suppressed amusement seemed to spread over the
+well regulated face of Mr. Bisgood.  "Mr. Gage went out riding this
+morning," he answered woodenly.  "His lordship accompanied him."
+
+"Have they returned?"
+
+Again the haze of enjoyment seemed to blur the suave features.  "No,
+miss," Bisgood answered, and there might have been detected a slight,
+ever so slight, catch in the unctuous voice; "Mr. Gage did not get far.
+Harlequin was rather fresh."
+
+"Did--did anything go wrong?"  It was Dagmar who asked the question.
+
+This time there was no doubt about the abnormal expression on the
+butler's sleek face.  "Well, miss," he replied, with an apologetic
+grin, "I believe Mr. Gage came off."
+
+Without trusting his dignity to carry him through any elaboration of
+the bare and pointed statement, Bisgood, turned abruptly from the room.
+
+Miss Ethel tried to laugh off a certain sense of annoyance.  Till she
+had tried and failed Gage was more or less her property.  "Poor Gage,"
+she exclaimed.  "Fancy his taking a toss.  I hope he has not damaged
+himself.  That brute Harlequin!"
+
+"Now, Dagmar, dear, honour between--knaves.  You will take Quorn and
+Sharnbrook off while I have my innings, won't you?  I'll do as much for
+you."
+
+"All right," she answered, still rather sulky.  "But mind, no unfair
+advantage.  No running me down, or falling into his arms."
+
+"No, no," Ethel assured her; "that's a last resort.  We may have to
+toss for that later on."
+
+"There's mother coming across the lawn," Dagmar remarked with a yawn of
+indifference.  "You had better be off and console the noble sportsman."
+
+And as the fair Ethel vanished through the door, Lady Agatha Hemyock
+came in by the French window.  She was a woman of somewhat stately
+presence, acquired by long practice of standing on ceremony and on her
+dignity.  Her face was well set off by white hair dressed straight up
+from her forehead, pompadour fashion, which had the effect of bringing
+into rather aggressive prominence her sharp physiognomy which she could
+make, when she chose, the vehicle of a gamut of remarkable expressions.
+In French phrase, her face jumped at you; nevertheless, had not the
+nose been rather too long and too sharp she would have been as
+good-looking as she was wily.  Among her ladyship's more prominent
+accomplishments was an interesting trick of carrying on a conversation
+with one person while she listened to everything else that was being
+said in the room; a feat difficult of successful execution, and one
+which has a tendency to depreciate the performer's popularity.
+
+"Where's Ethel?" Lady Agatha inquired sharply, after a preliminary
+glance round the room to make sure they were alone.
+
+"Gone after Mr. Gage," Dagmar informed her, still sore from the
+consciousness of a lost chance.
+
+"How provoking of her," exclaimed her mother, "when I particularly want
+her to look after Quorn."
+
+"Just what I tell her," said Dagmar resentfully.
+
+"Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha declared, "will keep.  He is a fool, and is to
+be secured whenever we choose to bring him to the point.  Quorn
+is--er--not such a fool, and if the coronet is to come into the family
+it is essential that he should be looked after.  He ought to have the
+choice of you."
+
+"No money, mother."
+
+"Perhaps not.  But a nice old place and an aristocratic position."
+
+"You've got most of that, mother," Dagmar observed shrewdly, "and you
+are discontented enough."
+
+"Well, you can't both marry Mr. Gage," Lady Agatha argued, ignoring the
+personal citation.  "And if you don't take care, the one he does not
+choose will lose Quorn as well."
+
+"Well, for a peer and a millionaire," Dagmar observed decidedly, "they
+are the most hopeless specimens.  Neither being in the least like what
+he ought to be, I should prefer the money.  It is the only thing here
+that looks like what it is."
+
+"I am thinking of your position, my dear," her mother replied
+insinuatingly.  "Millionaires are getting so common and unpopular."
+
+"Peers are common enough," Dagmar retorted.  "They made a dozen--and
+such a dozen--the other day."
+
+"Not old ones," rejoined Lady Agatha.  "Quorn's peerage is centuries
+old, and improves with time."
+
+"But I don't," returned her daughter pointedly.  "And the idea of my
+descendants swaggering about with a coronet wherever they can put it,
+in the year 2147 doesn't amuse or comfort me at all, or reconcile me to
+the fact that nobody, without being told, would take Quorn for a peer,
+even if he dressed every day in robes and coronet, always supposing he
+could afford that somewhat expensive get-up."
+
+"After all, a peerage is above money, my dear," Lady Agatha urged.
+
+"Yes," was the quick reply, "it ought to be above it, and have the
+money underneath to support it.  No, I prefer to take my chance of
+cutting out Ethel, and buying a peerage with some of Gage's money."
+
+Lady Agatha shrugged.  She could not bring herself to let Quorn slip
+through their fingers when they had him in hand.  "There is as much
+difference between an old title and a new one as between new wine and
+old," she asserted dogmatically.
+
+"Granted, mother," Dagmar assented cheerfully.  "But when some idiot
+has pulled the cork out, causing the strength and the flavour to
+evaporate, and the dust has got in, the old is worse than the new."
+
+"You are most provoking and disappointing, Dagmar," Lady Agatha
+exclaimed, losing patience.  "To think that the Quorn coronet should go
+begging."
+
+"That's exactly what the owner will have to do, it strikes me," the
+undutiful one retorted.  "And it is what I don't intend to do while
+Messrs. Gage and Sharnbrook are handy and bachelors.  Here's Ethel.
+Hurrah!  She doesn't look all over a winner.  My turn," she said with a
+snap, as that discomfited-looking young lady came in.
+
+"That it isn't," Ethel flung back in a reciprocally pleasant tone.  "I
+haven't seen the man yet."
+
+Dagmar's look would hardly have been accepted as a testimonial to her
+sister's veracity.  The statement, nevertheless, was true.  Ethel had
+raced all over the grounds in pursuit of her quarry, but had just
+missed striking the trail; the object of her hunt having contrarily
+appeared in the drive as the fair huntress, after drawing it blank,
+moved off hungrily to the park on the other side of the house, whence
+having prowled herself tired, she had at length come in, spent and out
+of breath and patience.
+
+Noting her amiable state of mind, Lady Agatha, prompted by experience,
+prepared to withdraw, with a Parthian shot which took the form of the
+sarcastic expression of a thoughtful hope that, in case of possible
+accidents, the pair of charmers were not entirely losing sight of the
+existence and eligibility of a certain John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, nor
+were permitting him to ignore theirs.
+
+
+"You haven't hurt the horse?" Gage inquired, as he and his confederate
+walked towards the house together.  "Sorry now I didn't think of
+stopping to see what happened."
+
+"Hurt him?" Peckover exclaimed, resenting the question as making light
+of his own peril.  "Never had a chance.  It took all my time to see he
+didn't hurt me.  Hurt the brute?  I should like to," he continued
+wrathfully reminiscent.  "I'd teach him the difference between a
+quadruped and a gentleman."
+
+"How did you come to take him on?" asked Gage.
+
+"Take him on?  He took me on," returned the discomfited equestrian.
+"All right, I'll remember that groom, Wilkins, or rather, I won't
+remember him.  'Just throw your leg over Harlequin, sir,' he says, 'and
+take him over the turf!'  Now, old man, I should describe that animal,
+from a safe distance, as an inferior plater; but when I got up my
+feeling of contempt changed to one of respect--it usually does.  On
+foot I'm pretty familiar with horses; once on their back I feel as
+though I had not been properly introduced.  Well, I mounted in best
+jockey style; I haven't shelled out for the saddling paddock for
+nothing.  'Me up,' says I, just waking him up with the whip.  Next
+moment it was me--down, and instead of putting him over the turf, he
+very nearly put me under it.  I don't think you could have passed a
+five-pound note between his hind hoof and my front teeth.  His near
+plate was so near that my jaw was almost off."
+
+"Good job it wasn't," observed Gage, wondering how much such a
+catastrophe would have affected his enjoyment of the pleasures of the
+peerage.
+
+"You're right.  Well, the fellows were grinning; so, thinks I, if the
+horse won't be beaten, no more will I.  So I ups into the pigskin
+again, and tries the soothing system."
+
+"Did that do better?"
+
+"Slightly.  The animal began to feel quite comfortable, and after a bit
+sat down."
+
+"Sat down?" laughed Gage.  "What became of you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know," answered Peckover, with rueful humour, "whether
+it has ever struck you, in Tasmania or elsewhere, that it is a
+difficult thing for a horse and its rider both to sit down at the same
+time.  You see, there is no back to the saddle, so I just slid down
+over the tail, with as much side as I could put on, and then footed it
+off.  It's all very well for you to laugh, my lord," he remonstrated,
+as the other man's guffaws grew exasperating, "but it would take you
+all your time to keep your back stiff when the horse under you is
+sitting up like a cat, and the back of his head trying to play the
+castanets with your front teeth.  Harlequin?  He's a regular pantomime
+rally."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," suggested Gage, "if he was called Harlequin,
+because he'll jump through anything."
+
+"Dare say!" replied Peckover dryly.  "No doubt he'd have tried jumping
+through a brick wall if I'd stayed there long enough.  No, thank you.
+I prefer seeing these little funniments from the top of the Grand
+Stand, not from the top of the performer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+"Can't say I notice much family likeness, old man."  Peckover had been
+enjoying the novelty of a contemplative cigarette in the ancestral
+picture gallery of the Quorns, and was there surprised by Gage who had
+stood for a while silently comparing the portraits of dead and gone
+Quorns, in all stages of costume and self-consciousness, with the
+cheap, up-to-date cockney swell who sprawled in a great chair of state
+before them.  "I guess they didn't pick you out in Australia by the
+family mug."
+
+Peckover gave a short awkward laugh.  "I should hope not," he replied,
+recovering his mental balance.  "If I thought I was anything like that
+tuppence-coloured Johnnie I'd go and hang myself."  He pointed to a
+depressing portrait labelled, "Everard, fourth Baron Quorn."  "Good old
+Everard," he went on.  "I've no use for a nose like that, nor for the
+dial of that old juggins in the Dutch oven--what's his name?
+Marmaduke.  He'd only have to take the top off the pepper-castor to
+give the enemy a shock.  Useful face that to fall back on, and it looks
+as though some one had been falling back on it."  And he flicked the
+ash off his cigarette scornfully at the doughty warrior.
+
+"We don't run to beauty, do we?" Gage remarked.  "At least we didn't
+till quite recently," he corrected politely.
+
+"Fact is," said Peckover, "the old crowd were an over-rated lot.
+Making allowances for bad workmanship on the painters' side, we should
+have no use for them except on the Fifth of November.  They are fair
+frauds.  What do you think of a man who wears a steel lounge suit like
+that?"  He flung the end of his cigarette, having lighted a fresh one,
+at the nearest suit of armour.
+
+"Well, it covered up his deficiencies," observed Gage.
+
+"Yes," said Peckover, "it's about as clever as wrapping a twopenny
+smoke in silver-foil."
+
+Gage gave a look round the gallery as though to see that they were
+alone, and then sat down beside his friend.  "Tell you what it is, old
+man," he said seriously; "to change the subject, we must do something
+to make things hum a bit more for me.  I became my lord to get some fun
+out of it, but as things are, it strikes me that I've got the empty
+title, and you're having all the fun."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Why," Gage proceeded, "what's my position here?  I'm Lord Quorn with a
+million of money; but because Lord Q. is known to have next to nothing
+a year, nobody looks at me.  You're supposed to be the millionaire and
+every one runs after you."
+
+"Is that my fault?" Peckover asked pertinently.
+
+"I don't say it is," Gage returned.  "It suited our purpose to fix it
+so.  But it don't work.  There must be a change.  I don't pay five
+thousand a year to stand out in the cold on the bleak eminence of an
+impoverished peerage, looking on and seeing every girl in the place
+tumbling into your arms."
+
+"One can have too much of that sort of tumbling," Peckover remarked
+sententiously.  "And----"
+
+"Well, I'd like a little of it," snapped Gage, "and I'm going to have
+it."
+
+"That's reasonable," Peckover agreed.  "What do you propose?"
+
+"Well," answered Gage, "I've thought it out, and it's simple enough.
+I've got to find an excuse for spending my money, or, rather for having
+money to spend.  I've a plan.  I'm going to save your life."
+
+"What?"  Peckover jumped a foot away and turned a suspicious and
+alarmed face on his companion.  "What--what do you mean?"
+
+"Just what I say," the other replied quietly.  "I've got to save your
+life----"
+
+"What from?" Peckover inquired apprehensively.
+
+"Drowning, for choice," was the cool answer.  "Then in common gratitude
+you will make over to me a sum sufficient to give me a handsome income.
+See?"
+
+Peckover looked immeasurably relieved.  "I see that much," he replied.
+"But how are you going to save me from drowning?"
+
+"Well, that presents no difficulty.  We are going fishing on the lake,
+and you are going to over-balance yourself in your excitement and slip
+overboard."
+
+"Oh, am I?"  Peckover looked uneasily doubtful.  "I don't see where the
+excitement about fishing comes in."
+
+"That's a detail."
+
+"Then I can't swim," Peckover objected.
+
+"All the more reason for my jumping in to save you."
+
+"But supposing you don't save me?"
+
+"I'm bound to save you.  If I'm not going to rescue you, there is no
+point in your getting wet."
+
+"If you are not going to rescue me there's no point in my getting
+drowned," Peckover returned, with misgiving.
+
+"I shall work it all right," Gage assured him.  "Never let go of you.
+You're too precious."
+
+"I don't know.  It would be worth five thousand a year to you to let me
+dive to the bottom and stay there."
+
+"I'm neither a fool nor a murderer," Gage declared.
+
+"Not much catch in taking a cold bath with your clothes on," Peckover
+remarked, with an uneasy shiver.  "However, I suppose I must do it."
+
+"Yes," said Gage, "after all it's the most feasible form of
+life-saving, combining as it does the minimum of risk with the maximum
+of effectiveness."
+
+So it was arranged, and the next afternoon the confederates, dressed
+for the occasion in their oldest clothes, went fishing on the lake.
+Peckover, whilst ostensibly instituting inquiries as to the best pools
+for sport, had cunningly obtained information as to the depth of the
+water at various spots, and it was at one of the shallowest that he
+insisted on having the punt moored.
+
+"What's the good of my pretending to save your precious life in four
+foot six of water," Gage expostulated in a disgusted tone, as he
+pointed to the watermark on the punt pole.  "We shall be taken for
+blithering idiots."
+
+"That won't matter," returned Peckover stolidly.  "It's better than
+being blithering idiots, and dead ones at that."
+
+"We shall give the show away."
+
+"Better than giving a peerage and a million away," Peckover retorted.
+"Life's too comfortable just now for us to run any risks.  Besides
+who's going to remember how shallow the water is; and it stands to
+reason that if we could keep our breathing apparatus above water by
+just standing up, we shouldn't be such fools as to want any swimming
+and life-saving."
+
+So Gage had to submit, which he did with a better grace when he
+reflected that there might, after all, be some risk in saving a
+panic-stricken lover of life in really deep water.
+
+The two fishermen made a great fuss over their sport, angling as
+probably no one in this world had ever angled before, and in a manner
+calculated not to take in the most unsophisticated fish that ever swam.
+What their proceedings, however, lacked in method, they made up in
+exuberance; never before had two such showy fishermen sat in a punt.
+Naturally their intention was to emphasize, generally, their existence,
+more particularly their presence in the punt on the lake, and
+incidentally their designs upon the fish.  To their satisfaction they
+saw that they were not without observers.  The farmer, to whom the
+grazing of the park was let, had luckily put in an appearance to
+inspect his sheep, accompanied by a semi-sporting person who might,
+however, have been, and indeed was, a butcher from Bunbury in quest of
+raw material.  Presently two women came in sight, crossing the park by
+a right of way which skirted the lake.
+
+The moment was propitious.
+
+"Old man," said Gage, "this is grand.  We're in luck for an audience.
+Now, over you topple; only, do it artistically, or you will have your
+dip for nothing."
+
+Peckover threw a distasteful glance at the weed-grown water, and then
+his eye roved from the haggling fanner and butcher to the chattering
+pair of villagers.  "Almost too much of an audience," he objected, with
+a view to postponing his immersion as long as possible.
+
+"Rats!  Can't be too many for our purpose," Gage returned impatiently.
+"We've got to make a business of it, if it's to do any good.  Over you
+go.  The water won't be any damper for you than it will be for me."
+
+"You can swim," observed Peckover with something suspiciously like a
+chattering of the teeth.
+
+"What odds does that make in four foot six of water?"
+
+"Beastly weedy hole," remarked the unwilling adventurer.
+
+"All the better.  Makes it look more dangerous, and keeps people from
+seeing how shallow it is."
+
+"I believe," said Peckover, with an admirable air of conviction, "there
+is an out-sized pike under those weeds.  I just saw his scales glisten."
+
+"Then you'll astonish him, that's all," was the unsympathetic reply.
+"Any one would think it was a crocodile or a shark by the funk you're
+in.  Now, are you going over?  Not knowing the treat that's in store
+for them these people aren't likely to wait all day.  They'll be past
+directly.  Stand up and swing your line out."  Nerving himself to the
+disagreeable task, Peckover stood up, and began swinging the rod round
+his head.
+
+"That'll do," said Gage, with a show of directing his attention
+elsewhere.  "Now, over!  That'll do with the rod.  They'll think you
+mad.  Over, you fool!"
+
+Thus adjured, Peckover took the plunge, if plunge it can be called.
+Dropping the whirling rod on the placid surface of the lake, he
+suddenly stooped, nervously clutched the gunwale of the punt and,
+assisted surreptitiously in the manoeuvre by Gage's left foot, tamely
+rolled over the side.  His despairing shout, which had been agreed
+upon, was smothered by the shock of the cold water and the utterer's
+general preoccupation.  It therefore remained for Gage to do the
+shouting, which duty he performed with a vigour out of proportion to
+the apparent exigences of the case.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+For the dripping Peckover was still holding tenaciously on to the side
+of the punt, with a fixity of purpose which no mere considerations of
+stage effect seemed likely to dispose him to relax.  Added to this,
+there was more of his body above the surface of the water than appeared
+quite consistent with the idea of imminent and deadly peril; this was
+accounted for by the fact that he was standing, miserably enough, on
+the bottom of the lake.
+
+"Get down!  Let go of the punt!  D'ye hear?" commanded Gage, in an
+exasperated undertone.  "What's the good of hanging on there like a
+fool?  Get down, will you?  Duck that idiotic mug of yours under water,
+or how am I to go after you?"
+
+"I--d--d--daren't," chattered Peckover: "my feet are slipping or
+sinking or something; it's dashed deep mud at the bottom."
+
+"I wish your head was in it instead of your feet," retorted his
+prospective heroic rescuer, all the while making a fine show of bustle,
+for which, however, as viewed from the shore there was no obvious need.
+"Will you get down, before I knock you under?"
+
+As he spoke Gage was surreptitiously jabbing at Peckover's fingers,
+and, incidentally, at his face with the butt-end of his rod.  This
+somewhat drastic method of enforcing his orders and ensuring the
+vraisemblance of the performance was perhaps justified by the manifest
+absurdity and uselessness of his taking a showy and heroic dive in
+order to rescue a man who was, to the spectator's eye, holding
+comfortably on to a substantial punt with his breathing organs high out
+of the water.  As matters--that is to say, Peckover--stood, danger was
+the last thing that would suggest itself to the casual onlooker.  The
+note at the moment was farcical; it was urgently necessary to change it
+to the tragic, even at the expense of loosening a few of Peckover's
+front teeth.
+
+That unhappy dissembler, finding the episode of having a brass-capped
+butt in forcible contact with the more sensitive and damageable parts
+of his physiognomy more than he had bargained for, spluttered forth an
+objurgatory remonstrance, and, to cut short the objectionable
+attentions, let go, disappearing forthwith under the side of the punt.
+Whereupon Gage, uttering a wild and wholly unnecessary shout, poised
+himself for a few moments with one foot on the gunwale, and then,
+having attracted the attention he desired, took a tremendous dive into
+the water.  With such vigour did he go down that he forced his head and
+arms into a thick bed of weeds, which demanded for a time his
+breathless attention.  On extricating himself from the difficulty, and
+coming to the surface, he was much concerned to find that Peckover was
+nowhere to be seen.  Instantly he took another superfluous dive, and as
+he came up, knocked his head against the bottom of the punt.  Half
+dizzy with the blow, he now saw Peckover watching his efforts from the
+other side of the craft whither he had worked his way round while the
+diving was in progress.
+
+"What are you doing round there, you idiot?" he gasped.  "Get right
+down into the water at once and shout for help till I come along and
+catch hold of you."
+
+With the word, he struck out manfully and swam round to the other side
+of the punt, only to find on arriving there that Peckover had
+disappeared.  Whereupon he dived again, only to come up empty-handed
+once more, and to see the anxious face watching him, alertly
+apprehensive, over the farther gunwale.
+
+"What fool's game is this?" he hissed.
+
+"None of your larks," returned Peckover in a tone of resolute desire
+for self-preservation.  The cold water, the weeds and the mud were
+beginning to tell upon him; all sense of a practical joke had
+evaporated.
+
+Gage looked round.  On the right the farmer and the butcher, on the
+left the two women had come down to the margin of the lake and were
+watching the proceedings in a silence which betokened some doubt in
+their minds as to how they ought to take it.
+
+"Will you get under water and let me come to the rescue?" Gage demanded
+with exasperation.
+
+"Not good enough," Peckover replied, and thereupon he began a spirited
+effort to climb back into the punt.
+
+"Fool!"  Gage shut his mouth with a snap, and took a vicious dive under
+the punt as the shortest cut to his objective.
+
+As he rose, Peckover was half on board.  Without further expostulation
+Gage seized the leg which still hung in the water and furiously tried
+to drag it down.  Peckover resisted, kicking, and a very pretty
+struggle ensued, which taking place, as might be supposed, between a
+millionaire and a peer of the Realm, must have given rise to singular
+reflections and conjectures in the minds of the onlookers.
+
+Eventually the turn of the position favoured Gage.  The conditions
+under which Peckover fought rendered the struggle additionally painful;
+by degrees he lost ground and finally was dragged back exhausted into
+the water.
+
+"You stupid ass, I've a good mind to shove you under and keep you
+there," Gage growled.
+
+His victim could only gasp and shiver.
+
+"What must we look like from the shore?" Gage demanded savagely.
+
+Peckover made no reply, but from his manner it might have been gathered
+that his mental attitude on the subject was one of complete
+indifference.
+
+"Haven't we had enough of this tommy-rot?" at last he ventured to
+suggest.
+
+Gage was maintaining a fine show of keeping afloat in the
+four-foot-six.  "I think we have," he returned.  "I'm getting chilly,
+so we had better come to business.  Now, will you keep down in the
+water when you've quite done advertising the fact that it isn't up to
+our shoulders?"
+
+All the response Peckover made was--"Look at the punt!"
+
+Keeping the corner of an eye warily on his companion, Gage turned and
+looked.  The distance between them and the punt instead of a few feet
+was now some twenty yards.  The cause of this alteration was obvious.
+Their struggles had caused the cord which made fast the craft to one of
+the poles to become untied and the other pole to work loose.  There was
+some wind, under which the punt was now moving at a fair pace over the
+lake, dragging one pole with it.
+
+"All right," said Gage, "I'll soon catch it and bring it back."
+
+But Peckover clutched him with the tenacity of despair.  "No, you
+don't," he exclaimed, anxiously resolute.  "You don't leave me here.
+How am I to get ashore if you don't come back?"
+
+"Walk," answered Gage, trying to free himself.
+
+"Yes, I dare say," Peckover retorted.  "You don't catch me trying it.
+It's not the same depth all over.  We're on a bit of a bank here."
+
+"Look at the blamed thing going off," Gage cried.  "Let go!  She'll be
+a quarter of a mile away directly."
+
+But Peckover was not to be shaken off.  "You don't go and leave me
+here," he insisted wildly, "for any old punt."
+
+The situation was an interesting one, and as such, no doubt the four
+spectators acknowledged it.  Their comments, however, had not so far
+been directed to the performers.
+
+"What are you going to do?" Peckover asked, still gripping the plunging
+Gage.
+
+"Going for a swim," he answered unfeelingly, at the same time making
+spirited but futile efforts to dive.
+
+"No, you don't," Peckover returned, restraining his companion's
+attempts with all the energy that the chill and unusual element allowed
+him.
+
+Gage, kicking and struggling, was at length obliged to desist, after
+having furnished a several minutes' novel and exhilarating exhibition
+to the puzzled spectators.  Short of actual murderous violence, it was
+not possible for him to free himself from the tenacious Peckover.  It
+was difficult, he had to own, to do much in the way of natation with a
+desperate person hanging like grim death on to his legs, moreover,
+Peckover's embrace had a tendency to send Gage's head under water and
+to keep it there.  So, exasperated and vindictive as he felt, he had to
+compromise.
+
+"Well," he said, veiling his displeasure and sense of defeat with a
+cheerless grin, "am I going to save your life or not--before we catch
+our death of cold?"
+
+"You've got to," was the dogged reply.  "Five thousand a year is too
+good to say good-bye to in the middle of a pond."
+
+"It is all your silly rot that has stuck us here," Gage returned.  "If
+you hadn't played the drivelling idiot, the life-saving performance
+would have been comfortably over half an hour ago."
+
+"Well, get it over now," retorted Peckover, "as quick as you like, and
+no tricks."
+
+"All right; come on," said Gage ill-humouredly.  "Let's hope those
+fools won't see through the fake."
+
+"This way," said Peckover, starting off breast-high in the water,
+towards the nearest shore, and still holding tightly to his companion.
+
+"You are not going to walk?" Gage exclaimed aghast.
+
+"I'm going to do what I can do best, and I can't swim," Peckover
+replied, with a determination which was apparent even through his
+shivering.  "We'll have to try this life-saving joke in some other
+form.  It's getting a bit stale this way."
+
+Slowly their progress towards the shore, impeded by mud and thick
+weeds, began.  They had not noticed that the farmer, actuated by
+humanitarian motives or with an eye to reduction of rent, had run off
+to an old boat-house, and was now hurrying back with an oar and a coil
+of rope.
+
+"All right, my lord!" shouted the butcher, as taking credit for his
+friend's action.  The two men, shivering and struggling unromantically
+through the jungle of weeds, smiled unpleasantly at the cry.
+
+Suddenly Peckover became aware that the water was up to his chin.
+"It's getting deeper," he gasped, trying to hold his companion back.
+
+"Let it," Gage retorted sulkily.  "We've got to get to shore, dead or
+alive."
+
+With an energy which suggested his preference for the latter mode of
+arrival Peckover threw his arms around Gage and tried to draw him back.
+"Try another way," he panted.
+
+"You can.  I'm going straight on.  You should learn to swim," was the
+unkind response.  "If you don't let go, not another penny of my money
+shall you see," Gage added, beginning to have doubts about his own
+ultimate safety in those dreadful weeds.
+
+"You're not going to leave me here to drown?" Peckover remonstrated,
+shaking with terror.
+
+"You can go back."
+
+"What's the good of that?"
+
+"I'll fetch a boat."
+
+Water had become so utterly distasteful to Peckover that even the
+comparative shallows had no longer the slightest attraction for him.
+"What am I to do?" he shrieked.  "Gage, you must save me!"
+
+"Don't feel up to it now; too cold," was the unfeeling reply.
+
+Peckover now found that the extra six inches in the depth of the water
+made all the difference when it came to a struggle.  The margin below
+the breathing point was too small to permit of a sustained effort.
+Gage struck out, and Peckover, choosing what a momentary consideration
+suggested as the lesser of the two evils, let go his hold and stayed
+behind where at least his mouth was above water.
+
+What the four people on the bank now saw was this.  The supposed Lord
+Quorn leaving his companion, and energetically striking out for the
+shore, while the head which was all that was visible of the pretended
+millionaire remained a weird and ghastly object on the green expanse of
+water.  To add to the interest of the scene, Peckover, finding the mud
+on which he stood, had a tendency to give way beneath him, was forced,
+as he gradually sank, to keep jumping, with the object of maintaining
+his head well above water.  That the situation had grown critical was
+now fairly apparent, and it became borne in upon the farmer and his
+friend that heroic measures were indicated.
+
+Directed by the butcher, who assumed an important (and dry)
+superintendence of the operations, the farmer now waded to the tops of
+his gaiters into the lake, and flung out the oar with the rope attached
+towards the wildly struggling Gage.
+
+"There you are, my lord.  Lay 'old!" shouted the butcher.  "Then you
+can go back for the gentleman.  You'll 'ave to get a little farther
+out, Mr. Purvis; the rope's a bit short."
+
+"Wish you'd come and lend a hand yourself, Mr. Fanning, instead o'
+telling me what any fool can see," Mr. Purvis called back testily, as
+the water lapped over the rim of his gaiters.
+
+"You're all right, Mr. Purvis," Mr. Fanning cried encouragingly,
+ignoring the invitation.  "Pull the oar in and throw it out again to
+his lordship."
+
+"Thought you could swim, Fanning," observed Mr. Purvis, wrestling
+uncomfortably with the difficulties of the situation.
+
+"Never," Mr. Fanning protested promptly and mendaciously.  "Wish I
+could.  Now, out with it!  Take care of his lordship's 'ead."
+
+Once more the oar hurtled through the air, and fell this time within a
+yard of Gage's blanched face.  Making a desperate and supreme effort,
+he seized it, and, once sure of the timely support, clung to it panting
+and exhausted.  As he rested there, his feet naturally sank till they
+met with an obstruction.  Moving them about to clear himself, Gage
+found that they had touched the bottom; he forthwith stood up and
+disclosed the fact that he had been swimming for his life in three feet
+of water.
+
+"Look to the other gentleman, Mr. Purvis," directed Mr. Fanning from
+his post of high and dry observation.
+
+Mr. Purvis and Gage accordingly directed dubious glances at the bobbing
+head of the unhappy Peckover.
+
+"If your lordship would swim out with the oar to the gentleman," Purvis
+suggested, "I can pull you both in."
+
+"I dare say," returned Gage with chattering teeth.  "I'm not going
+back, the fun doesn't pay for the trouble.  You wade out as far as you
+can and throw the oar to him, and let your friend hold the rope.  Hi!"
+he called, to the complacent Mr. Fanning, "come here and catch hold.
+Hurry up or there'll be an inquest."
+
+The dictatorial Mr. Fanning's expansive face, together with his
+self-centred spirits, fell at the invitation.  "Sorry I can't swim, my
+lord," he objected, advancing along the margin with dry and lagging
+steps.
+
+"No one wants you to," retorted Gage as he heavily emerged, dripping
+and pitiful from the water.  "Go in, and hold the rope," he commanded,
+"or my friend will be drowned."
+
+And indeed Peckover's sharp cries, uttered so as to fill the
+opportunities when his mouth was above water, gave colour to the
+statement.
+
+Mr. Fanning, perhaps by the nature of his trade, rendered somewhat
+indifferent to the question of life and death where he was not
+personally concerned, had been congratulating himself on being well out
+of the affair; and now the order coming as it did from so important a
+personage and customer as Lord Quorn, was neither pleasant nor to be
+disregarded.  Personal discomfort was a thing to be endured by him only
+in other people, and now as he waded reluctantly into the water he
+resolved to avenge his outraged feelings and damp extremities by an
+extra penny a pound all round on his future deliveries at Staplewick
+Towers.
+
+"Now throw me the end of the rope, Mr. Purvis," he commanded when the
+water reached half-way up his calves.
+
+"You must come right out, Mr. Fanning," was the peremptory reply, "or
+we shall never reach the gentleman."
+
+Accordingly Mr. Fanning, standing between a cross fire of admonishment
+and objurgation, was fain to advance till waist-deep.
+
+Encouraged by the recently indicated shallowness of the water, Mr.
+Purvis now went boldly forward, as much with the idea of exhibiting
+superior prowess compared with Mr. Fanning, as of ingratiating himself
+with the lord of Staplewick.  The resoluteness of the proceeding,
+however, had the effect of demonstrating its own superfluity, for as
+Mr. Purvis pushed forward he sank no deeper in the water and was able
+to approach waist-deep within the oar's length of Peckover who, it
+appeared, had unfortunately come upon a hole and, in his fright, stayed
+there.  Clutching the end of the oar he was pulled out into safety,
+not, however, without a great show of superfluous energy on the part of
+Mr. Purvis, who wished to make the most of his effort and have the
+greatest possible return for his ruined breeches and gaiters; and so
+the three, rescuers and rescued, stumbled with mixed feelings to the
+shore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+The most tangible result of the aquatic performance was that Gage,
+through his long immersion, caught a bad chill, and had to take to his
+bed.  Peckover, who was none the worse for the trying twenty minutes
+(having probably been too frightened to think of catching cold), was
+summoned to his lordship's bedroom, and there passed a particularly
+uncomfortable quarter of an hour.
+
+"It is all your idiotic fault that I'm stuck away here," the patient
+declared wrathfully.  "That ass of a doctor says he won't let me get up
+for a week.  A fine lot of fun I'm getting out of the title up to now.
+And I'm paying you a hundred pounds for a week in bed.  As though it
+matters when I'm between the blankets whether I'm a lord or a
+solicitor's clerk.  A peerage only counts when you've got your boots
+on."
+
+"I'm very sorry, old man," said Peckover contritely.  "But I don't see
+that you can blame me."
+
+"I do blame you," Gage burst out.  "Why couldn't you do as I told you,
+instead of dodging about like a fool and nearly bringing us both to our
+death!"
+
+"You might make allowances," urged Peckover, "for a chap's feelings,
+when he finds himself for the first time in cold water with his clothes
+on."
+
+"Bah!" Gage returned scornfully.  "You've no pluck.  And you spoilt the
+whole show.  Well, it will have to stand, anyhow; I'm not going to let
+you make a fool of me again, whatever you may do with yourself.  Now
+perhaps you will put your mind to carrying through the dry land part of
+the trick.  If you don't I'll chuck you back your beggarly title, and
+get on without it.  It hasn't done much for me yet."
+
+"What do you want me to do?"
+
+"While I'm lying here," Gage answered in an aggrieved tone, "you've got
+to make the most of the rescue.  I reckon neither of us wants to play
+the joke over again."
+
+"Not me," Peckover agreed heartily.
+
+"Well, then, the least you can do is to make out what a splendid rescue
+it was, and that I'm a first-class hero, and that you're going to
+recognize the fact by making over to me a big slice of your fortune.
+D'you see?  If I'm not a hero there can be no point in your solid
+admiration and gratitude.  So rub it well in."
+
+"All right," Peckover promised.
+
+"You may as well," Gage proceeded, "send for the lawyer chap from
+Bunbury and have a deed drawn up, settling, say, a couple of hundred
+thousand on me, it won't mean much as between you and me, but it will
+impress the local public; and I tell you I mean to have a good bit of
+glory to pay for this beastly cold.  Now, do it at once and do it with
+a snap, or I shall find a better use for five thousand a year than a
+cold-catching title."
+
+Thus admonished, Peckover carried out his instructions with a will, and
+in a very few hours the _soi-disant_ Lord Quorn's heroic act promised
+fair to be an undying tradition for the country-side.  In fact,
+Peckover, in his anxiety to retain his desirable income, rather overdid
+the business, and so much so that one or two cynical spirits were
+goaded into making question whether the life so saved was really, apart
+from the income it might have left behind, quite worth the value its
+owner evidently set upon it.  Still, that mattered nothing to Peckover,
+who was not thin-skinned, at least on dry land.
+
+The _Bunbury Bulletin_ devoted a column and three quarters to the
+"Romantic and Heroic Incident at Staplewick Park," and told its
+breathless readers in unusually and adjectively gorgeous language how a
+distinguished young Colonial of immense wealth was the guest with the
+newly succeeded Lord Quorn at Staplewick Towers, temporarily in the
+occupation of Colonel and Lady Agatha Hemyock; how he had, while
+fishing in the justly celebrated and admired lake in the beautiful
+park, overbalanced himself in making a cast, had fallen into deep
+water, and he being in imminent risk of drowning, how the gallant young
+nobleman, worthy descendant of a line of heroes and otherwise
+distinguished ancestors, had plunged in and with great difficulty and
+after unheard-of exertions rescued his friend.  The writer having fully
+described the occurrence, with a minuteness of detail only possible
+from the pen of one who was not there, proceeded to give the respective
+lineage and achievements of rescued and rescuer, while the interstices
+in the thrilling narrative were filled up with topographical,
+historical and picturesque notes by way of local colour; items which
+were kept ready for use in the event of anything worthy of description
+happening at Staplewick, from a chimney on fire to a royal visit.
+
+Great as was the sensation which the highly coloured account created,
+it may be safely asserted that by none was it read with more consuming
+interest than by Mr. Purvis, the farmer, and Mr. Fanning, the butcher.
+Their traditional and rooted belief in the infallibility of the
+newspaper press received a shock from which it never recovered.  But
+when their astonished perusal reached the last and most sensational
+paragraph, in which it was stated "on the best authority" that the
+grateful millionaire had, as a mark of his esteem, admiration and
+gratitude, settled a considerable fortune, "a sum which, it was an open
+secret, might be represented by a two and five noughts," on his
+deliverer, their sensations became of a complicated character that
+defied analysis.  Anyhow, the result was that they met to discuss the
+matter, and the outcome of the meeting was that next morning they
+proceeded to the Towers and sought an interview with the supposititious
+millionaire.
+
+Peckover felt somewhat uncomfortable when the visitors were announced.
+In his exuberance in making the most of a sham rescue he had overlooked
+the spectators, or at least had regarded them as negligible factors in
+the episode.
+
+After a few words of disingenuous congratulation, Mr. Fanning came to
+the point.  He and Mr. Purvis had seen it stated, doubtless correctly,
+in the local paper that Mr. Gage had in his gratitude, etc., rewarded
+his purported rescuer in more than princely fashion.  And Mr. Fanning
+and Mr. Purvis, whilst not withholding their meed of admiration from
+his lordship, whose illness they deplored, and who had, they generously
+admitted, done the best he could, were anxious to know where they came
+in, and could only say that it was hard for them to express in words
+their joint and several disappointment at being mentioned in connexion
+with the affair only in the roles of casual spectators.  Whereas, Mr.
+Fanning urged with a suggestion of latent heat, it was they who brought
+the accident to its comparatively happy termination; but for them and
+the parts they played, he, Mr. Fanning, did not think they would that
+day be having the pleasure of addressing Mr. Gage, or at any rate he,
+Mr. Gage, the advantage of being in a position to listen to them; the
+depressing inference being obvious.
+
+As Peckover had by this time come to take a more comfortable and even
+jocular view of the affair, he was not inclined to give more notice to
+the claim than seeing in it evidence that the bogus rescue had deceived
+its witnesses.  Moreover, as a Cockney, he had not much opinion of or
+consideration for the feelings of a farmer and a country butcher.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you did much," he replied off-handedly.
+
+"Begging your pardon, sir," Mr. Fanning maintained, "we did everything,
+if the lives of yourself and his lordship count for anything."
+
+"You didn't risk your lives," Peckover argued.
+
+"We did, begging your pardon, sir."
+
+"What, in three feet six inches of water?"
+
+"How," urged Mr. Fanning, "were we to know the depth?  We were prepared
+to go much deeper."
+
+"I dare say," returned Peckover incredulously.  "But as you didn't that
+doesn't come into the account.  You did a lot of shouting, I admit, and
+nearly knocked my head off by flinging that infernal oar at me as
+though you thought you were harpooning a whale.  Well, what do you
+want?"
+
+Mr. Fanning's face was lowering, and that of Mr. Purvis was overspread
+by a foolish grin of disappointment.  Certainly matters were not
+turning out as they had anticipated on their walk to the Towers.  They
+were being rudely awakened from their dreams of returning to their
+respective homes rich men.
+
+Mr. Fanning paused for a moment, as collecting, so to say, his routed
+forces for a final charge.  "Well, sir," he said, bluntly now and with
+a note of repressed indignation; "putting myself aside for the moment,
+I should like to ask, seeing what you are doing for his lordship,
+whether my friend Mr. Purvis' efforts on your behalf are not to meet
+with suitable recognition.  It was Mr. Purvis who, with me, kept our
+presence of mind when matters looked black; it was Mr. Purvis who,
+under my direction, ran with splendid promptitude to the boathouse; it
+was Mr. Purvis who fetched out all there was to fetch, the oar and the
+rope, and, under my directions, lashed the one to the other; it was Mr.
+Purvis who, at my suggestion, and at imminent risk to himself, first
+made sure of his lordship when his lordship was totally exhausted.
+Yes."
+
+Mr. Fanning paused, and drew a murrey-coloured handkerchief lightly
+across his heated brow.  Mr. Purvis, with the reticence of conscious
+desert, stood eyeing Peckover with an expression which suggested, that
+if that unsympathetic person was not duly impressed by the catalogue of
+his achievements, he ought to be, and that if he, Purvis, failed to
+obtain due reward for the same he would be content to leave his claim
+to the judgment of posterity, but at the same time would much prefer an
+immediate and more material recognition.
+
+"It was Mr. Purvis," resumed the butcher, "accompanied and assisted by
+your humble servant, who at considerable risk, I may say, great risk,
+since I am no swimmer----"
+
+"Nor ain't I," interjaculated Purvis, thankfully, as looking to his
+ignorance to increase the figure of his recompense.
+
+"Anyhow," continued Fanning, rather put off his eloquence by the
+interruption, "we risked it.  We risked it.  And we are husbands of
+wives and fathers of families."
+
+Mr. Fanning, who was said to be in the habit of knocking his wife about
+after an evening at the _Pigeons_, became, for a butcher, almost
+touching, and Mr. Purvis, whose wife ruled him with a copper-stick on
+the rare occasions when her tongue failed, experienced no difficulty in
+looking intensely married.
+
+"It was Mr. Purvis, guided and sustained by me, who pushed out for you,
+sir, and----"
+
+"It was Mr. Purvis, directed by you, who nearly sliced the top of my
+head off," Peckover interposed flippantly.
+
+"Your rescue," pursued Fanning, ignoring the interruption, "was no
+light matter.  It was the stiffest job I've ever been concerned in,
+though I must say I never expected to have to bring the fact home to
+the gentleman most interested in it."
+
+"Well," said Peckover curtly, "what did you expect?"
+
+"Leave it to you, sir," Purvis replied promptly, shrewdly fearing the
+effect his friend's verbosity might have upon the ultimate figure.
+
+But Mr. Fanning would have his say.  "Putting aside, sir, the risk of
+life we ran, to say nothing of the most valuable existence which it has
+been our privilege to prolong, I may mention that I was wearing on the
+occasion a bran new pair of boots which are now good for nothing, quite
+ruined, sir; I had on likewise my best market-day gaiters and breeches
+ditto; added to which the tails of my coat and the sleeves were so
+saturated that my missus can do nothing with 'em.  And I believe I am
+correct in stating that Mr. Purvis' wearing apparel was greatly
+deteriorated."
+
+He turned towards Purvis for corroboration.  That worthy man gave an
+assenting nod.  "Ain't been able to get into my breeches since, nor my
+boots, nor my gaiters," he asserted painfully.
+
+Peckover made a rapid calculation based on the price-tickets he had
+studied during the luncheon hour in the windows of various
+establishments in Cheapside.  "All right," he said graciously, "I shall
+be happy to present you with five pounds apiece; that is one pound
+seventeen for the damage and three guineas each for your trouble."
+
+For a few moments a sepulchral silence reigned in the room.  Then Mr.
+Fanning's mouth slowly opened, as though the machinery, brought to a
+sudden stop, was just set going again.  But all he could say was:
+
+"Five pounds apiece?"
+
+So profound was his emotion that for the moment Peckover was at a loss
+as to the real effect of his offer.
+
+"As a mark of my high appreciation of your services, and taking into
+consideration that we did not know the depth of water was only three
+foot six, I shall be pleased to make it guineas," Peckover announced,
+in as grand a manner as he knew how to assume.
+
+Mr. Fanning threw up his hands and turned to Mr. Purvis, an incarnation
+of despair.  "Five guineas!  Five!" he gasped.
+
+"The gentleman's joking," was all Purvis could say.
+
+"No, I really mean it," said Peckover with princely condescension.  "I
+absolutely refuse to reward your services at any lower figure, however
+much less your modesty may feel them to be really worth.  I said five
+guineas and I mean five guineas, and not a shilling less than five
+guineas apiece shall you have."
+
+Mr. Fanning was now reduced to a state of abject helplessness.  "Five
+guineas! five guineas!" was his cry.  "While the man who had to be
+rescued himself--by us, by us--gets a sum running into six figures.
+It's something to be a lord."
+
+"A poor look-out for respectable farmers and tradesmen," put in Purvis.
+
+"What," demanded Peckover, in well-feigned surprise, "aren't you
+satisfied?"
+
+"Not exactly," Fanning answered feelingly.
+
+"Well," returned Peckover, "I consider five guineas very good pay for
+ten minutes' work in preventing two gentlemen from drowning in three
+foot six of water."
+
+"It's an insult," Fanning maintained.
+
+"Oh, well," retorted Peckover, "I won't insult you.  Good-day."
+
+But neither Mr. Fanning nor Mr. Purvis had any intention of leaving
+heroism to be its own reward.  They made a simultaneous movement to
+intercept their insulter as he moved towards the door.
+
+"Don't misunderstand us, sir," said Fanning, tempering with a nice
+sense of dignity his demand for justice.  "We are poor men, and if five
+guineas apiece is really all you are disposed to offer us, why, our
+duty to our families is to accept it."
+
+"Ah, I thought you'd come to your senses," observed Peckover with a
+grin.  "Five guineas isn't to be sneezed at."
+
+"I've done a lot of sneezing for it," replied Fanning, "and so has Mr.
+Purvis.  We both got bad colds from the wetting."
+
+"Well, you can't expect me to pay you for having a cold in the head,"
+returned Peckover, with more flippancy than justice.  "Here's your
+bonus."
+
+He took out the money and paid them, with the full intention of
+recovering the same from his friend and patron upstairs.  Messrs.
+Fanning and Purvis received the inadequate solatium in a due spirit of
+protest.  The crackle of the notes in their bucolic fingers woke them
+from their dreams of affluence, and as they gazed with sorrow on the
+legend thereon the fact was established that five, not five thousand,
+was the figure at which their heroism was assessed, and that if justice
+was to be found in the world her habitat was not Staplewick Towers.
+
+With the departure of the dissatisfied pair Peckover threw himself into
+a chair and laughed for some minutes as he recalled, one after another,
+the salient points of the serio-comic interview.  He had his
+limitations and deficiencies, but a certain sense of humour was not
+among them, and the logical consequence of that magnificently absurd
+rescue and reward appealed to it strongly.
+
+"Oh, I'm in for a fine time at last," he chuckled, in unrestrained
+enjoyment of his new state of existence.  "What a bit of luck!  I'm
+going to be in clover for the rest of my days.  Tal ra, ra!  It's
+immense!"  He jumped up and began, in pure joyousness, to dance a
+double shuffle.  In the midst of his saltatory abandon he suddenly
+stopped.  The light in the room had become sensibly diminished.
+Pirouetting round to the window to ascertain the cause, he saw bulking
+therein the huge figure of a man who was watching his caperings with a
+threatening eye.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+The man who, with his burly form filling up the window, stood looking
+in with grim amusement at Peckover's performance, was a great
+round-faced, bullet-headed fellow of six feet two, whose massive
+proportions, coupled with his juvenile countenance and somewhat vacuous
+expression, gave him the appearance of a fat schoolboy seen through a
+magnifying-glass.  He was dressed in a Norfolk suit of leather, which
+by its amplitude of cut made the wearer look even a bigger man than
+Nature had intended him to be.
+
+For some seconds the two stood staring at each other in a sort of
+stupefied silence.  Then Peckover, somewhat nervously, remarked,
+"Hullo!"
+
+"Keeping warm?" the substantial apparition enquired, drawing back the
+corners of his wide mouth in a sarcastic grin.
+
+"Foot asleep," was the ready explanation, given with a certain
+apprehensive quaver.
+
+"I see."  The stranger accepted the statement for what it was worth.
+"This is Staplewick Towers?" The question was put in a tone of settled
+conviction that only an answer in the affirmative would be deemed
+worthy of credence.
+
+"Yes.  Front door round to the left," said Peckover perking up.
+
+"Thanks," returned the intruder significantly.  "I'll try that way when
+I leave."  He took a step in to the room and stared round him curiously.
+
+"Awkward member!" was Peckover's muttered comment, duly impressed by
+the other's size, which made the furniture look small.  "You wish to
+see Colonel Hemyock?"
+
+"Not particularly," returned the stranger gruffly, "I want Lord Quorn."
+
+"Lord Quorn!"  Peckover caught up his face in the act of falling.
+"Pressing business?" he inquired politely.
+
+"Very."
+
+"Any message?"
+
+"No."  The man's voice was unnecessarily, objectionably loud, Peckover
+thought.  "You would not care to take what I've come all the way from
+Australia to give him," he added with unpleasant significance, as he
+twirled a thick crop, just missing a statuette by half an inch.
+
+So the complication which Peckover had feared but of which his good
+fortune and the zest of his new life had made him forgetful, had
+arrived.  In a moment the particularly awkward truth flashed upon him,
+that this was the dreaded bully from Australia, the brother of the
+would-be Lady Quorn.
+
+The idea put his thoughts in such a whirl that he was not ready with
+any reply.  His hesitation seemed to have the effect of exasperating
+the quick-tempered visitor.
+
+"Where is this nobleman?" he roared, with sneering emphasis on the
+substantive.
+
+Peckover, with the income of a Cabinet Minister at stake, was rapidly
+running over expedients for meeting the monstrous emergency.  To put
+him off for the moment and send for the police seemed the most feasible
+way.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" he replied.  "Oh, he's about."
+
+"He won't be about much after I have done with him," was the grim
+retort.  Suddenly stooping forward and looking viciously round the
+room, the unpleasant visitor carelessly threw his crop away over his
+shoulder and caught up the poker.  "Look here!" he bellowed.  "His
+lordship's right leg."  With the word he made a furious effort and
+snapped the poker in halves.  "See?" he panted, throwing the pieces
+down so near Peckover's feet that the impressed observer sprang
+eighteen inches into the air.  "How will his lordship like that?" he
+asked loudly.
+
+It occurred to Peckover that, considering the poor fellow's situation,
+the tampering with his noble limbs would not be likely to affect him
+much, and he said so.
+
+The strong man stared at him in incredulous exasperation that the
+performance had missed its intended effect.  "What?  He's not a big
+chap, is he?" he demanded.
+
+"No," Peckover answered, "I--I mean he is so devoid of feeling."
+
+The visitor caught up his crop and flourished it.  "My poor sister is
+not, though," he roared, with a violence which even his possibly just
+resentment scarcely seemed to justify.  "He promised to marry her, and
+then ran off.  But we are on his track.  Yes, I've got my
+broken-hearted sister waiting outside in the garden."
+
+Peckover felt that he must have a few minutes' solitude in which to
+think out the solution of the awkward problem.  "Hadn't you better go
+and fetch her in, while I tell Lord Quorn?" he suggested.
+
+"I will," was the answer, given with a violent suddenness which made
+Peckover start.  "And when I catch sight of his lordship," added the
+amiable zealot, "I'll astonish him.  I'll--I'll make him jump."
+
+"You'll astonish a good many people besides if you do," murmured
+Peckover dryly, as the bully flung off through the window.  Here was a
+pretty situation.  Was the good time he was enjoying and promising
+himself to turn into ash like a pipe of tobacco?  Already the
+_soi-disant_ Lord Quorn was complaining--and with some justice--that he
+was not having much fun for his money.  Would he be likely to continue
+paying five thousand a year for the privilege of marrying an
+undesirable colonial maiden with the alternative of having his arms and
+legs snapped, possibly his nose slit and his eyes gouged out, if he
+refused?  Not likely.  Nor that he would care to wear the title when he
+found it carried so little fun and so many inconveniences with it.  But
+what was he, Percy Peckover, to do?  The situation baffled him.
+Temporize was all he could think of; temporize till he could hit on
+some expedient for ridding the position of this awkward element which
+threatened to spoil it.  It was certainly exasperating just when he had
+settled down into a good thing to have to return to the hard world of
+work which he hated, poverty which he loathed, and his own identity of
+which he stood in terror.  But this great noisy bully--ugh! how he
+would like to----
+
+His bitter meditations were interrupted by footsteps on the path and
+next moment the _bete noire_ reappeared, this time with the lady.  The
+first anxious glance at her did nothing to dissipate Peckover's
+apprehensions.  A fine woman she was certainly, according to the
+popular acceptation of the term--tall and massive, but coarse and
+off-hand almost to vulgarity.  She had challenging black eyes, a nose
+which the most casual glance could never overlook, and a determined
+mouth and jaw.  Her hair was cut short like a man's, and in her hand
+she swung a substantial ash stick which she seemed quite capable of
+using to enforce any argument which verbal persuasion had failed to
+drive home.  As to her dress, it was of masculine cut, the skirt being
+deeply edged with leather.  Altogether she was a formidable and
+workmanlike young woman.
+
+Peckover had taken the precaution to latch the French window.  Finding
+it did not yield to his heavy hand, the gentleman from Australia
+applied his boot to it and burst it open.
+
+"This rotten window sticks," he remarked by way of apology.  "Come in,
+Lalage.  Mind the glass.  This," he said aggressively to Peckover, "is
+my poor deceived sister, Miss Lalage Leo.  My name is Carnaby Leo.
+Now, where's Lord Quorn?"
+
+"In bed," answered Peckover manfully.
+
+"What?" roared Mr. Leo.
+
+"You need not shout," Peckover suggested, fearful that the noise might
+reach other ears and occasion complications.  "We had an accident on
+the lake the other day, and he has been in bed ever since."
+
+"We've heard of it," said Miss Leo, speaking for the first time.  Her
+tone was as downright and masculine as her appearance.  "And are you
+the rich young man who was rescued from drowning?"
+
+"I am."
+
+Brother and sister exchanged glances, and the glances, Peckover told
+himself, foretold a further complication.
+
+"Lord Quorn is very seriously ill," he said impressively.  "Took a bad
+chill, and is suffering from congestion and--and fever.  It is quite
+impossible that you should see him for at least a fortnight, if he
+isn't dead by that date."
+
+"I'll see him, dead or alive," shouted Mr. Leo, who was making a tour
+of inspection round the apartment.
+
+"Be calm, Carnaby," said his sister casually.
+
+"It would kill him," observed Peckover, with conviction.
+
+"Killing's too good for him," returned Carnaby, loudly.
+
+"Hush, Carnaby!" the lady commanded.
+
+"He is delirious," said Peckover, warming to his work.
+
+"I'll bring him to his senses," growled Leo.
+
+"Better leave him to me for the present," suggested Miss Leo.
+
+"He wouldn't recognize you, or you him," said Peckover, for once
+touching upon the truth.
+
+"I'll soon let him know who we are," bellowed Mr. Leo, "and what we
+are--and what he is."
+
+"Impossible, while he's in this state," Peckover maintained.  "If you
+kill him----"
+
+"Good job too!" Mr. Leo interpolated.
+
+"He won't be much good for matrimonial purposes."
+
+"True," Miss Leo admitted.
+
+Peckover had noticed with some discomfort that of late her eyes had
+rested on him with increasing interest.  He was always typically alive
+to the slightest sign of female attraction to himself, but this
+particular attention did not produce in him the usual sportive
+complacency.  The situation was becoming tense.  The very complexity of
+his position took from Peckover his usual volubility.  Then he
+bethought himself of certain alcoholic sustenance which he and Gage
+kept in a closed cabinet in order to be able to indulge in it at
+uncanonical hours without the fuss of ringing and ordering drinks.
+_Noblesse oblige_, the new-fangled peer had observed in reference to
+his obligation to hide the evidence of irregular refreshment.
+
+"Have a drink?" he suggested, as he whipped out a decanter of derelict
+sherry which a foraging tour of the cellars had discovered.
+
+Mr. Carnaby Leo's interest in his surroundings seemed to deepen at the
+suggestion.  "I will," he promptly responded, as he swooped down upon
+the wine.  "Sherry!"  He pronounced the word with a contortion of his
+fat face which might be construed into an indication of preference for
+some other beverage not immediately forthcoming; but he drank it,
+gulping down a glass at a swallow, nevertheless.
+
+Suddenly Miss Leo turned to Peckover.  "You are not married?" she
+demanded with startling significance.
+
+"Not yet," he answered, blanching.
+
+"Engaged?"
+
+She stood over him breathing a fell design, her black eyes transfixing
+him, and seeming to wither his flippant courage to the very root.
+Still he made a feebly desperate effort to stave it off.  "Not quite.
+Almost.  Practically," he stammered.
+
+"That's a trifle," the lady returned with masterful decisiveness.
+"Easily got over."  Then to his relief she turned her blighting gaze
+from him and directed it meditatively to the expanse of park beyond the
+window.  "I think," she said musingly, "that in any event I see my way
+out."
+
+"Yes, that is the best way out," murmured Peckover as loudly as he
+dared, following her gaze.
+
+But she ignored the rash speech, and for some moments the silence was
+broken only by the smacking of Mr. Leo's lips as he endeavoured to
+impart gusto into his occupation.
+
+Peckover, dreading the next words, was about to call attention to the
+beauty of the landscape when Miss Leo suddenly turned upon him, and, as
+though struck by an exceptionally brilliant idea, said--"In the event
+of my not being Lady Quorn, why should I not marry you?"
+
+"Oh, bother!"  Peckover was startled into the expression of
+disagreement.  "Why should you?" he objected manfully.
+
+"If I set my mind upon it," she said, with a dangerous look in her eye.
+
+"Please take it off," he protested.  "Lord Quorn is my friend; he saved
+my life, I could not be so base as to rob him of you."
+
+"No," the lady replied dryly, "you wouldn't if I wanted him.  But I'm
+not so sure about it.  Anyhow, in case the poor fellow doesn't get
+better, why, he couldn't complain."
+
+"No, that would be my work," Peckover reflected anxiously.
+
+"Weak stuff, this," exclaimed Mr. Leo.  "Brandy neat is my sauce.
+Can't taste sherry."
+
+"It's not for want of trying," Peckover thought, as he noticed the
+almost empty decanter, but he did not say so.
+
+"Isn't he a fine fellow?" murmured Miss Leo, with an unwelcome approach
+to affectionate confidence.  "Be nice to him and he'll soon take to
+you."
+
+"He has soon taken to the sherry," was Peckover's mental commentary.
+
+"Strong as a lion," said Lalage, waxing enthusiastic.
+
+"And thirsty as a dozen," Peckover told himself.
+
+"Carnaby, dear," his sister called sweetly, "I want you and Mr. Gage to
+be great friends.  We are so already," she added caressingly to the
+unhappy Peckover; "more than friends, eh?"
+
+"Don't seem to have lost much time," was her brother's not unnatural
+comment as he leered at their victim.
+
+Peckover felt that if he did not take a firm stand at once he was lost.
+"I quite agree with you," he replied boldly, addressing himself to the
+still thirsty Mr. Leo and ignoring the lady's blandishments.  "There is
+no need to be in such a deuce of a hurry.  You see"--he took courage to
+face his would-be enslaver--"I never set eyes on you till ten minutes
+ago."
+
+Miss Leo's face changed swiftly from affection to resentment.
+"Carnaby," she exclaimed, as an ill-boding light flashed from her eyes,
+"do you hear that?"
+
+Carnaby, disturbed in his employment of draining the last drops out of
+the decanter, responded loudly, and, it seemed a trifle perfunctorily,
+"Never set eyes?  All right.  I'll take them out for you, and reset
+them directly."
+
+"But I'm not the man you want," Peckover protested.
+
+"Nobody," roared Leo, "will want you much after I've shaken hands with
+you."
+
+"I want Lord Quorn," Miss Leo declared resolutely.  "Failing Lord
+Quorn, I'll take you."
+
+"Well, but----" Peckover began to expostulate, when Mr. Leo rolled up
+and stopped him.
+
+"Now, look here, my pretty dickey-bird," he explained grimly, "I'm
+gentle up to a point, because my sweet sister doesn't like bloodshed.
+That poker," he pointed to the broken steel, "was his lordship's right
+arm; here is yours."
+
+He caught up the shovel, and with a quick movement snapped it, throwing
+the pieces back into the fender with emphatic and dismaying clatter.
+
+"Would you mind listening to me?" urged Peckover, regarding the
+object-lesson as unpleasantly superfluous.
+
+But the man of strength disregarded his appeal.  "I shan't hurt you
+yet," he declared with an under-lying threat, as he caught up the tongs
+and flourished them.  He opened and closed them with a snap several
+times uncomfortably near Peckover's nose.  "Both legs," he exclaimed,
+as, putting forth a mighty effort, he twisted and broke them, throwing
+them down with the same provoking clangour.
+
+"I tell you," Peckover declared desperately, "this house is not mine.
+It is not even at this moment Lord Quorn's.  It is let furnished.  I
+wish you would not interfere with the fire-irons."
+
+"I'm not particular," Leo returned.  "Can't stop to go into the
+ownership of fire-irons.  You've seen what I'm capable of; now send 'em
+up to his lordship with my compliments."
+
+"Lord Quorn is not at home here at present," Peckover insisted.
+
+"A lord," said Lalage, "is at home anywhere."
+
+The thought of the real Lord Quorn crossed Peckover's mind.
+
+"Fine thing to be a lord," he reflected bitterly.  "That poor chap has
+missed this fun."  Then seeing Carnaby evidently on the look-out for
+fresh worlds, or, rather, domestic implements, to conquer, he turned
+desperately to Lalage.  "I say," he proposed seriously, "can't we
+compromise this?"
+
+The words, or at least one of them caught the ear of her brother, on
+whom possibly the sherry was beginning to take effect.  "Compromise,
+you wombat?" he bawled.  "Compromise my beautiful sister?"
+
+"No, no, Carnaby," protested the beautiful one in question, with a look
+at Peckover which gave unmistakable point to her words, "how absurd you
+are."
+
+"Compromise my precious sister, you slink!"
+
+"No, no," Peckover objected, getting quite reckless between the two
+fires; "not your precious sister.  How absurd you are!"
+
+Next instant the giant had sprung at him and had him in his grip.
+"Absurd?  Am I?  I'll wring your neck!"
+
+"I mean settle," Peckover explained in a shriek.
+
+"I'll settle you," was the retort, emphasized by a tightening grip.
+
+"I mean settle with money," gasped the tortured one, hoping the magic
+word might have a relaxing effect upon the stricture.
+
+But whatever might have been its effect upon his tormentor's mind when
+unclouded by alcohol, it had now the reverse of the desired result.
+"Money!" he cried in maudlin indignation as he threw him off, "what is
+money where the honour of my lovely Lalage is concerned?"
+
+Peckover had come to the inevitable conclusion that it would be worth
+his while to make some pecuniary sacrifice in order to get out of the
+difficulty.  He would do well to jettison part of the cargo of his ship
+which had seemed to be coming home so nicely.
+
+"You see," he explained, "much as my friend Quorn may admire your
+sister, he will be bound to marry a rich girl to support his title."
+
+"A peer wants a lot of keeping up, I suppose," growled Mr. Leo, taking
+out another bottle from the cabinet and shaking it viciously,
+demonstrating by his action that a bush-bully requires a certain amount
+of keeping-up as well.
+
+"It stands to reason," Peckover replied.  "Now," he added
+insinuatingly, "if a hundred pounds----"
+
+The words were scarcely out of his mouth when he was sorry he had
+uttered them.  There was an explosion, a smash, and the little table
+with its contents was lying on the floor broken by a thump from the
+mighty fist.
+
+"Hundred devils!" Mr. Leo roared.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+So far as he dared, Peckover began to lose his temper.  "I wish you
+would not smash things," he ventured to remonstrate.  "I'll take your
+word for your muscle."
+
+"My muscle prefers to speak for itself," was the retort.
+
+"It need not talk with such a deuced lot of emphasis," Peckover
+rejoined.  "What do you say," he added, returning to business, "to two
+hundred pounds?"
+
+"Don't you wish I may take it?" exclaimed the fair Lalage with infinite
+scorn.
+
+"You can't expect any more," Peckover urged.  "Lord Quorn is a very
+poor man."
+
+"Is he?" Lalage asked, becoming thoughtful.
+
+"Certainly he is.  Really not worth looking after.  Now," he added,
+coaxingly.  "Can't you put a fair price on your journey?"
+
+"What price my glorious sister's broken heart?" bellowed Mr. Leo,
+truculently maudlin.
+
+"Damaged goods half price," was Peckover's inaudible reply.
+
+"Eh, you scallywag?"  The big man advanced upon him threateningly.
+"Let me go into figures with your beautiful Lord Quorn.  Once before a
+man played the fool with Lalage, and we got five thousand pounds out of
+his executors."
+
+"Executors?" repeated Peckover, interested in spite of more urgent
+considerations.  "Poor fellow died then?"
+
+"Yes, you see Carnaby called upon him," Lalage explained sweetly.
+
+"Now," proceeded Mr. Leo, always with unnecessary volume of tone,
+"before I proceed to extremities, I should like to know from you, as
+his lordship's friend, how we stand."
+
+It occurred to Peckover that the chances were that either he or both
+would stand on two stumps before long if the weather did not change.
+"Name your own sum for the return ticket," he said desperately.
+
+Mr. Leo walked up and placed his hands upon Peckover's shoulders with
+such energy that the smaller man wondered he did not collapse into his
+boots.  "Does he mean it?" he cried, glaring tipsily into Peckover's
+contorted face.  "Not he!  Look at his eye; it's shifty."
+
+The victim considered he might esteem himself lucky if the feature in
+question did not shift out of his head forthwith.
+
+"We must take time," said Lalage, laying a repressing hand on her
+brother's arm.
+
+"We'll stay a week or two with you," Mr. Leo declared; "till his
+lordship has decided whether he will remain on above ground or not."
+
+It occurred to Peckover that the property would be considerably out of
+repair by that time, but he recognized that a refusal was at the moment
+quite out of the question.  Then, as Mr. Leo, having given him a
+preliminary shake, released him from his clutch by sending him
+backwards with uncalled-for violence against a floor lamp which was not
+improved by the contact, the door opened and Miss Ethel Hemyock looked
+in.  "Oh, Mr. Gage, I have only just got rid of poor Mr. Sharnbrook."
+
+The young lady came in with a smile for Peckover and a doubtful glance
+at the strangers.  Perhaps Miss Leo's appearance suggested to her
+ignorance that she had not much to fear from that quarter in the way of
+rivalry; anyhow, her look changed to one of easy graciousness as
+Peckover, awkwardly enough, introduced them.
+
+"Let me present some Australian friends of mine," he said.
+
+"Very great friends," added Lalage, with a significant smile.
+
+"More than friends; brothers, eh, Gage, my boy," put in Carnaby taking
+the cue from his sister, and accompanying the words with a slap which
+nearly dislocated Peckover's shoulder.
+
+"Oh," said Miss Ethel, rather drawing back, and looking enquiringly at
+Peckover.
+
+"So pleased to know all your friends, dear," observed Lalage with
+mischievous significance.  "I am sure we shall be great friends,
+Miss--Miss----"
+
+"Ethel Hemyock," the young lady supplied frigidly, the word "dear"
+having congealed her.
+
+Lady Agatha and Dagmar came in.  The hostess' look of enquiry at the
+sight of the abnormal visitors was cut short by Ethel's anxious
+enquiry.  "Where is Mr. Sharnbrook?"
+
+The tone suggested to her mother's sharp ears that something was wrong.
+
+"Mr. Sharnbrook has just gone."
+
+"He is staying to luncheon?"
+
+"No," Dagmar answered.  "Mother did not ask him."
+
+"He must!" Ethel exclaimed, making for the door.
+
+"Ethel!" Dagmar cried, as she sprang after her.
+
+Lady Agatha, scenting mischief, turned to Peckover.  "Will you present
+your--friends?" she said coldly.
+
+Peckover, roused from the natural preoccupation induced by his
+position, did so.  "Miss Leo, Mr. Leo----"
+
+"Friends from the Bush?" Lady Agatha enquired superciliously, eyeing
+through her "witherers" Lalage's short hair and short dress.
+
+"Yes--just so," Peckover answered in his confusion.
+
+"What?" roared Carnaby.  "Bush?  I'll bush you!"
+
+"Carnaby," his sister remonstrated, "be calm.  Yes, we are just from
+Australia."
+
+"Friends of Mr. Gage's?" Lady Agatha enquired, in a tone of disgusted
+resignation.
+
+"Friends of Lord Quorn," Peckover corrected swiftly.
+
+"And of Mr. Gage's, I should hope," Lalage added with an embarrassing
+show of affectionate insistence.
+
+"Ah!" said Lady Agatha, transferring her attention and her glasses to
+Carnaby, "Lord Quorn's former sheep partner, perhaps?"
+
+"What?" shouted the worthy fellow, more bellicose than usual under the
+influence of the sherry.  "Sheep partner?"
+
+"It is not necessary," observed Lady Agatha with cutting distinctness,
+"to speak so loud.  I am not aware that any one in the room is deaf."
+
+"What," demanded Carnaby of Peckover in a roaring whisper, "does the
+old lady mean by calling me a sheep partner?"
+
+"Hush!  It's all right," he replied.  "She thinks you are an Australian
+swell--a mutton-king."
+
+"Mutton king?" Carnaby bawled, raising his arm as though to pulverize
+his insulter.
+
+The evidences of his strength had meanwhile attracted Lady Agatha's
+attention.  "Are you," she asked severely, "the person who has been
+taking liberties with the fire-irons?"
+
+"Yes," answered Carnaby with justifiable pride.  "I just snapped them
+to amuse this little wombat."  Then, as a brilliant afterthought, he
+suggested--"Shall I ring for some more and show you how it is done?"
+
+"By no means," was the frigid answer.  "I should very much object to be
+shown anything of the sort.  And I must request you, if your friends
+need amusement, to choose some other method of providing it."
+
+"All right, don't be alarmed," replied Carnaby, on whom her grand tone
+was quite wasted.  "Winter's coming on and I won't reduce the stock;
+I've got something more interesting to break than fire-irons."
+
+"By the way," Lady Agatha observed, "we saw a strange and not very
+prepossessing person in the shrubbery by the drive just now.  Was he by
+any chance a friend of yours?"
+
+"Not likely, ma'am," Carnaby answered, "unless it was Lord Quorn, and
+this little wallaby tells us he is in bed."
+
+"It was not Lord Quorn," said Lady Agatha.
+
+The Misses Ethel and Dagmar came in breathless, with Sharnbrook between
+them, looking as a pick-pocket might under escort of two policemen.
+
+"We caught him, mother, at the drive gate.  I told him how sorry you
+were you had let him go when you meant to insist upon his staying to
+luncheon."
+
+"Of course," Lady Agatha corroborated, conveniently ignoring the fact
+that she had practically sent him off as having no further use for him.
+"Mr. Sharnbrook might have known we never could be so inhospitable."
+
+Sharnbrook gave an enquiring glance at Peckover, who could only
+helplessly reply by a sign directing his attention to Miss Leo, at
+sight of whom hope gave way to despair in the Sharnbrook bosom.
+Bisgood announced luncheon.  Lady Agatha's look at Peckover said as
+plainly as speech--"What are you going to do with these impossible
+people?"  And under the look he felt more limp and nonplussed than ever.
+
+Under the circumstances Peckover was actually relieved when the tension
+of the situation was snapped by a loud exclamation of satisfaction from
+Carnaby.  "Lunch!  Good!  I'm all there!"  With a stride he placed
+himself by Lady Agatha's side, and offered her his arm with what might
+be supposed to stand in the Bush for the grand manner.  Ignoring his
+arm, Lady Agatha crossed her own and walked stiffly and resentfully
+from the room.  By no means abashed, Carnaby looked round and pounced
+upon Dagmar, who, having lost Sharnbrook in a struggle for him with her
+sister, was also disappointed of getting Peckover, whom Miss Leo had
+taken prompt care to annex.  But Carnaby was hardly acceptable, even as
+a consolation prize.  Dagmar drew back and made a sudden dart after her
+mother leaving the rest to follow in various degrees of discontent.
+
+"Oh, mother," she exclaimed breathless with indignation, "what
+appalling people!  We had better keep an eye on the silver.  Do you
+know, I saw that horrid man again in the shrubbery just now."
+
+As the last of the party were pressing through the library door "that
+horrid man" came up to the window and looked furtively in.  It was none
+other than Lord Quorn, the real Lord Quorn; he who had drunk Peckover's
+drugged champagne at the _Quorn Arms_ at Great Bunbury.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+"I've  had enough of this, I'm going to get up," Mr. Gage, the
+_soi-disant_ Lord Quorn, declared, as Peckover after luncheon devoted a
+few minutes of his present complicated existence to visit that
+impatient patient.
+
+"No, you don't."
+
+"Won't I?" was the querulous rejoinder.  "Why not?  The doctor's gone,
+and----"
+
+"There's something worse than the doctor come," said Peckover with a
+long face.
+
+"I don't know what's worse than the doctor, unless it's the
+undertaker," returned Gage.
+
+"Well, I do," said Peckover feelingly.  "A most unfortunate thing has
+happened.  A girl who I was a bit sweet on out there has followed me
+over."
+
+Gage whistled.  "Then our game's all up.  Of course she'll know you are
+Quorn and I am not."
+
+"No," replied Peckover subtly.  "I have made it all right about that.
+Told her there was a mistake and I was not the rightful heir."
+
+"That was smart of you," Gage said with gloomy approval.  "Well, what's
+the trouble, then.  The lady doesn't expect me to marry her, does she?"
+
+"Yes," answered Peckover with intensity, "she does."
+
+"What?"  Gage nearly landed out of bed in his surprise.  "Me?"  Then
+laughed incredulously.
+
+"She says she has come six thousand miles to be Lady Quorn and she is
+going to be Lady Quorn."
+
+"The deuce she is.  How is she going to manage that?"
+
+"By force."
+
+"What?" Gage shouted.  "Marry me by force?"
+
+"Yes," answered Peckover seriously.  "You see, she has brought her
+brother with her, a dare-devil rampaging brute of a bush-ranger, six
+foot three tall, and broad in proportion, who sticks at nothing but
+your favourite vital part with a bowie knife."
+
+"I'd like to see him," Gage observed scornfully
+
+"You will, if you get out of bed and come downstairs," returned
+Peckover impressively.  "Also you will have an opportunity of remarking
+the havoc he has made with the fire-irons."
+
+"What?  Fire-irons?"
+
+"He has been snapping a few pokers and tongs just to show what he will
+do with you when he catches you."
+
+"What absurd rot," Gage said with rising exasperation.  "I never had
+anything to do with the brute's sister."
+
+"But you have got to marry her," rejoined Peckover quite seriously, "or
+take the consequences."
+
+"Oh, have I?"
+
+"Yes; you had better stop in bed."
+
+"Had I?" Gage exclaimed, flinging off the clothes.  "I rather think
+I'll get up and hand the ruffian over to the police, as you don't seem
+to have the _nous_ to do it."
+
+"Not I," returned Peckover shrewdly.  "Not quite such a fool.  Once
+open police-court proceedings, and our little arrangement will come out
+and be spoilt, even if nothing else happens."
+
+"Well, what are we to do?" Gage demanded, recognizing the weight of his
+friend's objection.
+
+"You stop in bed," said Peckover, with an air of authority based upon
+expediency.
+
+"D----d if I do," Gage retorted.
+
+"If you don't, you'll have to," replied Peckover with truth underlying
+paradox.  "A fortnight of the downy is better than six months of the
+plank."
+
+"What, stop here for a fortnight?" Gage cried wrathfully.  "It's a
+regular take in.  A rollicking time I'm having for my money;
+cold-shouldered, half-drowned, and now tucked up in this beastly bed
+for weeks.  Where does Lord Quorn come in?"
+
+"Lord Quorn," observed Peckover sententiously, "will go out if Mr.
+Carnaby Leo gets hold of him.  He has got a museum at home of pickled
+ears, and eyes and noses, et cetera, of which he has deprived certain
+parties who didn't do as he told them.  After all," he added
+persuasively, "it is better to stop in bed with the schedule of your
+features complete than to get up for a rollick and find some of the
+items missing."
+
+"Why the devil didn't you tell me you'd been playing the fool with a
+bush-ranger's sister?" Gage snapped savagely.  "I wouldn't have looked
+at you or your title.  You've got my money under false pretences."
+
+"You never gave me time to go into my past history," was the plausible
+reply.  "You might have known when you took over a peerage you were
+letting yourself in for something of the sort.  You know it's a way we
+have."
+
+"A pretty brilliant way, to get tangled up with bush-rangers," sneered
+Gage.
+
+"He didn't come on the scene till an hour ago.  I suppose, by the way,"
+he suggested mischievously, "you would not care to marry her, and so
+see your way to getting out of bed without damage?"
+
+"Marry ten thousand devils!  That's not my idea of fun."
+
+"Lalage is a fine figure of a woman," Peckover continued.  "Make an
+imposing Lady Quorn.  Fine mover; takes the drawing-room in three,
+including anything that stands in the way.  The coronet would suit her
+better if she'd let her hair grow."
+
+"Crops her hair short?" Gage enquired, in a tone of infinite disgust at
+the picture.
+
+Peckover nodded.  "Bit too much of the dragoon for our taste, my boy.
+You stop in bed, and let me try to get rid of them."
+
+"I won't stop in bed," returned Gage.  "Where are these brutes?"
+
+"Sent 'em down to _The Pigeons_," Peckover answered.  "Lady Agatha
+wouldn't have 'em in the house.  Don't blame her.  Their manners aren't
+exactly Vere de Vere.  Things were a bit awkward at lunch.  Carnaby,
+the beauty, had been mixing his liquors and fell asleep with his ugly
+head in the salad bowl, and the tomato which Lalage aimed at him to
+wake him up, missed, and spattered on Bisgood's shirt-front.  Lady Aggy
+wasn't pleased."
+
+"It's all very well," said Gage sulkily, "but I'm going to get up.  The
+woman can't make me marry her against my will, nor can the great ox,
+her brother."
+
+"No," Peckover agreed, "but he can have a good try for it, and the
+process might not be pleasant."
+
+"I never heard such nonsense."
+
+"No; I wouldn't have believed it," said Peckover, "if I hadn't had the
+fellow's dukes round my windpipe.  He is just a buffalo in trousers.
+And if you get up, and shy at the sister, who is a hyaena in petticoats,
+you'll know it; that is, if he leaves you in a state to know anything."
+
+"A pretty abominable treat you've let me in for," said Gage sourly.
+"But I'm not going to stay in this four-poster.  You've got to go and
+square this at once.  Ask them what they'll take to go back."
+
+"I've offered them a couple of hundred," Peckover replied, "and got
+nearly strangled for my trouble."
+
+"Couple of hundred!" said Gage contemptuously.  "You'll have to make it
+thousands and take it out of your five."
+
+"Oh, I say!" the other protested.
+
+"All right; if you don't," Gage declared resolutely, "I'll chuck the
+title and leave you and your friends to fight it out among yourselves.
+If she means Lord Quorn she shall have him, but not me, my boy.  And
+I'm not going to stop between the sheets for any bush-ranger in
+Australia or out of it.  So there!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+After Lord Quorn--supposed to be Percy Peckover--had been carried to
+Dr. Barton's surgery, he lay for several days in a state of now total,
+now semi, unconsciousness.  The astute Mr. Doutfire, pluming himself on
+his neat capture, hovered about the unfortunate peer, drank whisky and
+water with the much-bored medico, and discussed over sundry cigars the
+chances of the patient's slipping through his fingers into the next
+world.  The object of his solicitude did slip through them, though not
+quite so far as that.  And it happened in this wise.
+
+When Doutfire was not himself on guard (to the accompaniment of
+nicotine sedatives and alcoholic tonics) he took care to post a
+constable about the doctor's premises with instructions to keep a sharp
+look-out for any sign of activity on the part of the lethargic
+criminal.  Then suddenly the police authorities of Bunbury and district
+were thrown into a state of excitement by the news of a daring burglary
+which had taken place at Mansetter Park, the seat of Sir James
+Rumbelow, the importance of which crime was heightened by the fact that
+the stout baronet, roused from his post-prandial nap by the news, had
+unwisely attempted to pursue the thieves, who had by that time got four
+or five miles' start, and had cut short the chase, so far as he was
+concerned, by tripping over a croquet-hoop on the lawn and thereby
+severely injuring himself.
+
+It was clearly a case that called for the utmost activity on the part
+of the representatives of the law; the Bunbury police force was on its
+mettle, and the fussy Mr. Doutfire became in a moment the incarnation
+of bustling importance.  The comatose culprit at Dr. Barton's was
+forgotten in the gravity of Sir James Rumbelow's stolen plate and
+broken nose.  And it so happened when the detective was reminded of him
+it was by a communication from headquarters announcing that Peckover's
+associate, Cutbush, had been arrested, and he had volunteered a
+statement which made it appear that there might not be much of a case
+against his dupe.  Under the circumstances, Mr. Doutfire felt little
+hesitation in withdrawing the guard and drafting him into the Mansetter
+district, especially as the doctor assured him that he might be under
+no uneasiness as to the likelihood of the patient's being in a
+condition to get up and walk about.
+
+Nevertheless, that is exactly what Lord Quorn did.  Suddenly waking
+from a lethargic sleep, he stretched himself, sat up, looked round in a
+dazed fashion, and after a futile attempt to remember who and where he
+was, feeling an irresistible longing for fresh air, he got up, shuffled
+into his clothes, and walked unnoticed into the street.
+
+It was market day; the noise and the bustle worried him, and in his
+weak state the jostling of the yokels was more than he could stand.  So
+he turned into one of the quieter streets and thence wandered off into
+the country, his mind still a blank as to what had recently happened to
+him.  Although the fresh air revived him and was grateful after the
+drug-laden atmosphere of the doctor's dispensary, yet it did not quite
+drive the fumes from his brain, and his existence and identity were, as
+he strolled on, as much a puzzle to him as ever.
+
+"Have a lift?" asked a good-natured farmer, overtaking him on the dusty
+road, and noticing his dragging footsteps.  Quorn mechanically got into
+the cart, in his aimless, drifting state of mind; all he knew was he
+had begun to feel tired and wanted to get right away from the place
+whence he had come.
+
+"Going far?" inquired the farmer, as they bowled along.
+
+"Far as you like," was the dull answer.
+
+The farmer stared at him, and then proceeded to cross-examine him, with
+the result that he came to the conclusion that he had picked up an
+escaped lunatic.  With this idea he resolved to set his passenger down
+at the first village they came to, which happened to be Staplewick.
+Finding Quorn had no money, the good fellow took out a coin and gave it
+him, in lieu, as it were, of taking him further, and drove off in a
+state of cogitation.
+
+Naturally Quorn had been set down opposite an inn, the sight of which,
+combined with the touch of the silver in his hand, told him he was
+hungry and more especially thirsty.  He went in and called for
+refreshment, and then took his seat in a room which had already two
+occupants.  They were no others than Messrs. Fanning and Purvis, who,
+after their discomfiture at the Towers had dropped in at _The Pigeons_
+to discuss their all-absorbing grievance.
+
+Until Quorn's hunger and thirst were appeased he paid little attention
+to his companions, but when he had pushed his plate away and lighted up
+the churchwarden pipe that the house afforded, he fell to listening
+lazily to the unrestrained emphasis of their remarks.
+
+"Fi'pun note!  Fi'pun note!" exclaimed Mr. Fanning almost tragically.
+"And his blooming lordship, who didn't do nothin' more in the water
+than a cat would 'a done, smothered with wealth, just because 'e
+'appens to 'ave a 'andle to his name.  Mean, I call it; low mean."
+
+"That it is," agreed Purvis.  "And 'im adding insult to injury telling
+us to get a noo rig-out, and keep the change for our trouble.  Noo
+rig-out?  I'll wear my old boots and breeches down to the last nail and
+stitch first."
+
+"Right!" exclaimed Fanning, with an energy which ignored the aesthetic
+considerations which such a proceeding would involve.  "Fi'pun note!"
+he repeated, relapsing into his now chronic state of truculent
+grievance.  "Fi'pun note for us poor deserving 'eroes, and two hundred
+thousand quid for that bit of gilt gingerbread, Lord Quorn."
+
+"What?"
+
+In a flash of enlightenment the real Lord Quorn jumped from his seat,
+and stood staring at the two men with distended eyes.  "By Gum!  You
+said Lord Quorn?"
+
+"I did," Fanning declared, half defiantly, as not quite sure whether he
+had not opened his mouth rather too wide and too often.  "I said Lord
+Quorn, and I meant Lord Quorn, but my grievance ain't agin 'is
+lordship.  I blame no man for takin' wot's offered.  Wot I blame and
+'ate and detest is the meanness of those 'oo call themselves gents and
+reward a man not accordin' to the services rendered, but accordin' to
+persition in life."
+
+The trenchant pronouncement was entirely wasted on the person to whom
+it was addressed.
+
+"Lord Quorn!"
+
+He had started to his feet with a great cry of self-recognition.  The
+word seemed to have pierced the mist of oblivion which clouded his
+brain, and the incidents of the last hour of his former waking
+existence came thronging to his memory.  Lord Quorn?  Why, of course,
+he was Lord Quorn; although exactly what had happened to him in
+consequence he could not make out.  "Lord Quorn?" he demanded eagerly
+of the astonished pair of grievance-nursers.  "What about him?"
+
+"Do you know his lordship?" Fanning asked suspiciously.
+
+"I ought to."
+
+"Well, then," said the butcher resentfully, "you know the man who has
+earnt two 'undred thousand quid quicker and easier than any man ever
+did before.  Look 'ere!"  Determined to speak his mind to his lordship
+through his acquaintance, Fanning jumped up and tapped Quorn
+impressively on the chest to emphasize his story.  "Wot do you think o'
+this, mister?  Lord Quorn and a rich millionaire friend of 'is--I won't
+call 'im a gentleman--goes out fishin' on the lake.  They fools
+themselves overboard into the water, and is within an ace of drownin'.
+This gentleman," indicating Purvis who sat stolidly blinking with
+conscious merit, "and me, goes to the rescue, and at the risk of our
+lives pulls 'em out when they were just at the last gasp.  What
+'appens?  My nobleman persuades 'is friend that it was 'e 'oo saved 'is
+life, and ignores what me and this gentleman done.  Again wot 'appens?
+Millionaire, 'oo, in my opinion ain't fit to own two and sixpence, ups
+and settles a couple of 'undred thousand sov'rins on his lordship, and
+when me and this gentleman who 'ad risked our lives and ruined our best
+suit of clothes 'appens to ask where we comes in--what do you
+think?--'ee fobs us off with a beggarly fi'pun note."
+
+"I wouldn't have taken it," Quorn commented wonderingly, as he
+recovered from the extra hard slap with which the last words were
+driven home.
+
+Mr. Fanning waggled his greasy head knowingly.  "P'raps you wouldn't,
+mister.  But you didn't catch me nor this gentleman playin' into 'is
+'ands by refusin' it."
+
+"That accounts for it," said Quorn, following his own train of thought
+rather than Mr. Fanning's biassed narrative.  "That accounts for it.
+I've been half drowned.  Funny I don't remember anything about it."
+
+"You?" exclaimed Mr. Fanning.
+
+"According to your story," Quorn maintained.
+
+Mr. Fanning turned a glance on Mr. Purvis which suggested a grave doubt
+as to their companion's sobriety.  "Oh," he replied sarcastically, "and
+'oo may you be?"
+
+"Well," answered Quorn deliberately, "I rather think I'm Lord Quorn."
+
+Again Mr. Fanning's glance sought Mr. Purvis', and this time it
+indicated a diagnosis of more serious mental trouble than mere alcohol
+would account for.
+
+"Oh, you think that, do you?" he returned with gentle banter.  "Then,"
+he added mischievously, "I should recommend your lordship goin' up to
+the Towers 'ere, and turnin' out the party 'oo is at present occupyin'
+your position."
+
+"Oh?"  Quorn started up as a fresh puzzle took hold of his mind.  "Is
+that so?"
+
+Instead of replying directly to his questioner, Mr. Fanning turned to
+his friend, and somewhat exasperatingly repeated the enquiry to him.
+"Is that so, Mr. Purvis?"  Then with an exaggerated wink, he added,
+"Yes, no doubt about it, there's a screw loose somewheres."
+
+Quorn stared at him for a moment, and then turned to the door.  "What's
+the name of the place?" he asked over his shoulder.
+
+"Your lordship's residence?" grinned Fanning.  "Staplewick Towers."
+And as the door shut upon their late companion the two aggrieved heroes
+indulged in the first merriment they had found the heart for since it
+had been borne in upon them that their gallantry was held so cheap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Staplewick Towers.  That was the name of the place, his own, that he
+had been on his way to see.  He would soon get the answer to the
+riddle.  As to his having been nearly drowned, it could not have been
+he.  The last thing he remembered was drinking the drugged wine at the
+_Quorn Arms_.  Surely he had not gone through an active existence
+between that and his waking up in the doctor's surgery.  He argued the
+probabilities with himself as he hastened eagerly towards the Towers
+which loomed grey and real enough before him.  Confident now of his
+position he walked through the lodge gates with an air of ownership,
+and made his way up the drive until he saw a little way in front of him
+several people.  The sight checked his hurry.  It suddenly occurred to
+him that it would be a good plan and amusing to lie low and just see
+what was really going on before declaring himself.  One thing was
+certain.  He was not the Lord Quorn who had been rewarded with a
+fortune for pretending to have saved a millionaire's life.  That was
+too good to be true; he only wished it were.  Then who was the other
+Lord Quorn, and what devil's game could they be playing?
+
+So he turned off the drive and slunk along behind the shrubs which
+fringed it, lurking in the bushes until he could see his way clear to
+get up to the house.  He was seen, as has been shown, but the observers
+were too intent on their own ends to take more than casual notice of
+him.
+
+Presently, however, he got his chance, and was able to make his way
+unseen to the library windows.  He peeped through, and the first person
+his eyes lighted on was Percy Peckover.
+
+In an instant some idea of the real state of affairs flashed upon him;
+and his hazy guess was not far from being correct.  Fired with
+indignation and a furious desire to put an instant stop to the
+nefarious game that was being played, he put forth his hand to open the
+window.  Before he could do so a figure advanced from a side of the
+room which was hidden from him, and with a sickening shock he
+recognized his former flame, Miss Lalage Leo.  Behind her loomed now
+the unmistakable form of the great bully whom he had never actually
+met, but had learned to regard with the enhanced terror which the
+unknown inspires, and from which the present glimpse detracted nothing.
+Happily the frightened face was not noticed by any of the party who
+were setting their faces resolutely towards the dining-room.  So Quorn,
+as he recovered from the shock of the forgotten terror, was able to
+move back unobserved and slip away to a quiet spot where he could
+review his deplorable situation.
+
+
+After luncheon and Peckover's interview with Gage, he and Sharnbrook
+had a somewhat uncomfortable half-hour together over a cigar.  Lady
+Agatha had proved herself equal to what had seemed the impossible task
+of bundling the Leos out of the house.  But then Carnaby was in a state
+of comparative helplessness, and Lalage, although she would have liked
+to stay and, perhaps, smoke a cigar with the object of her matrimonial
+intentions, was disarmed by the superior style and the strength of Lady
+Agatha's grand manner.  It was something quite outside her experience,
+and, for the time at any rate, it paralysed any tendency to opposition
+and insistence on her part.  So she went off with her clumsy,
+staggering brother, and with a promise, unacceptable, but not to be
+ignored, to return very soon and keep a business eye upon Lord Quorn
+and Mr. Gage.
+
+"Whew!  That's a good riddance," Peckover exclaimed, with a great puff
+of relief as he lighted a big cigar and dropped into an easy chair.
+"I've had some uncomfortable meals in my time, but that bangs the lot."
+
+"Nice let-in for me," said Sharnbrook ruefully.  "I'm back in their
+clutches again, just when I was congratulating myself you had got me
+out."
+
+"Well, I couldn't foresee this volcanic eruption," replied Peckover
+apologetically.
+
+"No," Sharnbrook admitted.  "You did your best to draw them off.  They
+are nailers, and their staying power is wonderful.  But, I say, you are
+never going to marry that----?"  He jerked his head backwards in the
+direction Miss Leo was last seen taking.
+
+"Not if I know it," Peckover answered feelingly.  "I'm going to
+compromise----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I mean compromise any claim she may have on me; pay her off."
+
+"I see.  But how on earth did you ever get nuts on her?" Sharnbrook
+inquired wonderingly.
+
+"How, indeed?" thought Peckover.  "Well, you see," he answered, "out
+there the girls aren't enough to go round.  You're lucky if you see one
+in a month, and somehow, when you do see her you don't care to lose
+sight of her.  Where there's only one, that one's the best.  Over here
+Lalage suffers by comparison."
+
+"You bet she does," assented Sharnbrook with more warmth than gallantry.
+
+"Out there," Peckover declared, "she was unique."
+
+"So she is here," said Sharnbrook with conviction.  "Well, if you are
+going to square matters with her otherwise than on a matrimonial basis,
+you might call the fisher-girls off me again before I'm quite landed."
+
+"All right," assented Peckover who had now quite recovered his spirits.
+"I'll do anything to oblige, especially when there's a little fun
+attached to the job."
+
+At that moment Miss Ethel's voice was heard singing in the corridor
+leading to the picture gallery.
+
+"She's coming after me," Sharnbrook exclaimed in an agitated whisper.
+
+"Slip out," said Peckover, "and leave me to do my best for you."
+
+Sharnbrook gave him a nod of gratitude and ran off by the opposite
+door, just as Miss Ethel, keen on the scent, looked in.
+
+"Do come in, Miss Ethel," Peckover besought her, with an earnestness
+not to be ignored.
+
+"I was looking for Mr. Sharnbrook," she replied coldly.
+
+"He has just gone out that way," said Peckover indicating the other
+door.
+
+"Did he see Dagmar?" Miss Ethel inquired jealously, crossing the room
+with determined steps.
+
+Peckover sprang to intercept her.  "Don't run away from me, Miss Ethel.
+I know you must be annoyed by those vulgar people who intruded here
+just now----"
+
+"I should think so," said Ethel haughtily, trying to pass.
+
+"But," urged Peckover, "you won't be troubled by them again.  I'm
+paying their fares back to Australia; so that will settle them--out
+there."
+
+Ethel suddenly appeared to be somewhat less desirous of reaching the
+door.  "Oh?" she said slowly.  "And are you going with them?"
+
+"Not if I know it.  Old England's the place for my money."
+
+"Not going to marry the--the lady?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Do I look like it?" he replied insinuatingly.  "Now, don't trouble
+about them, or about that silly old Sharnbrook, who prefers to go off
+and buy his fifty-ninth fox-terrier to waiting for you.  Let's sit down
+and have a nice cosy chat."
+
+The invitation was, under the circumstances, hardly to be resisted,
+whatever short work the young lady might, under others, have made of
+it.  As they took their seats side by side, Peckover stretched out his
+arm behind the lady to arrange a cushion for her--and let it stay there.
+
+For as many seconds as probability allowed Ethel affected to be unaware
+of the caressing attitude.  Then suddenly she seemed to wake up to the
+fact that her companion's arm was round her shoulders, upon which she
+leant forward to allow him to withdraw it.
+
+But Peckover was not keen on taking hints when they ran counter to his
+amusements.  "Isn't it comfortable?" he asked.
+
+"Your arm."
+
+"My arm's all right," he assured her cheerfully.  "Do lean back.  Hope
+I'm not in the way.  Of course if you'd rather I went and sat at the
+other end of the gallery I'll do so.  Only it will be a bit slow."
+
+"Mr. Gage, how absurd you are."
+
+"Yes," he agreed, "the suggestion is rather far-fetched.  We may as
+well keep within kissing distance, mayn't we?"
+
+"Oh, but it is not proper," Ethel protested.
+
+"Kissing?" he asked in surprise, "I think it is proper; if you are
+going in for a proper time.  Why not?"
+
+"It is," she answered demurely, "between some people."
+
+"People who know how to make the time pass?" he suggested.
+
+"People who are--engaged," she said, with as much indifference to the
+immediate and personal application as she could assume.
+
+"Well," he rejoined flippantly, "you are engaged, and I may be."
+
+"Mr. Gage!"  She turned on him indignantly.  "I am not engaged."
+
+"Not to Sharnbrook?"
+
+"Mr. Gage, how absurd you are."
+
+"I hope so.  Are you engaged?" he asked significantly.
+
+"Whether I am engaged or free," she answered, "it is all the same to
+you."
+
+"No," he returned, "if you were a little more free it would be quite
+different."
+
+"Would it?" she asked, with a provocative glance at his face.
+
+"Wouldn't it?  Like this."  He closed his arm round her and tried to
+draw her to him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage, you don't mean it," she protested, holding back.
+
+"Come!" he said.  "One kiss."
+
+"Oh, no.  It wouldn't be right," she still objected.  Then she sighed.
+"Poor Jack!"
+
+"Ah, poor fellow," Peckover said, with a hardly suppressed grin.  "Poor
+old Sharnbrook."
+
+"He is very fond of me," she said, regretfully.  "But of course if I
+can't care for him as much as I ought to--I don't know what the poor
+fellow will do."
+
+"Give me something handsome, I hope," was Peckover's thought.  "Ethel,"
+he whispered, and this time did get something like a kiss.
+
+"Percy, it is wrong of you," she murmured.
+
+"I know it is," he admitted, drawing in a breath as of pain.  "Poor old
+Sharnbrook; and he thinks I'm his friend.  He'll never give you up," he
+added with conviction.
+
+For an instant Miss Ethel's look suggested that that matter might be
+safely left in her hands to bring to a satisfactory conclusion.  But it
+swiftly passed away, and she said, "Jack Sharnbrook is a good fellow.
+He will not stand in the way of my happiness."
+
+"That he won't, I'll go bail," said Peckover to himself.  "Ethel!" he
+murmured caressingly.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage," she returned, in half-yielding protest.  "Percy,
+darling," he suggested, drawing her to him for another kiss.
+
+"You must wait," she objected, "till we are engaged."
+
+"We Gages never wait," he assured her softly.  "It's a tradition in the
+family.  No.  We don't hang about for the mistletoe to grow."
+
+Nevertheless the present representative of that impatient race had to
+postpone his endearments, for the door opened softly and Miss Dagmar's
+scandalized voice cried, "Oh, Ethel!" making the fond pair start aside
+with electric unanimity.
+
+"Bother it," Peckover muttered, putting on the air of self-conscious
+indifference usual in such contretemps.
+
+"All right, Miss Dagmar," said Ethel through her teeth.
+
+"Hope we haven't disturbed you," exclaimed Sharnbrook who had followed
+Dagmar into the room.
+
+Peckover jumped up and went to him.  "Got a cigarette?" he asked in a
+loud voice, adding in a whisper, "Don't look so pleased, old man; or
+you'll spoil everything."
+
+Sharnbrook took the hint at once.  "Don't speak to me, Mr. Gage," he
+cried resentfully.
+
+"You've not lost any time," Dagmar sarcastically remarked to her sister.
+
+"No, dear," Ethel replied with feline sweetness.
+
+"He belongs to that appalling woman from Australia," said Dagmar
+confidently.  "She'll hold him.  Don't you wish you may get him."
+
+"I've got him," Ethel declared.
+
+"She's ready to break it off," whispered Peckover to Sharnbrook.
+"Don't be too eager.  Pretend to be broken-hearted."
+
+The other nodded.  "Mr. Gage," he said, with a fine show of dignified
+feeling, "I find I am mistaken in you."
+
+"That you are," Peckover muttered aside through the corner of his mouth.
+
+"How do you do the broken-hearted?" Sharnbrook enquired in a whisper,
+seeing the ladies were occupied in reciprocating sarcasms.
+
+"Don't make too much noise," Peckover instructed him, in the same tone.
+"Think you are feeling sick; that it's your wedding-day with Ethel.
+Fancy you've missed a pheasant and shot your best dog."
+
+"But I should make a noise," the pupil objected.
+
+"Well, mug a bit," said Peckover, with a model grimace suggestive of
+the wrong horse winning.
+
+"Oh, don't speak to me!" Sharnbrook shouted, as the ladies seemed to
+tire of their mutual repartees.
+
+"That's it," murmured Peckover.  "Don't let her go too easily."
+
+"I--I have something to say to you, Ethel," Sharnbrook declared with a
+sob in his voice.
+
+"Oh, Jack," she exclaimed, with a pretty imitation of remorseful
+distress.
+
+"Come round the garden with me, if it be for the last time," said
+Sharnbrook, his tones quivering with emotion.
+
+"Too loud," whispered Peckover critically as the jilted swain passed
+him.
+
+"Oh, Jack," cried Ethel, the distress in her voice counterbalanced by
+the look of triumph she threw at her sister, "don't look so miserable.
+I couldn't help it."
+
+Sharnbrook gave vent to an explosive, window-rattling sigh as, with a
+wicked half-grin at his deliverer, he held open the door.  The fickle
+Ethel, as she prepared to pass out, put her shapely hand to her
+treacherous lips and contrived to waft a kiss to her latest lover.  And
+she did this without detracting in any appreciable degree from the
+contrite expression with which she successfully veiled her sense of
+triumph.  Which shewed that, up to a point, she was a clever girl, or
+at least a credit to her maternal up-bringing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+It was, however, unfortunate that Miss Ethel had to leave her lover and
+her sister together.  Peckover, baulked of a kiss in one direction, was
+by no means above trying for one in another; and, while Ethel was
+getting off with the old love, thought he might as well utilize the
+opportunity in getting on with the new.  And Miss Dagmar, save in the
+matter of temper, was quite as interesting an object for his attentions
+as her sister.  What was considerably more to the point, her manner
+suggested that she was even more susceptible to his fascinations than
+Ethel.
+
+"Well," he observed with a leer, "while they are settling their
+differences we've got to amuse ourselves, eh?"
+
+A wild desire to cut her sister out on the spot took possession of Miss
+Dagmar.  Lord Quorn was for the time out of the question, and even if
+he were available, she was certain that she would give herself a far
+better time by marrying the richer man.
+
+"How shall we do that, Mr. Gage?" she asked, with an archly provocative
+glance at him.
+
+"Well," responded Peckover, by no means at a loss, "suppose we try how
+much we can get to like one another in ten minutes."
+
+"I'm afraid----" she began, when suddenly she became aware that his arm
+was round her waist.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Dagmar," he entreated.
+
+"I am," she returned, releasing herself.  "I'm afraid you are a
+deceiver."
+
+"Oh, no," he protested, far from displeased, however, at the accusation.
+
+"You have just been making love to Ethel."
+
+"Nothing to speak of," he assured her lightly.  "You see," he added,
+more amorously, "I did not know you cared for me."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage!"
+
+"I didn't," he maintained, wilfully misunderstanding her protest.  "I
+dare say I ought to have, but I didn't."
+
+"And now"--she laughed meaningly--"you think you have discovered my
+secret?"
+
+The last word nearly brought a whistle to Peckover's lips, but he
+suppressed it in time.  "Yes," he urged, "if I am right, if I have
+discovered it----" he paused to get a look at her face, and something
+more.
+
+"Yes?" she murmured.
+
+"Let's make the most of it," he suggested.  "Give me a kiss."
+
+"Oh, no, it wouldn't be proper," she objected, holding back.
+
+"Quite proper," he assured her.  "There's nobody looking."
+
+"I don't quite see," said Dagmar thoughtfully, "how the fact that
+nobody is looking makes it proper."
+
+"Well," argued Peckover, "if nobody is looking I don't see how it
+matters whether it is proper or not."
+
+"But it does," she maintained, holding off.
+
+"So long as it's agreeable to both parties," he urged; "we've no one to
+please but ourselves.  Of course," he added airily, "if you've any
+rooted objection to kissing----"
+
+"It is," said Dagmar hastily, "a question of what is right and what is
+wrong."
+
+Peckover began to think this was dry work.  "You think kissing wrong,
+then?" he suggested.
+
+"Unjustifiable kissing," Dagmar declared.
+
+"Unjustifiable?" Peckover repeated, with the suspicion of a yawn.
+"Seems to me if both parties don't object the act is justified."
+
+Dagmar glanced reflectively at the clock and calculated how many
+minutes more remained to bring him to the point.  "Not necessarily,"
+she rejoined with provocative archness.  "There are certain people who
+may kiss each other, and the rest may not."
+
+"That's no reason why they shouldn't try," argued Peckover, warming
+again under the influence of the fetching glance.  "That's just where
+the fun comes in.  You ought to kiss your mother and your grandmother
+or your sister, or your aunt, or your----"
+
+"Or your fiancee," Dagmar supplied quietly yet promptly.
+
+"Naturally," he agreed, "but that doesn't count."
+
+"Doesn't it?" Dagmar enquired in a tone of surprise.
+
+"You see, it's expected of you," he explained.  "There's--much more of
+a catch, the poets tell us, in the unexpected."
+
+Dagmar was beginning to grow desperate.  Ethel's next (and nearly due)
+innings might hold the unexpected for her.  "There are some things,"
+she observed demurely, "which are made much more delightful by being
+looked forward to."
+
+"That's right enough," he assented, catching an inviting gleam from her
+eyes.  "But it's poor fun looking forward to a thing you aren't going
+to get.  You know what I'm looking forward to?"  He pointed the
+question with a leer.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage," she protested artlessly, "how can I know?"
+
+"By my teaching you," he answered promptly putting forth an endearing
+arm, which, however the lady deftly avoided.
+
+"No, no," she declared, as bewitchingly as her limitations allowed.
+"It is not right, as we are."
+
+It was a pretty broad hint, but the sands of opportunity were running
+low, and Miss Dagmar meant business.
+
+"As we are?" the philanderer echoed, with a short laugh of
+discomfiture.  "No, it's certainly not right or even possible when we
+are so far apart."
+
+Dagmar fancied she caught the hateful sound of her sister's voice.
+"That's what I mean," she said, covering her desperation that a touch
+of demureness.  "We might be close enough to----"
+
+"Right!" Peckover exclaimed eagerly, making a spring towards her.
+
+On this occasion she did not seek to elude his grasp, possibly
+considering that the time for that was past.  She contented herself
+with keeping her inviting cheek at a tantalizingly safe distance from
+Peckover's lips till he wearied of the struggle.
+
+For that spoilt child of Fortune was not used to opposition about
+trifles on the part of the fair sex.  "This is dry work.  What are you
+afraid of?" he protested impatiently.
+
+"You really mustn't.  We are not engaged," was the artificially
+agitated reply.
+
+"That doesn't matter," he insisted.  "Who'll be any the wiser?"
+
+Matrimony, not wisdom, was Miss Dagmar's concern just then.  "I
+couldn't let you," she declared, with a cunning suggestion of duty
+overriding inclination.  "I couldn't--unless----"
+
+To her disgust, she found herself suddenly released.  "Oh, all right,"
+said Peckover, settling his necktie.  "You shan't, if you don't want
+to.  There are other girls about who ain't so particular.  Ethel's not
+coy."  And he made for the door.
+
+In an instant she was after him.  "Ethel?" she cried, clutching his arm
+in desperation, as she saw the lady in question coming across the lawn.
+"You forget Ethel is engaged."  Which speech was, to say the least of
+it, rather disloyal.
+
+"What of it?" Peckover demanded off-handedly.  "All the better.  You
+allow engaged persons may kiss."
+
+"Yes, each other.  Ethel is engaged to Mr. Sharnbrook."
+
+"Oh, Sharnbrook won't mind," he returned, with more truth than
+politeness.
+
+Dagmar's clutch increased in force.  "Mr. Gage," she exclaimed, in
+almost horrified protest, "you are never going to be so thoughtless as
+to wreck two people's happiness?"
+
+"I wasn't aware of it," he replied, somewhat sarcastically.
+
+"Oh, but you are," she urged vehemently.  "Jack Sharnbrook is wrapped
+up in Ethel."
+
+"Finds the wrap a bit too warm to be pleasant," Peckover observed.
+
+"Sooner than see John Sharnbrook's happiness wrecked," the suddenly
+emotional and altruistic Miss Dagmar proceeded, "I would make any
+sacrifice.  Mr. Gage," the moment was critical, and her grasp now
+intense, "you shan't make love to her.  Promise me you won't, and--and
+you shall have a kiss, even before we are engaged."
+
+Footsteps sounded on the gravel just outside the window.
+
+"All right," Peckover responded cheerfully.  "I promise to let her
+alone if she lets me alone.  I'm not the man to stand in Sharnbrook's
+light."
+
+His arm was round her and his lips three inches from hers, when a
+vigorous exclamation of disgust from the window made it expedient that
+even they should pretend to be engaged in quite another of the varied
+but limited number of occupations which necessitate the heads of two
+persons being close together.  Nevertheless Dagmar found time, before
+the window opened to admit Gage, who had come down for an hour, and
+Ethel, to say hurriedly but with none the less fell intent, "Remember
+your promise.  You will be true to me, now?"
+
+Miss Ethel, rendered thoughtfully emulative by the evidences of her
+sister's progress, contented herself with tossing her head peremptorily
+and disdainfully at her treacherous sister.  Further activity on the
+part of the young ladies was, however, postponed by the announcement of
+tea.  Gage lingered behind to say a word to his friend.
+
+"Beats me," he observed sourly, "what's the matter with this peerage.
+Always thought a lord had it all his own way.  Instead of that, the
+girls talk about the weather and the flower-beds to me, and they drop
+into your arms one after the other."
+
+"They're a bit calculating all the same," Peckover remarked with a
+sense of failure.  "I don't know that we might not just as well have
+been talking about the weather."
+
+But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook came in whistling and radiant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+It was to appear that Mr. Carnaby Leo and his sister were not to be put
+off so easily as the confederates imagined.  Encouraged by what they
+considered the other side's weakness, and led on by their ignorance of
+European ways, they--or rather the lady--grew determined to make out of
+their trip a much bigger coup than at first seemed likely to be
+forthcoming from what was really nothing but a huge piece of bluff.  It
+is true that Lady Agatha, with her unassailable manner, was a serious
+obstacle in the path which this enterprising couple proposed to take,
+but she, after all, Lalage argued, was but an outside and detached
+factor in the affair, an outlying rampart, as it were, in the defence.
+
+Nevertheless the influence of her repellent personality was so great
+that neither of the Leos cared to come face to face with her again if
+that situation could by any possibility be avoided, and in their
+councils of war (in which Lalage tried to teach her thick-witted
+brother how to back up her brain by his muscle) the temporary mistress
+of Staplewick was never regarded as a negligible quantity.
+
+So it happened that when, in the evening, the Leos resolved to pay
+another visit of coercion to the Towers, they took care to enter
+unannounced, and to keep out of Lady Agatha's way.  Confident in the
+reasonable cause of their presence, they made their way quietly from
+the hall along a corridor leading to the picture gallery which seemed
+to offer an inviting lurking-place.  As luck would have it, the
+gallery, as being somewhat isolated, had been appointed the
+trysting-place of Peckover and Miss Ethel.  And it was there that the
+arch-deceiver with a cynically expectant smile on his face was awaiting
+his lady-love.
+
+The long room had struck chill as he entered it, and he had lighted a
+cigarette, if not with the idea of warmth, at least to keep his nerves
+in order.  "Quiet," he remarked aloud to himself as he glanced with a
+little shiver along the line of effigied Quorns before whose canvases
+at intervals were arranged, like sentinels, stands of armour.  "Not to
+say Madame Tussaudy.  Rum things ancestors.  What a lot some folks seem
+to think about 'em.  Can't say I ever troubled about mine.  That
+reminds me, I must get up a family history of these Quorn Johnnies, and
+impart it to poor old Gage.  It need not," he gave a little knavish
+laugh, "be all strictly correct according to 'Ume and Smollett.  Well,
+Percy, my boy," he kept talking to himself as though to keep the
+silence at bay, "you've dropped into a nice thing.  It's a fine life to
+be a rich toff, or the imitation of one--which is quite sufficient for
+the general public.  Ethel is a smart little thing; she has come on
+wonderfully since those Australian nuisances gave her a fright.  Poor
+old Gage!  Strikes me I'm having the fun he's paying for.  Ah, here she
+comes."
+
+Footsteps were heard by the door.  He flung away his cigarette, and
+went forward as quickly as the semi-darkness would allow him.  "Ethel!"
+he whispered.
+
+The figure whom he addressed emerged into the stream of moonlight, and
+he saw, to his dismay, Lalage Leo.
+
+"It's me, dear," was her greeting, pleasant, yet with a suggestion of
+business behind it.  "Lalage."
+
+"Eh, yes," he stammered, trying to mask his annoyance with a laugh.
+"Funny place to meet, isn't it?"
+
+"You and Miss Ethel evidently don't think so," was the obvious retort.
+"So you were expecting her?"
+
+"I thought the step was hers," he replied disingenuously.
+
+"Poor girl!  She must have a heavy tread if it is anything like
+Carnaby's," Lalage returned pleasantly.
+
+On the hint Peckover looked beyond her and saw the looming figure of
+her brother with an irritating grin on his just discernible face.
+"Carnaby has got a heavy foot," his sister pursued significantly, "and
+he is going to put it down and keep it there.  Eh, Carnaby?"
+
+The objectionable figure lurched forward.  "Point out the spot you want
+it planted, Lal," he said truculently, "and down it goes."
+
+Peckover found himself wishing that the abominable extremity had been
+planted in the Antipodes and had taken root or, for preference,
+withered away there.  "Where?" he asked wearily.
+
+"Where," Miss Leo echoed.  "Why, on your carrying on with these Hemyock
+girls.  Carnaby, dear," she made the appeal with a vicious look, not at
+her brother but at his intended victim, "you won't see me fooled?"
+
+"But I tell you----" Peckover began, when she snapped him up.
+
+"If you are good enough for other people, you are good enough for me.
+So no nonsense."
+
+"Nonsense?" Carnaby roared.  "I'll----"
+
+Lalage thoughtfully turned to shut the door.  "That's it," she
+whispered.  "Frighten him a bit."  For it seemed to her that the effect
+of the snapped fire-irons was wearing off.  "Tell Mr. Gage," she said
+aloud, holding Carnaby in the moonlight with a glittering eye, "what
+happened to those three mounted police who went after you."
+
+Owing either to the suddenness of the demand or the spell of his
+sister's masterful glare, the small mind which dominated the mass of
+muscle seemed paralysed.  "Ah, yes," he responded stupidly.  "Didn't
+they!"
+
+Miss Leo for the moment seemed to justify her name; she looked like a
+lioness ready to spring, but withheld by considerations of expediency.
+"Go on," she whispered through her clenched teeth.  "Carnaby!" she said
+more mildly and aloud.  "The three who looked after you in the Bush."
+
+But either the hero's recollection was hazy or invention was not his
+strong point.  "Eh?" he said confusedly.  "Yes.  They--they followed me
+into the Bush."
+
+"Yes?  Well?" enquired Peckover, curiously.
+
+"And two of them are there now," continued Lalage with a world of
+uncomfortable meaning.
+
+"I wish you two were," thought Peckover.  "Tell us all about it," he
+said resignedly.
+
+"Go on, Carnaby," his sister commanded.
+
+Whether or not the man of thews and sinews had been keeping up his
+constitution injudiciously at the _Three Pigeons_, certain it was that
+his brain did not seem in glib working order.  "Ah, yes," he said
+slowly, quailing under Lalage's eye, "three mounted constabulary----"
+after which thrilling statement he paused.
+
+"Came after you in the Bush," the flippant Peckover ventured to supply.
+"Yes, we've heard that."  For the little man saw no chance of ending
+the interview till the narrative was concluded.
+
+Mr. Leo, failing to stimulate his imagination to the required point,
+fell back upon a more ready and less intellectual form of address.
+"I'll eat you in a minute, boots and all," he informed his impatient
+listener with an undue amount of emphasis.  Then, as though the
+outburst had spurred his invention, he went on, "Three--three mounted
+police at me at once.  Three to one----"
+
+"Cowards," commented Peckover warmly.
+
+"I was alone," shouted the son of Mars, now plunging recklessly into
+the recital; "no bush-armour; nothing but my fighting-jacket.
+They--they----" he stammered and stopped as the trickling stream of
+imagination ran dry.  He, however, sought to make up for verbal
+shortcomings by fixing Peckover with a stare of the most appalling
+ferocity.  Lalage saved the situation by prompting from the darkness
+behind him into which she had slipped.  "They came on at the charge,"
+he roared, never relaxing his truculent glare at his listener; "one in
+front, one on each flank----"
+
+"That's right," whispered Lalage.  "Keep it up."
+
+"And one----" roared the encouraged swashbuckler.
+
+"Thought you said there were only three," objected the irrepressible
+Peckover.
+
+"I'll wring any man's neck who interrupts me and puts me off my
+stroke," was the savage response, and as the application of the remark
+could bear but one interpretation, its object decided that it would be
+better to curb his critical faculties before they brought on an
+interference with his personal appearance and comfort.
+
+"On they came like a hurricane," roared Carnaby, as the promptings
+reached him, "one here in face: one on the right flank, one on--on----"
+
+He stopped with some hazy notion that he had made a mistake.  In his
+graphic action illustrating the narrative he had landed himself beyond
+ear-shot of his prompter.
+
+"On the left," Peckover supplied sympathetically.  "What's the matter?"
+For the reciter seemed confused.
+
+"He has had so many fights that he forgets them," explained Lalage,
+emerging from the darkness to the rescue.  "More than the other fellows
+do, though.  Go on, you great fool!" she politely adjured the
+free-lance under her breath.
+
+Thus incited, Carnaby put on a grimace which would have been nicely
+calculated to send an old lady into a fit or an infant into
+convulsions, albeit there lay beneath it an abject fear of his sister's
+displeasure.  "I'll show you!" he bellowed, while Peckover, with an
+uneasy calculation of the means of exit, wondered whether the object
+lesson would involve his posing as the inadequate representative of the
+unfortunate mounted police.  "First chap," the mighty one proceeded,
+with, it must be confessed, a certain tendency to reiteration, "first
+chap comes on full gallop in front."  Peckover nodded his absorbed
+interest.  "I pull off my boot and dash it in his face."  For an
+instant Peckover looked dubious; then realizing his ignorance of
+fighting under antipodean conditions, he accepted the statement for
+what it was worth.
+
+"Down he goes," the story continued, "tobogganning over the horse's
+tail."  Peckover, having without prejudice admitted the premises, could
+not resist accepting the conclusion as highly probable.
+
+Suddenly the warrior's hand shot out and grasped him by the shoulder.
+"You," he shouted, becoming intoxicated with excitement as the tale of
+his prowess grew, "are the second man.  As you pass, I slip under your
+arm and catch you a smack on the point of the jaw which puts you to
+sleep."
+
+Instantly Peckover covered with both hands the part of his anatomy
+referred to, and was understood to intimate that his own powers of
+imagination were quite equal to the task of realizing the particular
+form of assault which it was unnecessarily proposed to illustrate.
+
+Postponing for the moment the exemplification of the knock-out blow,
+Mr. Leo proceeded in spluttering ferocity with his narrative.  "In a
+moment I have got hold of the first man's cutlass----" here he caught
+up in his excitement a sword which unfortunately hung near, and
+flourished it in a fashion not hitherto adopted by any recognized
+school of arms.  "I turn, and cry----" he bellowed, when, as luck had
+it, his energy led him to catch the weapon, in his terrific swing,
+against a suit of armour which was brought toppling over upon him and
+thence to the floor with a crash which sounded through the gallery with
+startling din.
+
+The effect on the man of doughty deeds was, however, even more than
+startling.  He fell forward under the shock of the cold metal, and with
+the helmet, thus jerked loose, striking him a smart blow on the head,
+his roaring was changed in a moment from truculence to terror.  "Oh!
+Oh!" he cried, as he sprawled over a chair, "don't hurt me.  I am only
+pretending!"
+
+But his quicker-witted sister was already at hand to cover his
+confusion.  "Carnaby will have his joke," she exclaimed laughing
+loudly.  "You see?" she demanded suddenly of Peckover, effectually
+dispelling the amusement which was gathering on his face, "he is a man
+of action," she continued with grim significance.  "Cares for nobody,
+except his sister.  And he won't see her made a fool of."  Then, having
+beaten Peckover into retreating from too close an inspection of her
+brother's real state of mind, she turned, caught the sprawling fighter
+by the collar, and pushed him to his feet.  "Great goose!" she hissed
+at him.  "I could strangle you!"
+
+The striking of a clock told Peckover that the time appointed for his
+assignation had arrived.  "We'll hear that bloodthirsty anecdote
+to-morrow," he said, half trembling at his own temerity.  "It's too
+good to be wasted on an audience of one."
+
+"All right, my little wallaby-rat," responded Carnaby in a tone
+unpleasantly threatening, and with a valiant attempt to cover his
+discomfiture.
+
+"Don't wait," Peckover's apprehension of a coming complication forced
+him to say.  "Not much fun in this dark, chilly place.  I'll stop and
+pick the tin plates up."
+
+But as he made for the scattered armour, Lalage seized him.  "No, you
+don't," she said, with determination that filled her victim with
+despair.  "You come with us.  I don't trust you out of my sight."
+
+"Going to meet a girl here?" cried Carnaby, with a quite surprising
+flash of intuition.  "I'd like to see him."
+
+"We will," said Lalage, with quiet insistence; "we will see him.
+Here!"  She took up a breastplate and helmet.  "Get inside this armour,
+Carnaby dear, and we'll just keep an eye on him."
+
+Piece by piece she picked it up and buckled it on him, Carnaby during
+the somewhat irksome operation relieving his feelings by addressing
+various minatory remarks to the now discomfited Peckover.  "You stir a
+foot, and I'll twist it off, my pigeon.  You just mention we're here,
+and I'll pull your tongue out, my little magpie.  So you'll play fast
+and loose--chrrr Lal, you're pinching me--fast and loose with my
+beautiful sister, will you?  You just try it on, my chicken, and it
+will be the last article you ever do try on.  I'll flatten you out, and
+then swab the floor with you."
+
+With a running fire of such cheering announcements did Mr. Leo relieve
+the tedium of his process of adornment.  At length the pieces of armour
+were fixed to him.  There were absurd gaps in the covering;
+nevertheless, in the semi-darkness there was no manifest difference
+between him and the empty suits of mail.
+
+"Now," directed Lalage, as she arranged him on a stand, "you stay there
+as still at you can.  And you"--she turned to Peckover--"stir from the
+room if you dare.  You just tell the young minx you won't have anything
+to do with her, and, if she poaches on other people's preserves there
+won't be much sport for her by this day week."
+
+"Yes!"  A husky voice filtered through the vizor of Carnaby's helmet,
+as he flourished the sword in his hand.  "If you try fooling I'll cut
+your----"
+
+"Hush!" Lalage commanded, as she drew back into the obscurity of a
+recess.  "Some one coming."
+
+"Nice evening this evening," muttered Peckover ruefully as the door
+softly opened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+"Mr. Gage--Percy--are you there?"
+
+"Yes, I'm here," was the lugubrious response.
+
+"Have you been waiting long?" Ethel asked, coming close to him.
+
+"Hours," he declared feelingly, then quickly corrected the statement.
+"No, I mean, not long."  Back in the darkness he fancied he could see
+the truculent eyes glaring through the bars of the helmet.
+
+"I couldn't get away," Ethel said invitingly.  "Had to dodge Dagmar."
+
+"Ho! she wanted to come too, did she?" Peckover remarked in
+desperation.  "The more the merrier."
+
+Ethel drew back with rather a sour look on her expectant face.  "Mr.
+Gage, what do you mean?"  Then with characteristic tenacity, she sidled
+up to him again.  "Percy, how cold you are," she observed reproachfully.
+
+"Cold?" he returned miserably.  "Yes, it is a bit chilly.  Enough to
+give any fellow the shivers.  Chamber of Horrors is a fool to it.  I
+mean," he quickly added, as an ominous movement of Carnaby's sword
+caught his eye, "the armour strikes cold."
+
+"Of course," said Ethel huffily, "if you would prefer Dagmar, I'll go
+and send her to you."
+
+"Oh, no; please don't trouble.  You'll do," he replied, with an
+indifference born of desperation.
+
+The lady resolved to try another tack.  "Oh, Mr. Gage," she said, with
+a tremor in her voice; "how unkind you are!"
+
+Her face was so close to him that the trial was almost more than he
+could stand.  "No, no, not unkind," he denied, looking wildly round for
+a way of escape.
+
+"So changed," she insisted.
+
+"No, not changed," he replied equivocally.
+
+"So distant."
+
+"Wish I was--a hundred miles distant," he groaned to himself.  "Can't
+help it," he declared, goaded by the consciousness of those four eyes
+magnetizing him from the darkness.  "Perhaps I've been too familiar."
+"Oh, no," she protested, growing desperate in turn, as the prize of a
+millionaire husband seemed slipping from her.  "If I don't mind it
+Percy, dear----"
+
+She put out her arms, but he fell back.  "Don't," he exclaimed, the
+hateful words almost choking him.  "It isn't proper, you know."
+
+"I'm afraid," she urged forlornly.  "I have been too absurdly proper."
+
+"Oh, no--yes, I mean, no, no."  In his state of mind Peckover found it
+impossible to differentiate between what he longed and what he was
+forced to say.
+
+"You said to-day it was dry work," Ethel observed caressingly.  "You
+may have a sip if you like."
+
+The invitation, reminding him, with a difference, of his Crystal Palace
+and Welsh Harp days, was well nigh too much for the well-versed
+philander of the suburbs.  "Oh, don't, don't!" he almost shrieked.
+"Please go away.  You will drive me mad.  This is awful," he groaned.
+
+"Of course, if you'd rather not----" Ethel suggested with a toss of the
+head.
+
+"It's never rather not with me," he protested under his breath.
+"Only----"
+
+Accepting his lowered tone as one of endearment and invitation, Ethel,
+wondering at his unusual diffidence, drew closer to him.  Mechanically
+and most unwillingly, he drew back.  "Well, you need not run away," she
+pouted.
+
+From what he could, in the semi-darkness, see of her eyes he fancied he
+detected there an intention to spring at him, or at any rate to fall
+into his arms.  In tantalizing terror he hastily retreated still
+further, and in doing so stumbled against the stand of armour which
+just then contained the redoubtable Carnaby, receiving for his
+clumsiness a sound cuff from the mailed fist of that truculent spirit.
+Luckily, as the episode took place in the shadow, it was not noticed by
+the lady who had stopped her pursuit of matrimony and mammon in a not
+unjustifiable huff.
+
+"I know," she declared resentfully.  "It's all that horrid Colonial
+girl.  How you can like her beats me."
+
+"Oh, she's not bad," was Peckover's reluctant explanation.
+
+"I think," returned Ethel with decision, "she is simply awful.  If that
+is Colonial taste, I am sorry for you.  You could never think of
+marrying her!"
+
+"I'm afraid so," he blurted out in his woe and confusion.  His guilty
+eyes perceived a disquieting movement on the part of the man in armour,
+and in turning, ready to flee from the probable onslaught, he saw in
+the gloom Lalage's eyes scintillating vengeance.  "I--I mean I hope
+so," he corrected, almost in a shriek.
+
+Induced by this strange and contradictory behaviour, Ethel suddenly
+made a dart and flung her designing arms round him.  "Oh, Percy," she
+cried with an adequate imitation of a sob, "you are not going to throw
+me over for that creature?"
+
+"I must," he replied, releasing himself firmly and with what dignity
+was possible under the circumstances, "obey the dictates of honour."
+
+Miss Ethel drew back, looking very sold and desperate in the moonlight.
+"What a charming brother-in-law you will have!" she exclaimed, panting
+with scorn and her late exertion.  "Great lout!  Only fit to guzzle and
+smash furniture."
+
+"And," Peckover added miserably to himself, "people who don't agree
+with him."
+
+His silence gave rise to a wild hope in the besieging breast that the
+defence was wavering.  In a trice, with an improvement upon her former
+tentative onslaught, she had thrown herself with greater deadliness of
+aim and more convulsive tenacity into his willing, yet unwilling, arms
+again.
+
+"Oh, Percy," she howled in a judiciously modulated pitch, "I can't bear
+your coldness!  I can't let you go!"
+
+Peckover's situation with those four glaring eyes and those two
+matrimonially determined grips upon him was truly deplorable.  "I'm a
+dead man," he gasped, as he saw, over Ethel's reckless shoulder, the
+awful mail-clad figure raise the sword with grim significance.  "I say;
+stop!" he cried, struggling ungallantly to free himself.  "Keep away!
+I can't marry you!"
+
+"Mr. Gage!  Do you mean it?"  It was most undignified from both
+parties' point of view, but the fact must be chronicled that she
+shook--actually shook him.  "Oh, I won't be swindled like this!" she
+cried, in the height of exasperation.
+
+Finding that with the obvious intention of being as good as her word,
+she, instead of releasing him with scorn, was hugging him tighter in
+desperation, he was fain to cry, in a hoarse whisper, "Hush!  Keep off!
+We are not alone.  Somebody in the room."
+
+Ethel started back and looked round with a half-indignant,
+half-distrustful eye and saw--Dagmar.  That young lady having had her
+suspicions aroused by the prolonged absence of her sister and their
+eligible guest, who, by the way, was supposed to be cheering the sick
+bed of his friend, Lord Quorn, had started off on a search expedition,
+and had just then crept pryingly into the picture-gallery.
+
+"Ethel?" she cried with a pounce.  "All alone with Mr. Gage here, of
+all places, and in the dark!  This is disgraceful."
+
+"Mr. Gage," Ethel declared calmly, "is going to marry me."
+
+She was quite ready for her sister to join issue on that statement, but
+to her surprise the contradiction came from another quarter.
+
+"Mr. Gage is not going to do anything of the sort."  It was Lalage Leo
+who, emerging from the obscurity which had shrouded her, uttered the
+flat denial.
+
+"There!" said Peckover in uncomfortable justification of his
+backwardness, "you see we were not alone."
+
+"No!" cried a loud voice as Carnaby clanked forward.  "Not much."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage, how dishonourable," Ethel exclaimed trying to look
+scandalized while she resolved how best she could turn the situation to
+account.  "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
+
+"I did tell you not to hug me," Peckover replied bluntly.
+
+"If," suggested Carnaby with a leer, having, after a struggle to a
+running accompaniment of murmured strong language, got his helmet off,
+"if you want anybody to hug----"
+
+"Oh!" Ethel cried in manifest disgust, as though her demonstrativeness
+was regulated by any less material consideration than its object's bank
+balance.
+
+"I'll take the armour off," Carnaby assured her, his tone suggesting
+that that might make all the difference.
+
+"I will not be treated like this," Ethel exclaimed indignantly, aware
+of the necessity for having her position in the complication settled
+then and there.  "Mr. Gage is engaged to me."  She seized Peckover's
+arm and hung on to it grimly.
+
+"No, to me," Dagmar objected as with a desperation born of an insecure
+tenure she clutched his other arm.
+
+Lalage, with mischief in her dark eyes, swooped down upon the trio.
+The unhappy Peckover's arms being fast held, the only way that occurred
+to him of avoiding the coming assault was to endeavour to sit down on
+the floor, in which he succeeded, after a short and spirited attempt on
+the part of his captors to defeat the manoeuvre.
+
+"I have a prior and a stronger claim on Mr. Gage," said Lalage with
+calm determination; "and I mean to enforce it, eh, Carnaby?"
+
+"Just let me get out of this rotten armour," growled her brother, thus
+appealed to.  "I'll----"
+
+"But it's not my fault," urged Peckover plaintively, from his
+undignified position on the floor.
+
+His weakness was not, however, shared by the ladies who, having him
+fast in their grips, knelt, under the exigences of the situation,
+beside him.
+
+"He is engaged to me," Ethel maintained stoutly.
+
+"You are engaged to Sharnbrook," objected Dagmar.
+
+"I am not," she denied loudly and with decision.
+
+"All right!  That's settled," exclaimed a blithe voice from the gloom,
+from which next moment the said John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook emerged.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+The real and resuscitated Lord Quorn had all this while been having a
+deplorable time of it.  Driven from the _Three Pigeons_ in consequence
+of that hostelry being the abode of the terrible Leos, denied access to
+his own home through the same fear, he had betaken himself to a
+neighbouring village, and there spent his days, only venturing towards
+Staplewick after nightfall, when he would prowl about the Towers like
+an uneasy, discontented ghost.  But now the small sum he had been able
+to raise on the little jewellery he wore was all but spent, and he was
+becoming desperate.  Every day he expected to find that his trackers
+from the Antipodes had departed in disgust; every night he was
+disappointed.  Surely, thought he, with the false Lord Quorn to all
+intents established, what have these nuisances to wait for?  Surely
+even the self-and-brother-reliant Lalage can scarcely be stupid enough
+to suppose that she had a chance of catching the substituted lord of
+Staplewick.  If he has the cleverness and enterprise to fill that
+position backed by his friend's money he will hardly be such a rank
+idiot as to allow himself to be snapped up by those Australian sharks.
+
+Meanwhile the position for the real owner was drawing to a point when
+something would have to be done.  Necessary as it was for him to lie
+low, it was yet more necessary for him to live, and his resources were
+now about exhausted.
+
+And the other Lord Quorn, he who had, so to speak, bought a title
+without a title, was, except so far as nourishment went, in an almost
+equally uncomfortable position.  He had vowed that he would get up (his
+chill having left him) and he had done so, much to Peckover's annoyance
+and apprehension.  That astute person, rendered yet more wily by the
+chance of losing a handsome income, and furthermore of being kicked out
+of the fairly safe asylum he had found in the Towers, had set himself,
+with all the desperate disingenuousness he could summon to his aid, to
+work upon the fears and personal considerations of the convalescent.
+The consequence was that Gage, obstinate as he was, so far succumbed to
+the lurid picture, drawn by his friend, of the certain consequences of
+showing himself, that he had to submit with a very ill grace to
+confining his perambulations to the more secluded parts of the house
+and garden.
+
+He would not have minded this so much had his circumscribed existence
+been mitigated by the charm of constant--or even inconstant--female
+society.  But the fact was that so long as the rich Mr. Gage,
+represented by the strategic Peckover, was more or less free, Lord
+Quorn, even with a fair income, the result of his performance in the
+lake, was, to these ladies at least, less to be desired than the man of
+wealth.  The Misses Hemyock were too familiar with an aristocratic
+position for it to have any charms for them.  They were also well
+versed in the tricks of keeping up appearances on limited means, which
+meant going in for the parade and going without the desirables of life;
+in consequence of which their discontented hearts were both rigidly set
+upon solid fortune rather than upon empty grandeur; money was what they
+hankered after; they were tired of mere social standing.  So Mr. Gage's
+yearning was still ungratified, and so he told himself, and his friend,
+Peckover, in no measured terms as he rampaged about the more secluded
+quarters of the demesne.
+
+Meanwhile the time for the Hemyocks to give up their tenancy of
+Staplewick had arrived, and that designing family had left the Towers.
+Not to go far, though.  Lady Agatha with an eye to bringing the
+business in hand to a happy conclusion, had persuaded some
+acquaintances, two elderly sisters, to turn out of the Moat, a house
+within half a mile of the Towers, and seek the invigorating air of a
+seaside resort for a month or two.  From this point of vantage she
+continued to keep an opportunist's eye on the eligible bachelors, whose
+position of comparative freedom was now from the lady's point of view
+that of a bird who is let out of its cage and allowed to hop and
+flutter to the extent permitted by the string attached to its legs.
+But the Moat and the _Three Pigeons_, where the enterprising Leos still
+lingered in an attitude of doubtfully restrained aggressiveness, were
+both marked with a red cross in the minds of Peckover and Gage, to be
+given a wide berth in their rambles.
+
+Now a curious chance was to bring about a still more complicated state
+of affairs than already existed.  Gage was out riding one afternoon,
+exploring the roads and bridle-paths of the neighbourhood alone, for,
+since his adventure with Harlequin, Peckover had decided that life on
+five thousand a year was too precious to risk on horseback.  He was
+jogging along a woodland road, turning over in his mind plans for the
+extraction of more fun than he was just then getting out of his
+purchased dignity, when suddenly a turn in the way gave him a glimpse
+of the well-known figures of the ladies from the Moat who did not
+exactly fit in with the distractions he was seeking.  Luckily their
+backs were towards him, while the grassy road deadened the sound of his
+horse's hoofs.  Quickly he reined up and turned aside into the wood
+with the intention of striking a bridle-path, a few hundred yards
+ahead, which would bring him to the park and safety.  As he gained the
+covert he heard or thought he heard, the would-be charmers giving
+tongue in pursuit.  Accordingly he shook up his horse into a smart
+trot, hoping to get clear away without apparent rudeness.
+
+Now it is manifestly difficult to ride fast and far through a pathless
+wood unscathed.  In his anxiety to press forward Gage had one or two
+narrow escapes from being rubbed off by interposing trees.  As he was
+being carried away at a smart pace he suddenly had occasion to duck
+over the saddle-bow to avoid a low branch.  While in this attitude,
+leaning sideways, his horse tripped over an exposed root, plunged
+forward and recovered himself, but not before the impetus had shot his
+rider out of the saddle.  In trying to save himself Gage somehow
+contrived to twist and wedge his foot in the stirrup as he fell.  So he
+was dragged along, just able to keep his head from contact with the
+ground by the purchase he got from the bridle which he still clutched.
+He tried in vain to stop the horse, preferring naturally the society of
+the Misses Hemyock to the excitement of that bumping progress; but the
+animal was not amenable to snaffle or reason, and the severely
+inconvenient mode of getting over the ground continued.
+
+Then suddenly, in his undignified, not to say dangerous, position, Gage
+heard a man's voice cry, "Whoa, boy!" the horse swerved inconveniently
+for his hanger-on, who became aware as the painful method of equitation
+came to a stop, that a man was at his head.  Without unnecessary loss
+of time Gage allowed himself to be extricated from his unbecoming
+attitude and set on his feet.
+
+"Awkward position to adopt," remarked his rescuer dryly.  "Lucky thing
+I happened to be on hand."
+
+"I'm awfully obliged to you," Gage said, gratefully, feeling that his
+good time had hung in the balance during those exciting moments.
+"Shouldn't wonder if you've saved my life."
+
+He surveyed his preserver inquiringly to gather what manner of man he
+was.  A shabby, hungry-looking fellow, who ought to have been more
+respectable than his clothes proclaimed.
+
+"I think it's quite likely," was the cool response.
+
+"Horse stumbled when I was off my balance ducking away from a bough,"
+Gage thought proper to explain by way of excusing his late pose.
+
+"Ah!  Just so.  Not an easy position to recover from when once you're
+well shaken into it," the man commented indifferently; "with the horse
+a bit fresh, and the ground not exactly a billiard table.  Lucky I
+noticed you, if you happen to be in no particular hurry to hand in your
+checks."
+
+"I really am more than grateful to you," Gage protested warmly,
+realizing the narrow squeak he had had of losing a big investment.  "I
+hope I may be able to prove my gratitude.  Do you belong to these
+parts?"
+
+"No.  Not exactly," the man answered gloomily.  "Came down here to get
+a place only to find it snapped up by somebody else."
+
+"Ah, the way of the world, I'm afraid," Gage commented sympathetically.
+"Well, perhaps I can find you something to do on my place here.  I'm
+Lord Quorn."
+
+"Oh, are you?" returned the man in a tone which left Gage a little
+doubtful as to his manners.
+
+"I've taken over an old place that wants a deal of looking after to get
+it ship-shape," he continued.  "Any experience in land and farming?"
+
+"Plenty," was the prompt answer.
+
+"Then you ought to do for me," Gage said.  "Anyhow I should like to put
+something acceptable in your way.  You've done me a service I shan't
+easily forget, and I hope you won't do anything to make me want to
+regret it.  Now, will it suit your book to take a position on the
+Staplewick estate?"
+
+"Just what I was after," replied the stranger in a curiously mechanical
+tone.  He seemed strangely preoccupied, even apathetic, but Gage was
+not going just then to criticize too closely the man who had saved his
+life.
+
+"Come along, then," he said.
+
+The man seemed to rouse himself from a reverie, then laughed oddly.
+"Yes, I'll come," he agreed more briskly.  "You shan't find fault with
+the way I look after my place."
+
+"We'll talk it over as we go," said Gage, throwing the bridle over his
+arm and moving on.
+
+
+"Full of fun and pretty surprises, the peerage," Gage observed to his
+friend later in the afternoon.  "Makes one wonder what the next start
+is going to be."
+
+"What's wrong now?" Peckover inquired with a laugh.
+
+"Had a nasty spill, and nearly got sent to bye-bye just as the fun is
+beginning."
+
+"Come off?"
+
+Gage answered by an aggrieved nod, as though he held his friend
+responsible for the mishap.  "Got my foot caught in the iron and was
+dragged ever so far."
+
+"Awkward," Peckover commented.  "Still you can't put that down to the
+peerage.  Noblemen's feet don't swell, although their heads may."
+
+"I don't," returned Gage snappishly.  "Only the Quorn title doesn't
+seem exactly a mascot."
+
+This was a proposition which the vendor of that equivocal dignity did
+not feel himself in a position to traverse.  "How did you get out of
+it?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+"The iron?  I shouldn't have been taken out alive, with the brute
+bumping me over the ground fit to drive my spine out at the top of my
+skull," Gage replied in a victimized tone, "if it hadn't been for a
+chap that came along in the nick of time and held him up."
+
+"Lucky," remarked Peckover.  "Going to settle a few hundred thou. on
+him?" he inquired playfully.
+
+"Not exactly.  But I'm going to give him a billet on the estate.  Poor
+devil, out-at-elbows; superior sort for all that.  Knows all about
+farming, he tells me.  He'd better have that glib old thief Treacher's
+place at the farm.  Turn him in there, and let him make the best job he
+can of it.  He has given me an idea of how he'd work the land, which
+seems pretty sensible, and at the worst he can't rob me more than
+Treacher has been doing."
+
+"Good idea," Peckover agreed, not wildly interested in the arrangement.
+
+"Yes," said Gage.  "After all, the fellow saved my life.  I owe him a
+chance of showing he can be honest as well as useful.  Now, as I'm
+considerably bumped about and only fit for a hot bath, I'd be glad if
+you'd just trot the fellow down to the farm, give Treacher his notice,
+and show his successor how the land lies.  We can put him up somewhere
+till Treacher clears out."
+
+"All right," Peckover responded with a yawn.  "Anything to oblige.
+Where is the party?"
+
+"He's in the gun-room.  I told Bisgood to get him something to eat.
+Poor fellow seemed half starved.  His name's Jenkins.  Treat him
+kindly.  He has done us both a service," he added significantly.
+
+"All serene," Peckover assured him with another yawn.  "I'll handle him
+tenderly.  In the gun-room, eh?"
+
+As Peckover opened the gun-room door, Gage's preserver was standing
+with his back to it, scrutinizing a sporting print.  "Up, Jenkins," was
+Peckover's facetious salutation and mode of attracting his attention.
+Next moment it was down Peckover, for he staggered back and subsided
+helplessly into a low chair as, in the stranger who turned quickly, he
+recognized with a gasping cry the real Lord Quorn, whom he had believed
+to be lying poisoned and forgotten in Great Bunbury churchyard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+For several seconds neither man spoke; Peckover, sprawling limply as he
+fell, staring with distended, apprehensive eyes at Quorn who, master of
+the strange situation, regarded him with a certain grim amusement.
+
+"Hope you are having a good time, Mr.--Gage, is it?--or something else,
+which for the moment has slipped my memory?"
+
+Peckover's wits were rapidly recovering from the shock of dispersal
+caused by the unexpected bomb which had fallen on them.  "Curious we
+should meet again like this," he said with a sickly smile.
+
+"Very," was the pointed response.  "And a trifle awkward, I should
+fancy, for you."
+
+"Oh, no," Peckover protested, pulling himself together and assuming the
+boldest face he could summon up.  "It wasn't my fault you drank that
+doctored wine, which I intended for my own consumption."
+
+"Dare say not," Quorn returned uncompromisingly.  "Admitting for the
+sake of argument that was an unfortunate mistake, how about you and
+your friend annexing my place and title?"
+
+Peckover's face showed bland surprise.  "Me and my friend taking your
+place and title?  What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh," replied Quorn with impatient sarcasm, "we are dense this evening.
+It may astonish you, Mr. Alias Gage, but I rather fancy Staplewick Park
+and Towers belong to Lord Quorn."
+
+"Who suggested they didn't?" asked Peckover wonderingly.
+
+"I'd like to see the man, that's all," retorted Quorn.  "And," he
+resumed, "I'm rather under the impression that I'm Lord Quorn."
+
+"I dare say," was the prompt rejoinder.  "But it doesn't follow you are
+that nobleman."
+
+"What?" he roared.
+
+"Don't make a noise," said Peckover, with a touch of dignity; "the
+servants aren't used to it."
+
+"I say I am Lord Quorn," the other repeated with less volume but more
+intensity.  "And you know it."
+
+"But Lord Quorn says he's Lord Quorn," argued the wily Peckover with
+maddening plausibility.  "That's all I know.  I'm not the Heralds'
+College."
+
+"You're a pair of frauds," cried Quorn.
+
+"Naturally, if you're the rightful peer," was the bland reply.  "But we
+don't know it, nor anybody else."
+
+"Don't they?"
+
+"Except yourself, I was going to say, and a lady and gentleman who have
+come all the way from Australia to stick to it--and you."
+
+The hit told.  Quorn's manner visibly weakened.
+
+"What--you've had the nuisances up here--what is their infernal game?"
+he asked, darkly apprehensive.
+
+"Simple enough," replied Peckover, beginning to feel the courage he had
+hitherto simulated.  "The fair Lalage's game is to be Lady Quorn, or to
+know the reason why.  And she has brought over dear old Carnaby as an
+extra note of interrogation."
+
+"Oh!  What persevering devils they are," Quorn observed uneasily.  "And
+what do they say to your friend who calls himself Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Say?"  Peckover's native smartness was quick to turn the situation to
+advantage.  "Why, their idea is that one Lord Quorn's as good as
+another and failing one the other will do nicely."
+
+Quorn gave a long whistle.  "Why, you don't mean to say that Lal Leo is
+going for your friend?"
+
+"She is, though, by George," was the blunt answer.  "Only, of course,
+she hasn't got the hold on him she would have on you.  And that's where
+Carnaby comes in."
+
+Quorn looked at him searchingly, but was fain to accept the statement.
+Besides which, it tallied with his idea of the Leonine methods.  "Well,
+that's a queer go," he said, and then fell into a puzzled silence.
+Presently he burst out with a question, not unnatural under the
+circumstances.  "Who the devil is the thief who has the cheek to call
+himself Lord Quorn?"
+
+Peckover shrugged.  "For aught I know to the contrary he is Lord
+Quorn," he replied blandly.
+
+"Rats!" cried the dispossessed one wrathfully.  "It's a put-up job
+between you and him."
+
+"My good sir----"
+
+"You know he's not Lord Quorn, and you know I am."
+
+"I've told you already, not being in the know of the Heralds' College,
+I'm not in a position to say anything about it."
+
+"Aren't you?" sneered Quorn.  "I know all about it, though.  When I
+drank that loaded stuff that sent me to sleep that was your chance, and
+you took it."
+
+"Did I?"
+
+"You did.  And I don't blame you.  But I've woke up now."
+
+"Then," rejoined Peckover sarcastically, "since you are so wide-awake,
+perhaps you can explain why I didn't take the title myself?"
+
+"I suppose," Quorn replied nastily, "you didn't feel you could fill the
+part."
+
+"Of a British nobleman?"  Peckover laughed scornfully.  "Too steady and
+respectable, eh?  My highly creditable record wouldn't have stood in my
+way if I'd had a chance of nobbling the coronet."
+
+Quorn brought his fist down with a bang on the table.  "D--n it, man,
+who is this fellow?"
+
+"Lord Quorn," Peckover maintained.
+
+"Lord Quorn!"  The real man could not find words to express his
+disgust.  "How did you pick him up?" he demanded, seeing the
+uselessness of arguing the question of identity.
+
+"He picked me up," Peckover replied coolly.
+
+"How?  When?  Where?"
+
+"I'll tell you all about it, if you won't make such a noise," Peckover
+said suavely.  "He came to the _Quorn Arms_ just after you had made
+that little mistake in the refreshment, and announced himself as Lord
+Quorn; and who was I to say he was not Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Funny," remarked Quorn, "that he should have brought you along here."
+
+"Fact is," was the ready explanation, "he was afraid of being caught by
+those Hemyock terrors who straightaway began tumbling over one another
+to get him.  Brought me along here as a chaperon, or an umbrella, if
+you like, and I've made myself useful."
+
+"I see," said Quorn suspiciously.  "And how about being a millionaire?"
+
+"That," replied Peckover, "is how we worked the trick.  Lady Agatha is
+a nailer.  She wouldn't have wasted board and lodging on a poor man.
+And as a rich chap I can whistle the dear girls off when they get
+closer to Quorn than he cares about."
+
+The assumption of the title irritated its real holder.  "Quorn?" he
+repeated resentfully.  "I like that.  There's only one Quorn, and I'm
+going to show everybody where he is."
+
+"Lalage and all?" was the pertinent objection.
+
+"Oh, confound Lalage!"
+
+"Just so--confound Lalage," was the hearty response, "Only take care
+Lalage does not confound you."
+
+For a few moments Quorn preserved an aggrieved and discomfited silence.
+"You don't suppose," he said at length, "I am going to stand being
+humbugged like this."
+
+"I don't reckon anything about it," replied Peckover with wise
+mendacity.  "You two Quorns had better fight it out between yourselves.
+Only----"
+
+"Only what?" the other snapped.
+
+"If I were you I should wait until the ring's clear before I put up my
+hands."
+
+Quorn stared in front of him in gloomy silence.  "Pretty darned mess it
+is," he remarked presently.
+
+"It is.  But it will clear up," said Peckover cheerfully.  "That is if
+you give it time."
+
+Quorn made a sour face.  "Nice position for me----"
+
+"If you will go engaging the affections of ladies from the Bush with
+short hair and muscular brothers," put in Peckover.  "It's a mercy as
+it is that this other claimant cropped up.  He has saved you a lot of
+worry."
+
+"So they're after him?" asked Quorn with grim amusement.
+
+"You bet.  He had to stay in bed for a week to keep out of their way.
+Lalage has crossed over to be Lady Quorn, and she means business."
+
+"The devil she does!" exclaimed Quorn uneasily.
+
+"Just think," urged Peckover with telling plausibility, "what this
+other Quorn has saved you from.  Dear old Carnaby has a rare hankering
+after experiments on people's physiognomies; trying how a man looks
+with his nose bent, his eye closed, and a tooth or two smudged out.  He
+fitted his dooks once round my throat, and I can feel 'em there now."
+
+"What was that for?"
+
+"Just to keep his hand in.  He is uncommonly keen on meeting you, and
+he has got a bagful of funniments ready for the occasion."
+
+"Pleasant fellow," ejaculated Quorn ruefully.
+
+"Yes," pursued Peckover, "it's providential this chap, t'other Quorn,
+turned up.  And if you take my advice you'll let him sit where he is
+till the Leos have eaten their heads off at _The Pigeons_ and turned
+the game up."
+
+"Looks as though I'd better," Quorn agreed reluctantly.
+
+"It will be bad enough if Carnaby catches you about as it is,"
+continued Peckover, encouraged by the success of his argument.  "He may
+do something distinctly unpleasant, but, not being for the moment Lord
+Quorn, you won't have to marry old Lalage into the bargain."
+
+"That's something," murmured Quorn.
+
+"Everything, almost," said Peckover cheerfully.  "If you wriggle out of
+that matrimonial spring-trap, you won't mind leaving half of your tail
+behind.  You may lose a feature or two, but you'll be saved a life-time
+of bother."
+
+"To get quit of Lalage would be gratifying," Quorn admitted gloomily.
+"But with my nose sliced off----"
+
+"If," urged Peckover encouragingly, "you keep away from the
+looking-glass you'll never miss it."
+
+"But other people will," Quorn objected, clearly discomposed by the
+idea.
+
+"Well, then," Peckover summed up, "if you don't feel equal to tackling
+the gentle Carnaby either as Quorn or Jenkins, you had best lie low
+till they cart themselves away.  The other Quorn won't be particular,
+since you saved his life, and Treacher doesn't go for a month.  We'll
+fix you up a room in one of the lodges, and you can spend your time in
+keeping out of Lalage's way.  Give out you are surveying the estate,
+which, if it should turn out to be yours, won't be trouble thrown away.
+I'll look after you, and back you up.  You can trust me."
+
+"I don't know that I can," was the not unnatural objection.
+
+"Of course you can," Peckover assured him sympathetically.  "Anyhow,
+you've got to, unless you want Carnaby to wring you out and swab the
+stable yard with you."
+
+"A nice thing," Quorn protested distastefully, "for me to be skulking
+about, and playing the understrapper on my own estate."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Peckover sententiously. "We often have to pay for our
+fun when we least expect to."
+
+
+Thus it came to pass that matters shaped themselves to the wily
+Peckover's handling, and he was able with native shrewdness to snatch a
+fresh reprieve from the threatening exposure.  And it was of manifest
+importance for him to do so, since every day's income made an
+appreciable addition to the little capital he was amassing.  If only he
+could keep the game up for a few months it would be for him, an
+independence.  That former income of his, thirty-five shillings a week,
+would be his for life, and without working.  No wonder he sharpened his
+wits to keep his oddly diversified puppets dallying.
+
+So the unsuspecting Lord Quorn by purchase continued to enjoy his
+title, little dreaming of the Jenkinsian volcano at his very door.  So
+likewise the chafing and mystified Quorn was assiduously taken in hand
+by Peckover and his fears kept up to high-water mark.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Lady Ormstork was a practitioner in somewhat the same line of business
+as Lady Agatha Hemyock.  Her dealings were however, of a wider scope
+and carried out with more histrionic embellishment than those of her
+sister schemer who, as may have been gathered, had her hands full with
+her two discontented and recalcitrant daughters.  Lady Ormstork had,
+she was thankful, and also given to say, no daughter.  But other people
+had them.  Also she had no money to speak of, and again other people
+had.  So, being a tough and wise lady of tireless energy and a grasping
+turn of mind, she set herself to take certain other people's daughters,
+for matrimonial objects, be it understood, and at the same time as much
+of their money as she had the face--and hers was fairly expansive and
+brazen--to ask for.
+
+In pursuance of a scheme which her ladyship had already several times
+put in practice with success, she, on hearing certain rumours, ran down
+to Great Bunbury, and secured a furnished house on the outskirts of
+that somewhat uninteresting borough.
+
+As the upshot of this apparently pointless and fatuous action, it was
+one afternoon announced to Gage who was seeking relaxation from the
+duties of his position in a game of billiards with his friend Peckover,
+that Lady Ormstork and Miss Ulrica Buffkin were in the drawing-room.
+
+"Who the deuce are they, Bisgood?" Gage inquired, in not the best of
+humours at being interrupted in a promising run of nursery cannons.
+
+"I don't know, my lord," answered Bisgood stolidly, his air suggesting
+that it was his master's business to find out for himself.  "Never
+heard of the ladies before."
+
+"What are they like?" asked Peckover, ever on the alert for an
+unpleasant surprise.
+
+"Middle-aged lady, sir, and a young one."
+
+"Good-looking?" Gage demanded, weighing the visitors against the joy of
+the prettily placed balls by the top pocket.
+
+"The young lady decidedly so, my lord," Bisgood answered with the
+dictum of a connoisseur.  "As regards the elder lady opinions might
+diff----"
+
+"Oh, bother the old lady.  You can look after her, Percy," said Gage,
+putting on his coat.  "I suppose they are ladies, Bisgood?"
+
+"Lady Ormstork, my lord."
+
+"Where's the book?  Let's look her out."
+
+Bisgood fetched Debrett, while Gage brushed his hair and gave an upward
+twist to his moustache.
+
+"Yes, here it is, correct enough.  'Harriot, Lady Ormstork, widow of
+Henry Fitz-fulke Candlish, fourth Baron Ormstork.'  Come on, old man,"
+Gage commanded; and with pricking curiosity concerning Miss Buffkin, he
+led the way to the drawing-room.
+
+The first glance told both men that Bisgood had not overstated the
+case.  Miss Buffkin had a roguish, voluptuous prettiness which fitted
+each man's ideal of feminine beauty.  Indeed it was so long before they
+could bring themselves to notice her companion that any other than the
+gratified Lady Ormstork would have reasonably shown signs of being
+offended.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" the wily peeress inquired sweetly, looking from one to
+the other; and for once, perhaps naturally, at fault.
+
+Gage, wrestling with his sudden preoccupation, went forward and shook
+hands.  "How do you do?" he inquired tentatively, in a manner from
+which no unprejudiced observer would have deduced any deep concern as
+to the state of her ladyship's health.
+
+"I must introduce myself."  She opened the conversation winningly, as
+the men took chairs opposite to her and kept furtive eyes on the
+alluring Ulrica.  "I was a great friend of the late peer's--your
+cousin----"  Gage bowed.  "My husband and he were at Eton together and
+kept up a life-long friendship."  Lady Ormstork sighed.  The men tried
+to look sympathetic and merely found themselves looking at the
+beautiful Miss Buffkin to see how she took it.
+
+"We often stayed here," the peeress proceeded in a voice of tender
+reminiscence.  "We always loved Staplewick and the--the neighbourhood."
+
+With an effort the men accepted the interesting statement with a duly
+chastened glance at the maundering lady.
+
+"So much so," Lady Ormstork continued, dropping with surprising ease
+the tone of lament in favour of one which suggested business-like hope,
+"that being sadly in need of change of air after the fatigue of the
+London season, I suggested, instead of the inevitable Homburg, the
+healthy and peaceful paradise of Great Bunbury."
+
+It struck as much of the minds of her listeners as they could afford to
+detach from the prepossessing Miss Buffkin that it had never occurred
+to them so to regard that unlovely market-town, but they made
+allowances for variation in tastes and found it possible to rejoice
+that some one, particularly this talkative old peeress, took pleasure
+in it.
+
+"It's an interesting old place," Gage agreed, with as much irony as
+anything else.
+
+"Nice change after London," Peckover chimed in, with a slight shudder
+at the recollection of his first impressions of that unattractive town.
+"Don't you think so?" he suddenly asked Miss Buffkin.
+
+The young lady hesitated, and her hesitation could not be said to count
+as a testimonial to the grimy place in question.  "It's not exactly
+lively," she answered with a smile that disclosed an irreproachable set
+of teeth.  "When you've walked up one side of the street and down the
+other you are ready, if not anxious, to bid Great Bunbury a life-long
+farewell."
+
+"My dearest Ulrica," Lady Ormstork remonstrated, "you have no romance."
+
+"If I had a sackful, Great Bunbury would shake it out of me pretty
+quick," her protegee retorted.
+
+"Well," the elder lady resumed almost plaintively, "perhaps it is that
+I view it in the light of happier days.  It used to be quite a treat to
+drive in from here on a fine afternoon to shop in the quaint little
+town."
+
+Both men glanced at Miss Buffkin as inviting a comment.
+
+"The things you buy there aren't much of a treat," she observed dryly.
+
+"And that is why," proceeded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the remark, "my
+heart turned towards Great Bunbury and dear old Staplewick, so that I
+felt I must come and see it again, even at the risk of being considered
+intrusive."
+
+The expression on the two men's faces was calculated to assure her that
+so long as she appeared similarly accompanied she need have no fear of
+her welcome.
+
+"I'm sure I'm delighted," Gage assured her, with a sly glance at the
+fascinating Ulrica.  "I hope you will stay to tea now, and come often,"
+he said with real enthusiasm.  "As often as you can."
+
+Lady Ormstork looked deeply grateful; indeed, as though a load of
+ungratified longing had been lifted from her shoulders; while Miss
+Buffkin seemed, from one cause or another, highly amused.
+
+"Thank you, Lord Quorn, it is most kind," Lady Ormstork replied
+gushingly.  "I shall revel in revisiting the dear old haunts.  I warn
+you I shall take you at your word, and come very, very often."
+
+"Can't come too often," Gage assured her gaily.  "Hope Miss Buffkin
+will come too.  You mustn't leave her moping in Great Bunbury.  We'll
+try to get up some fun for her out here."
+
+Lady Ormstork had no intention of leaving the profitable Ulrica behind,
+and she intimated as much.  Miss Buffkin, on her part, seemed to find
+more than a transitory amusement in the effect she had produced upon
+the men.
+
+"Perhaps you would like a turn before tea and look round the gardens,"
+Gage suggested, nudging his friend, "Rather untidy, but we are going to
+make them trim directly."
+
+"Oh, I should dearly love to see them as they are," the wily old
+peeress assured him.  "Untidiness lends itself to romance, does it not?"
+
+"I dare say it does," responded Gage, "and gets interest out of it."
+
+Lady Ormstork was too busy manoeuvring to get hold of Peckover to
+notice the joke.  Her game was to throw the new Lord Quorn and the fair
+Ulrica together with ultimate profit to herself.
+
+Peckover, it may be stated, was not wildly interested in the dowager
+peeress.  Not quite taking in the situation, he had anticipated that
+she would hang on to Gage, leaving Miss Buffkin in his willing charge.
+But the whole sense of the meeting was against him.  Between the
+grasping old lady and the repudiating Gage, he had no chance.
+
+"Go on!" commanded his friend in a peremptory whisper pushing him
+towards the peeress.
+
+"Don't you love a winter garden?" that astute dowager enquired sweetly
+as she annexed him, and then, without waiting for his predilections on
+the horticultural question, proceeded to arrange for "dear Ulrica" to
+be personally conducted by Gage.  There was no help for it, and
+Peckover resigned himself to the tolerance of aristocratic age and
+presumed inanity.
+
+"I can't tell you," Lady Ormstork observed in the cooing tone with
+which she smoothed over her designs, "how delighted I am to make the
+acquaintance of your friend, the new Lord Quorn, and to revisit dear
+old Staplewick.  What a charming fellow he seems."
+
+"Oh, yes; he's a slice of all right," Peckover agreed, wondering whence
+the lady had formed that conclusion, since Gage's behaviour had
+hitherto shown more signs of being charmed than charming.
+
+"He has," declared Lady Ormstork, "the family likeness.  Particularly
+the nose.  I saw the Quorn nose at once."
+
+This was a somewhat trying statement for Peckover, but he manfully
+repressed all evidence of agitation.  "Yes," he assented, "he's got the
+nose all right, and a bit of the Quorn lip, I'm thinking."
+
+Looking round as it were to verify the comparison, Lady Ormstork was
+pleased to see the lagging pair in close and animated conversation.
+
+"Yes, he reminds me of the late peer, particularly when he smiles," she
+declared with boldness, considering that she had never set eyes on a
+Lord Quorn in her life, nor been until a week before, within fifty
+miles of Staplewick.
+
+"Oh, does he?" responded Peckover indifferently, as he suppressed a
+yawn.
+
+"It will be so nice to come over here often," pursued Lady Ormstork,
+ignoring her companion's preoccupation.  "So delightful for my dear
+young friend, Miss Buffkin.  Naturally to a high spirited girl Great
+Bunbury is a little dull."
+
+"I should think it would be," Peckover responded.
+
+"Yes," said the lady with a little sigh of relief, "and so it will be
+such a pleasant change for her to have, so to speak, the run of this
+lovely park."
+
+"I'm sure," Peckover said with emphasis, "Lord Quorn will be delighted
+for Miss Buffkin to come here all day and every day."
+
+"How good of him," exclaimed Lady Ormstork, greedily accepting the
+suggestion.  "And I shall enjoy it too, more than I can express."
+
+Peckover was silent as he fell gloomily to wondering whether his
+desirable lot would be to entertain this suave old lady while his
+friend flirted with the fair and lively Ulrica.
+
+"My young friend," proceeded Lady Ormstork, "is a really charming
+girl--what a superb Wellingtonia!--Yes, I see a great deal of her.  Her
+father is not able to take her about, and so she has become almost like
+my own daughter."
+
+"Except that she doesn't exactly take after you in looks," thought
+Peckover; but he merely bowed acceptance of her statement.
+
+"You see, her position is quite enviable," the lady continued in her
+society voice and drawl, "As an only child she will be immensely rich.
+Indeed Ulrica has her separate fortune now.  I'm sure I may confide in
+you, Mr.----'
+
+"Gage," Peckover supplied alertly.
+
+"Mr. Gage.  Not one of the Shropshire Gages?"
+
+"Not that I know of," he replied, beating down a sporting instinct to
+claim kindred with that highly respectable, if rural, family.
+
+"Ah!  Some of the Worcestershire branch, the Lovel-Gages, were my
+greatest friends," said Lady Ormstork regretfully reminiscent.  "You
+don't come from Worcestershire?"
+
+"Not straight," he answered.
+
+Lady Ormstork laughed, as she always did when there was the possibility
+of a joke being intended.  "Well my dear Mr. Gage, I may tell you in
+confidence, as I feel we are going to be very good friends, that one of
+the reasons I brought dear Ulrica down to this quiet place was to be
+out of the way of certain fortune hunters who were pursuing her with
+their attentions."
+
+"I don't wonder," responded Peckover, with a touch of enthusiasm.
+
+"No," the lady agreed.  "Apart from her immense fortune, she is
+adorable.  So handsome! and so clever!"
+
+"Yes, she's all that," said Peckover, enviously thinking of what a good
+time his friend was having, and regretting for once, that he had let
+the title go.
+
+"One person in particular," pursued the dowager, "has given me great
+anxiety.  A Spanish duke, of undeniable family, a Grandee of Spain, and
+all that sort of thing, don't you know, but very poor, and consequently
+most persistent.  You know what these foreigners are."
+
+"Rather," Peckover assured her, in a tone which implied an intimate
+acquaintance with the procedure of Spanish Grandees, rich and poor.
+
+"Of course," the lady continued, "--oh, how pretty that peep is!--of
+course an alliance with Ulrica would set him, the duke, on his feet
+again.  It would enable him to resume his position and live on his
+estates like a prince."
+
+"Get a new hat to wear in the royal presence," added Peckover,
+remembering that attribute of Spanish Grandees which he had read of in
+the "interesting items" column of a weekly paper.
+
+"He is, I believe, devotedly in love with Ulrica, apart from her
+fortune," continued his companion.  "And of course from the point of
+view of mere rank and grandeur, the alliance would have been quite
+desirable.  But, after all, an English girl should marry an Englishman,
+that is my feeling and the wish of Ulrica's father; and so we have come
+down here to let the storm of the Duke de Salolja's passion blow itself
+out."
+
+"I see," said Peckover thoughtfully, wondering how much of the storm
+was true, since his last habit of mind was naturally now prone to
+suspicion and to look askance at unwarranted confidences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+"Well, Percy, my boy, what do you tot them up to come to?" inquired
+Gage jovially as they turned from an impressive adieu to their guests
+who drove off radiant--at least as far as Lady Ormstork was
+concerned--at the success of their visit.
+
+"They're all right," Peckover answered somewhat gloomily.  Considering
+the poor time he had had as the medium through which the wily peeress
+desired to convey certain information to his friend he could scarcely
+be expected to emulate that gentleman's enthusiasm.
+
+"Right?  I should think so," Gage exclaimed with emphasis.  "The girl
+is simply scrumptious."
+
+"I dare say," Peckover returned, with a jealous twinge.  "Rather
+different from our friends at the Moat, eh?"
+
+"Slightly.  There's no comparison.  She's a real beauty, and full of
+fun."
+
+"Oh, you found that out, did you?" Peckover observed curiously.
+
+"Rather.  This is the sort of Lord Quorn I'm paying for."
+
+"She has a lot of money," said Peckover.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"The old lady-bird told me so.  Confidential old party.  Good as
+admitted they had come down here to have a dash at you."
+
+"Me?" cried Gage, much interested.
+
+"Your title.  Or, rather mine," his friend declared sombrely, so
+dismally, indeed, that Gage said--
+
+"Come, you are not going to repent?  This is what I paid for.  I told
+you so at the outset."
+
+"Oh, yes," Peckover agreed.  "It's fair enough," and with the image of
+Miss Buffkin's commanding beauty in his heart, he darkly resolved to
+try whether some of her smiles might not in future be for him.
+
+
+Lady Ormstork was, as might have been confidently anticipated, as good
+as her word.  Almost every day she brought the fair Miss Buffkin to
+Staplewick, and on those that were missed the two friends contrived to
+find an excuse for calling at Cracknels, as the villa, built by a
+retired biscuit baker, was named.  The game was not a very pleasant one
+for Peckover, seeing that in it the dowager was invariably his partner,
+nevertheless he continued to stick to it doggedly in the hope that his
+opportunity for making running with the captivating Ulrica would surely
+come.
+
+Accordingly he disguised his feelings and the alertness with which he
+waited for an opening to assert his powers of fascination, making
+himself the while as agreeable and attentive to the astutely meandering
+peeress as the nature of her society talk permitted.
+
+"Lord Quorn and dear Ulrica seem to have taken quite a fancy to one
+another," she remarked one afternoon, tactfully leading the way so as
+to give a wide berth to a plantation of rhododendrons in the midst of
+which she had reason to suspect the other pair of promenaders was
+lingering.  "Don't you think so, Mr. Gage?"
+
+"Looks like it," answered Peckover with a sardonic curl of the lip.
+
+"You are his great friend.  He would naturally confide in you,"
+observed the lady with a pointed invitation to betray the said
+confidence.
+
+"Oh, yes.  He is very far gone," was the somewhat ill-humoured reply.
+"No need for him to mention it, so long as I retain my eyesight."
+
+"I am inclined to think," Lady Ormstork observed meditatively, "that
+the alliance would not be at all a bad thing."
+
+"No?"  Peckover, smarting under his confederate's good fortune, would
+not commit himself to an opinion.
+
+"Don't you think so?" the dowager asked suavely.
+
+"I don't blame old Quorn," Peckover replied, rather crudely.  "As to
+whether Ul--Miss Buffkin might not do better is a matter of opinion."
+
+"Possibly she might; or she might do worse," was the sage response.
+"After all, Quorn is a charming fellow."
+
+"Oh, yes," his friend assented in a tone so warped that it seemed to
+signify, "Oh, no."
+
+"It's a fine old title," said the lady reflectively.
+
+"Title's all right," he agreed equivocally.
+
+"Undeniable," Lady Ormstork maintained.  "But of course, my dear Mr.
+Gage, you understand that advantage would weigh nothing with me if
+Quorn were not genuinely fond of Ulrica."
+
+"Just so," responded Peckover with a wink at a passing swallow.
+
+"Naturally," she pursued, "you will see my position is a somewhat
+delicate one.  It is on that account, my dear Mr. Gage, that I make no
+scruple in asking you, a clever man of the world--if I may call you
+so----"
+
+"Oh, don't mention it," he replied glibly.
+
+"I'm asking you not to let me be in the dark as to your friend's real
+feelings and intentions.  For if I were sure that Quorn had no idea of
+proposing I should consider it my duty to take Ulrica away from here at
+once."
+
+"He has not expressed any such intention to me," Peckover replied,
+brightening a little.
+
+"But surely you think he will, he must?" demanded the lady anxiously.
+
+"Yes, he should by rights," Peckover agreed.  "But he may not be a
+marrying man."
+
+Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.  "Every man is a marrying man when he
+meets a girl like Ulrica.  Besides, it is the duty of every peer to
+marry, or what will become of our old nobility?  Heaven only knows to
+whom, as matters stand, the Quorn title will go next."
+
+Peckover had an idea that he could claim to share the knowledge.  "He
+ought to come to a firm offer if he means business," he said.
+
+"Our time here is getting short," Lady Ormstork declared significantly.
+Not but what she was prepared to grace Great Bunbury with her presence
+for a twelvemonth if that were likely to bring off the match.  "As
+Ulrica's temporary guardian I cannot allow Quorn to flirt with her
+indefinitely if he has no intention of proposing."
+
+"No," Peckover responded promptly, wondering how he could get a look
+in.  Then a happy idea struck him.  "Quorn is a shilly-shallying
+fellow," he said guilefully.  "Can't make up his mind.  I usually have
+to do it for him."
+
+"I wish you would in this instance," the lady exclaimed fervently.
+
+"Well, I think I might," he replied with sudden animation.  "But of
+course it won't do for me to tell him straight he ought to propose.
+He'd see you working the figure.  No, I've got a more artful plan than
+that."
+
+"Oh, you dear Mr. Gage!" cried Lady Ormstork, brightening at the
+prospect of an end to her uninteresting sojourn at The Cracknels.  "Do
+tell me."
+
+"Easy enough," said Peckover, sparkling likewise; "and highly
+effective.  One trial will prove it, or money returned.  Make him
+jealous."
+
+"How can we?" asked the dowager with a dubiousness which her companion
+did not find altogether complimentary.
+
+"Leave it to me," he replied, his sparkle subsiding to a touch of
+huffiness.  "Don't you think I'm equal to it?"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed, dear Mr. Gage," the lady drawled, eyeing him still
+rather doubtfully.
+
+"Don't you make any mistake about it," he protested severely.  "I
+always was first favourite with the ladies, and Quorn knows it--to his
+cost, I may tell you."
+
+"And you are still friends?" was the astute comment.
+
+"Sworn friends," Peckover replied with much truth.  "I'll prove it by
+making up his mind for him to marry the finest girl in England."
+
+"And what is your plan?" Lady Ormstork inquired approvingly.
+
+Rapidly the alert little mind had blocked in the outline of his scheme.
+"Let me make the running for a lap or two," he suggested.  "If that
+doesn't hurry him up, nothing will.  You come up as usual to-morrow;
+I'll slip away from Quorn, meet you, and go off for a stroll with Miss
+Ulrica.  You come on to the Hall.  Tell Quorn offhand, when he asks,
+what has become of the young lady.  Say she thought she'd prefer a
+stroll with me for a change, and if he sits still after that it's odds
+against Miss Buffkin being Lady Quorn.  You watch the effect."
+
+Lady Ormstork looked as though she might be safely trusted to keep her
+eyes open for it.
+
+Next day things happened as had been arranged.  Peckover made a timely
+desertion, and Lady Ormstork arrived at the Towers dignified and alone.
+
+"Not brought Miss Buffkin to-day?" Gage asked, trying to look as though
+he had still got the better half of the Cracknels establishment.  "Hope
+she's not ill?"
+
+"Oh, dear no," Lady Ormstork answered sweetly.  "She is here.  But we
+met your charming friend, Mr. Gage, just by the lodge gates, and dear
+Ulrica said she had been cramped up in the fly long enough, so she got
+out to stroll up through the park."
+
+Gage evidently experienced some difficulty in looking as pleased as a
+host should at the idea of his guest doing what pleases her best.  "I
+see," he said, uneasily reflective.  "Shall we walk back and meet them?
+It's a lovely day."
+
+"So Ulrica thought," the astutely suave lady responded.  "And the park
+looked so tempting.  Yes, a short stroll would be delightful."
+
+Accordingly they made their way down the drive at a pace which, set by
+the deliberate old peeress, ill accorded with Gage's impatience.
+
+Naturally Peckover had foreseen this move, and had proposed a
+circuitous and covert route to the house.  Ulrica, quite privy to the
+scheme, offered no objection.
+
+"Sun's rather hot," Peckover observed, when the carriage with its
+guileful occupant had rolled away from them.  "Let's keep under the
+trees."
+
+Ulrica laughed, and took without comment the path he indicated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+"This is a real pleasure to me," Peckover remarked, determined to get
+on flirting terms without wasting precious time in preliminary
+small-talk.
+
+"This lovely day?" Ulrica responded, with an obvious pretence of
+misunderstanding his drift.  "Yes, it is quite a treat."
+
+"I meant," he pursued, with a stimulating glance at the fresh, pretty
+face, highly provocative now with a roguish smile, "a walk with you.
+I've been longing for this moment ever since I first set eyes on you."
+
+Her glance of amused surprise suggested that she thought he was
+plunging _in medias res_ with a vengeance.  "Clearly," she commented,
+"patience is one of your virtues."
+
+"I don't know about patience," he replied.  "If I've waited a long time
+for my chance, it has not been exactly patience, but because I couldn't
+get it sooner."
+
+"Everything comes to him who waits," Ulrica observed with a careless
+laugh, to show she was not taking him too seriously.
+
+"I hope you don't mind the change?" he suggested.
+
+"In the weather?" she asked mischievously.
+
+"Bother the weather!  No.  From Quorn to me."
+
+"That remains to be seen," she answered.  "So far, I have no objection
+to it."
+
+"Same here.  Lady Ormstork is a proper old grandee, but, well,
+naturally she's not exactly my idea of an afternoon's fun."
+
+"I dare say not," Ulrica said dryly.
+
+"Now you are," he declared boldly.
+
+She ignored the compliment together with the amorous look which
+accompanied it.  "I have often wondered how you and dear old Ormstork
+were getting on;" she remarked with self-possessed blandness.  "One
+hears of such curious matches nowadays."
+
+For a moment Peckover hardly realized the drift of the remark.  Then he
+stopped dead.  "Why, you don't mean to say," he gasped, "you thought I
+was making love to the old gal?"
+
+She looked intensely amused at his face of disgust.  "Lady Ormstork is
+not bad looking for her age," she suggested wickedly.  "You must admit
+she is rather handsome."
+
+"I dare say," he returned, not certain how far she was in earnest.  "It
+never occurred to me to take stock of her."
+
+Ulrica kept her countenance steady, but her eyes were dancing.  "Then
+your devotion was purely Platonic?" she observed.
+
+"You may call it what you like," he replied, playing for safety.  "As I
+wasn't taking any."
+
+"Ah, then, I suppose it was devotion to your friend, Lord Quorn," she
+pursued, the corners of her mouth twitching with mischief.  "Of course.
+He saved your life, didn't he?  And you--yes; how generous of you."
+
+"Oh, bother my life," Peckover exclaimed with an impatient laugh.  They
+had covered a good deal of ground without getting on very far towards
+the end he had in view, and any moment now Quorn might run them down.
+
+"I expect poor old Quorn is feeling rather sick by now," he remarked
+pointedly, "at your giving him the slip and going off with me."
+
+"You don't think he'll be jealous?" she asked with a laugh.
+
+"Shouldn't be surprised."
+
+"There is no real reason why he should be," she said.
+
+"Nor no reason why he shouldn't be--if you like," he rejoined
+insinuatingly.
+
+"I don't understand you, Mr. Gage," she said, looking at the same time
+as though she understood him perfectly.
+
+"If you liked me half as well as I like you," he explained bluntly,
+under the compelling spur of her charms.
+
+"You think it would matter to Lord Quorn?"
+
+"You ought to know best," he returned.  "I know it would matter a lot
+to me.  The question is, which do you prefer?"
+
+"Oh, his lordship, of course," she answered mockingly.
+
+"Because he is a lord?"
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I see," said Peckover catching her tone.  "Is that your own original
+idea or Lady Ormstork's?"
+
+"It is certainly Lady Ormstork's," was the evasive answer.
+
+"But not yours.  Not altogether," he urged wickedly.  "You might have
+room in your heart for a little fondness for me?"
+
+She laughed.  "Why should I?"
+
+"It would be such a treat," he pleaded.
+
+"You are very, what Lady Ormstork calls, unconventional," she said
+quizzingly.
+
+"Does that mean nice?"
+
+"It may."
+
+"You can't tell unless you give a fellow a chance," he said amorously,
+as his arm, extended behind her, somewhat unnecessarily, to put aside a
+bough, remained there.  "Ulrica!" he murmured.
+
+"Mr. Gage!"
+
+"Percival--Percy," he suggested with empressement.  "Ulrica, time's
+short, so don't let's quibble about trifles.  You're the loveliest girl
+I've ever set eyes on," he continued with glib passion, "and I'm
+desperately in love with you.  I've been dying to tell you so all the
+time, but never could till this blessed chance came along.  Ulrica, say
+you're a little fond of me, in return."
+
+"Mr. Gage!"  Ulrica's expression was compounded of indignation, scorn
+and amusement.  But perhaps the last was the only sentiment that was
+genuine.  "It is not necessary," she protested, "to overdo the part
+like this."
+
+"The part?"
+
+"Lady Ormstork's little scheme," she said coolly.  "You need not take
+the trouble to make it quite so life-like."
+
+"Oh, it's no trouble," he assured her promptly.  "It is a pleasure."
+
+"I understood," she observed laughingly, "that the idea was to put it
+into Quorn's head that he ought to be jealous."
+
+"That's it," Peckover replied readily.  "And I'm doing my very best to
+give him cause for jealousy."
+
+"It is very spirited of you," she said, with her provocative,
+mischievous twinkle.  "But you need not act quite so hard, need you?
+At any rate till he sees us."
+
+He made a wry face.  "Not much fun in waiting till he sees us.  It
+occurs to me this is a little game it pays to play in earnest.  That
+is," he added pointedly, "if both parties are agreeable."
+
+"Ah, that's the question," she said tantalizingly.
+
+"Won't you answer it?" he asked insinuatingly.
+
+"H'm!  I rather like you," she admitted.  "You are breezy."
+
+"Thanks," he replied.  "Then I ought to be in request on a warm day
+like this."
+
+"Lord Quorn," she said with provoking irresponsiveness, "is breezy.
+But with him it blows from a rather different quarter.  And he is apt
+to be a little gusty."
+
+"Ah, yes.  Dare say he would be," Peckover agreed, recalling certain
+squally passages in their intercourse.  "Well, after all, a change of
+air ought to be grateful.  Does you good."
+
+Ulrica laughed.  "With the wind chopping about there is likely to be a
+storm coming."
+
+"Is there?" he returned.  "Then let us take advantage of the fine
+weather while it lasts."
+
+He was about to give a practical suggestion of how they might make the
+best of the sunny hours, with his arm only prevented from encircling
+her waist by a vigorous repulsive action on Ulrica's part, followed by
+a suggestion that the conditions did not exactly lend themselves to
+waltzing, when suddenly a man emerged from the bushes and stood in
+front of them.  It was not the Lord Quorn they were expecting, but the
+real Quorn who had sighted them while prowling about the grounds, and
+now confronted them with an expression of jealous irritation on his now
+chronically aggrieved face.
+
+"Hullo, my cunning little puppet," he exclaimed rudely.  "Enjoying
+yourself this fine morning?"
+
+"Trying to," replied Peckover, betwixt resentment and politic
+submissiveness.
+
+"That's right," said Quorn with a distinctly objectionable sneer.
+"Poaching on the preserves of the person who calls himself Lord Quorn,
+it strikes me."
+
+"Who is this rude person?" asked Ulrica, not knowing whether to be
+amused or alarmed.
+
+"Oh, he's all right," Peckover assured her uneasily.
+
+"Yes," responded Quorn with dismaying suggestiveness.  "I am
+particularly all right.  About the only man on the place who is all
+right, it strikes me."
+
+Peckover, reduced to an apprehensive and gloomy silence, noticed that
+Quorn's eyes were fixed on Ulrica with a look of unmistakable and more
+than passing admiration.  The aggressive manner was softening too,
+clearly for the lady's benefit, and indeed Miss Buffkin showed signs of
+a temptation to laugh at the embarrassment of her cavalier.
+
+"Right you are," Peckover said, nodding to Quorn as pleasantly as the
+situation permitted, and at the same time trying to get a chance of
+winking at Ulrica to intimate thereby that she need not take the
+new-comer seriously.  "Well, we must be getting up to the Towers now."
+
+But Quorn showed no intention of budging from their path.  His eyes
+were still fixed in the same resolute admiration on the fascinating
+Ulrica, and it was manifest that the spell of her beauty was holding
+him more strongly every moment.
+
+"You run off to the Towers, old man," he ordered Peckover, with a wave
+of the arm, while his eyes never left the object of their attraction.
+"You're wanted up there at once.  I'll escort the lady."
+
+There was a note of determination in his voice that Peckover had not
+noticed before.  Doubtless it was derived from the enchantment of Miss
+Buffkin's personality.  Peckover dared not disobey.  Happily a ruse
+suggested itself to him.  He nodded to Ulrica; "See you again
+presently," and made off down the winding path.
+
+Scarcely had Quorn time to pull himself together in his overmastering
+admiration, and frame the preamble of a rough flirtation, when Peckover
+came rushing back with apprehensive face.
+
+"Well, what's the matter now?" Quorn demanded, upset by the
+interruption.
+
+"Lions on the prowl," Peckover announced in a loud whisper.
+
+"Lions?" cried the exasperated Quorn.  "What do you mean.  You must be
+dr----"  Then the meaning flashed upon him, and he grew white.  "Not
+Leos?" he demanded hoarsely.
+
+Peckover nodded warningly.  "Both of 'em.  Looking nasty.  They'll be
+round the corner in a moment."
+
+Lord Quorn had decided before that moment elapsed not to stay to test
+the truth of the statement.  With an exclamation which savoured less of
+good manners than of abject, if wrathful, fear, he sprang without a
+word of leave-taking or excuse into the bushes and disappeared.
+
+Then Peckover winked at the astounded Miss Buffkin.
+
+"That was clever of you," she remarked with a puzzled laugh.  "How did
+you do it?"
+
+"Superior power of intellect," was his somewhat vague and unsatisfying
+explanation.  "Mind can start muscle any day.  Never mind that poor
+chap.  Where did we leave off?"
+
+"You wouldn't," she replied significantly.  "If I remember rightly."
+
+"No more I won't," Peckover exclaimed, with boldness increased by his
+late coup.  "Wasn't I just----?  I don't mind beginning again, if you
+don't."
+
+His impudence made her burst out laughing.  "You are absurd.  And you
+are not treating your friend well."
+
+"P'raps not," he returned.  "But when I look at you I feel called upon
+to treat myself well.  Besides, he'll never miss it."
+
+"Miss what?" she asked, innocently or by design falling into his trap.
+
+"A kiss," he answered.  "You'll let me have one, Ulrica?"
+
+Miss Buffkin was saved the trouble of dealing with the--perhaps
+embarrassing--request, by the appearance of Gage, who came up somewhat
+heated and resentful, followed by Lady Ormstork, whose face wore the
+look which dowager peeresses wear when their plans, matrimonial and
+financial, succeed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Gage, _soi-disant_ Quorn, was, to put it mildly, anything but pleased
+at Peckover's manoeuvre, Nevertheless he did not take the first
+opportunity of proposing to the fascinating Miss Buffkin.  In point of
+fact he preferred the role of Philander to that of Benedick.  He was in
+no hurry to settle down, however strongly the superb Ulrica might tempt
+him to matrimony.  He was more than rich enough to treat her wealth as
+a negligible quantity; added to which he desired to taste the sweets of
+life as dished up to a bachelor peer, and this was the first of them
+which had not turned sour in his mouth.
+
+Naturally he was not going to allow any interference or competition on
+the part of his paid confederate, Peckover.  That gentleman, had, he
+considered, put off the trappings of nobility for a handsome
+consideration, and was in honour bound not to start an opposition
+business on his own account, nor to obtain credit in the guise of a
+millionaire, within an equitable radius from Staplewick, or, indeed,
+from the person, wherever it might be, of the peer by purchase.
+
+The first practice of the scheme not having produced the desired
+effect, namely a proposal, it was arranged to repeat it next day; but
+Gage was too resentfully wide-awake to be taken in again.  He stuck to
+Peckover with all the persistency, and much more than the annoyance, of
+his shadow, and finally took care as the hour of their visitors'
+arrival drew near to post himself at the point of interceptance; the
+wily Peckover remaining at the house in a state of tantalizing
+discomfiture.
+
+But Lady Ormstork, who had not lived in vain in a world where even
+peeresses play "beat my neighbour," was equal to the occasion, and more
+than equal to the suddenly alert Mr. Gage.  Perhaps she had anticipated
+his move; anyhow, she was prepared with a prompt counter.
+
+As Gage met the carriage by the lodge, the driver, being either new or
+instructed, did not pull up for a hundred yards or so.  Then Lady
+Ormstork quickly alighted and the carriage bowled on at a good pace
+towards the Towers.
+
+With a wealth of amiability the lady advanced towards Gage who was
+hurrying up with a lowering face.
+
+"Where's Miss Buffkin?" he cried in a cold, exasperated voice.
+
+Lady Ormstork held out both hands gushingly.  "So delighted to come
+again.  So sweet of you to have us!" she crowed.  "Another quite
+heavenly day.  And the dear old park looking more lovely than ever."
+
+"But where's Miss Buffkin?" Gage demanded hoarsely, clutching the old
+lady's double-dealing hands and thinking unutterable things.
+
+"Oh, dear Ulrica is rather tired," was the plausibly artless reply.
+"She went for a walk to the Scotton Woods this morning.  So she has
+gone on in the carriage and will make herself at home till we come.  I
+am sure that you, as the soul of hospitality will not mind that."
+
+Mr. Gage looked as though he did mind it very much indeed.  However, he
+shut his lips, perhaps to keep back the unspeakable, and began to move
+on towards the house.
+
+"The park is truly delightful to-day," exclaimed his companion with
+studied rapture.  "The air is simply life-giving.  Do let us stroll up
+by the beech avenue, dear Lord Quorn.  It is a sin to hurry indoors on
+an afternoon like this.  Ulrica will not mind."
+
+Gage's face suggested thoughts too poignant for words.
+
+"Shall we stroll round by the rhododendron walk?"  Lady Ormstork
+suggested with a fine air of ignorance of anything abnormal in the
+situation.
+
+"Must go up to the house first," Gage insisted bluntly, his rage being
+almost too great for coherent speech.  "Was on my way there when you
+drove in.  Just remembered, forgot to give Bisgood an important order."
+
+"Oh, then do let us go by all means," the lady assented graciously, her
+heartiness stimulated by a wave of satisfaction in thinking that the
+proposal could not be far off now.  "If only you had told us, you might
+have got into the carriage and driven up with Ulrica.  What a pity."
+
+Considering the steps she had taken to obviate such a contingency this
+was a somewhat bold speech on Lady Ormstork's part.  But the grand
+manner carries a certain, if not altogether convincing, plausibility
+with it, and disarms rude censoriousness.
+
+So they walked towards the house together; the gracious dowager
+finding, as was natural, the slight incline up to the Towers rather
+against anything like pace.
+
+"We have had rather a disagreeable surprise to-day," said Lady
+Ormstork, summoning back to her side the irritated Gage whose
+impatience kept him farther in front of her than politeness might have
+dictated.
+
+"Oh?" he responded discouragingly, wishing she would keep her breath
+for the pedestrian effort and defer conversation till the Towers and
+the elusive Miss Buffkin were reached.
+
+"Yes," she proceeded.  "I think I told you--or was it Mr. Gage?--of a
+very persistent suitor of dear Ulrica's, the Duke of Salolja, a fiery
+Spaniard, who had been paying her great attention in town last season.
+In fact it was mainly to escape his importunities that we came down
+here."
+
+"Oh, then you didn't come to see Staplewick?" he observed, between
+chafing and chaffing.
+
+"That was my object," the lady maintained with dignity.  "And I brought
+dear Ulrica with me to Great Bunbury as to a sanctuary where we could
+be safe from the duke.  Judge, then, of our embarrassment when, driving
+up the High Street, we saw him coming from the station."
+
+"Awkward, if you've been fed up on him in town and don't want any
+more," Gage commented.
+
+"Very.  He proposed five times at least to Ulrica, and would not take a
+refusal."
+
+"It's a way they have in Spain, I believe," remarked Gage, wondering
+gloomily how this new development might interfere with his amusement.
+
+"Still," continued Lady Ormstork, "as I think I told Mr. Gage, one
+cannot have the dear girl forced into a marriage, even with a Spanish
+duke, against her inclination.  One cannot blame him, poor man; she is
+lovely, and altogether most adorable; but from our point of view why
+should she exile herself in Spain for the sake of a man she does not
+care for?"
+
+"Why, indeed?" assented Gage, wondering what the odds were on the
+Spanish duke's being a creature of the old lady's imagination.
+
+Meanwhile the fatigued Miss Buffkin had come as an agreeable surprise
+upon the baffled Peckover, and that alert opportunist had lost no time
+in making the most of his good fortune.
+
+"Dear old Ormstork has hooked Quorn down by the lodge," she explained
+laughingly.  "But I expect they'll be up here before long by the look
+on his face as she fastened on him and he saw me bowling on up here."
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said Peckover with a grin.  "Well, if we've got to
+make him jealous, don't let's lose any time in preliminaries."
+
+"Mr. Gage, you are too absurd," Ulrica remarked as she unwound her
+feather victorine.
+
+"Don't see much absurdity in that suggestion, anyhow," he returned.
+"What's the good of a chance if you don't take it?"
+
+"We need not exactly act in earnest," she suggested.
+
+"I've always thought that make-believe was poor sport," he rejoined
+engagingly.  "We were getting on nicely yesterday; if only----"
+
+"Ah, yes," she continued archly; "there's always an if only----"
+
+"If only," he continued, "Quorn wasn't on our track, we need not be in
+such a hurry to say what's uppermost in our minds.  As it is----"
+
+His arm seemed, to her alert eyes, to have a caressing twitch about it.
+"Shall we go out into the garden?" she proposed, by a plausible
+manoeuvre putting the table between them.
+
+"Too many men about, setting the place straight," he objected
+knowingly.  "Safer here, and snugger too, Ulrica!"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Gage!" she expostulated, as by a swift dart he got round to
+her side of the table.
+
+"Ulrica," he said seriously, for since yesterday a wild design and hope
+had taken possession of him, "Ulrica, need you marry Quorn?  Tell me,
+like a dear girl.  You don't love him as much as all that, do you?"
+
+She laughed.  "How do you know?  I'm not going to tell you."
+
+"It's only for the title," he pleaded, feverishly anxious to arrive at
+an understanding while the chance lasted.  "That's nothing.  It can be
+bought, if you go the right way about it.  Ulrica, I don't believe you
+like him as well as you like me.  Tell me you don't.  Tell me the
+truth, dearest."
+
+He seized her hands insistently.  There was no doubt about his
+earnestness and she could hardly laugh at him now.
+
+"I like you well enough," she answered.
+
+"Darling!" he cried with genuine rapture.  "Then you'll marry me?
+Won't you?  Say yes.  You're your own mistress.  Say you'll marry me?"
+
+"How can I?" she laughed evasively.  "I've got to marry Quorn."
+
+"Because he's a lord?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+She shrugged.
+
+"You like me best?"
+
+"You're more my sort," she was fain to answer.  "But it is no good."
+Then suddenly breaking away she said, "I've just seen another of my
+admirers, a real Spanish duke."
+
+"Oh, that chap!  I've heard of him," said Peckover with sovereign
+contempt.  "Well, you wouldn't look at him again?"
+
+"I daren't," she replied.  "I was afraid he'd see me."
+
+"You leave him to me," said Peckover in his grand manner.  "I'll settle
+the Dook.  I'll slice the top off the Spanish onion.  Ulrica, you'll
+have me?  Hang the title.  Have the man you like."
+
+She looked at him.  He was very different from the reckless little
+fugitive who had once tried to put an end to his existence at the
+_Quorn Arms_.  Prosperity, high living, and a general good time had
+transformed him, smartened him up, and, backed by a certain native
+shrewdness, made him fairly presentable.  Still----  Ulrica laughed.
+Her ideas and original breeding were but middle-class in spite of her
+wealth and expensive education.  But for certain successful
+speculations on the part of Buffkin _pere_ (who knew his striking
+limitations, and wisely kept in the background) there would have been
+nothing very unequal in the mating of his daughter with Peckover.  And,
+after all, in spite of the transmuting power of wealth, of changed
+circumstances and surroundings, human nature has always a tendency to
+seek and revert to its old level; to find most pleasure and ease in the
+society of those who are as it once was.
+
+So it was that she made answer to her eager wooer.  "I like you well
+enough, but a rich girl can't choose as she likes."
+
+"I should have thought," he urged, "she can like where she chooses."
+
+"So she can," Ulrica rejoined.  "But she can't marry him."
+
+"I'm just as much a gentleman as Quorn," he argued.  "He happens to
+have the title, but I might have had it and fitted the part just as
+well as he," he added with hidden truth.
+
+"So you might," she agreed.  "But you haven't got it.  And that makes
+all the difference."
+
+"I'll get one if you'll marry me," he pleaded, vaguely optimistic on
+the subject.  Then he fancied he heard Gage's voice outside.  "I say,"
+he urged with desperate affection, "here they come.  Quick.  If you
+love me give me a kiss."
+
+"I don't know that I do," she objected, her voice rising to a half
+scream of remonstrance as he clutched her.
+
+"Give me the benefit of the doubt," he insisted drawing her face
+towards him.
+
+But before his lips could reach hers, Lady Ormstork's shrill voice
+called "Ulrica!"  The handle of the door was turned, and Peckover
+sprang guiltily over as much carpet as he could cover from that
+interesting take-off, as Gage burst in upon them with a face of
+suppressed fury which was not diminished by the obvious suggestiveness
+of the attitudes of the conscious pair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+"Look here, old man," said Gage to Peckover, as they settled down to
+their cigars after dinner, "you're not playing the game."
+
+"What about?" his confederate inquired blandly.  He had felt from
+Gage's sulky attitude all dinner that something was coming and was
+consequently prepared for it.
+
+"Your carrying on with Ulrica Buffkin," was the blunt answer.  "She is
+my girl; and you know that as well as I do."
+
+"It's not in our contract that all the girls belong to you," Peckover
+suggested gently.
+
+Gage frowned.  "She came for me.  She was after me," he returned in an
+exasperated tone.  "That was the arrangement.  And I don't pay you five
+thousand a year to interfere in my love affairs."
+
+"It's not my fault," Peckover urged coolly, having drunk champagne
+sufficient for a reckless enjoyment of the controversy, "if the girl
+fancies a change.  It's your business to make yourself sufficiently
+interesting to keep her affection.  If you don't, well, I may as well
+take her on as any other fellow."
+
+"Don't you talk a lot of conceited nonsense," retorted Gage, keeping
+down his fury with an effort.  "The girl's all right: but she's led by
+your infernal monkey tricks into thinking that I'm neglecting her; so
+naturally she pretends to take up with you."
+
+"Well, that's one way of looking at it," Peckover observed with vinous
+sarcasm.
+
+"It's the only intelligent way," Gage returned.
+
+"From your point of view," his friend rejoined, tossing off a glass of
+port wine.
+
+"It's from my point of view that we've got to look at the affair," Gage
+said, with rising anger, for the other's coolness and confidence were
+more exasperating than his words.  "And," he proceeded, banging his
+fist on the table, "my view of the case is, that if you don't stop your
+little game and sheer off the Buffkin there's going to be a row."
+
+"I wouldn't," observed Peckover sententiously, "have anything to do
+with a girl, however good-looking, for whom my sole attraction was my
+title, and who didn't mind showing as much."
+
+"Has she told you that?" Gage snapped.
+
+Peckover shrugged.  "Practically."
+
+"Of course," Gage returned with an ugly mouth, "that's because she's
+huffy with me, thinking I'm not so keen on her as I ought to be, and
+you are."
+
+"I suppose her feelings don't count," Peckover retorted, being pretty
+sure of himself with the fair Ulrica.
+
+"Mine do, at any rate," Gage declared wrathfully.  "I've been humbugged
+enough over this precious title.  And as to your expecting me first to
+take on your revolting Australian pet and then to give up a girl like
+Ulrica Buffkin, why, you don't diagnose my character right, that's all.
+This is my show.  I'm paying for it, and I'm going to run it."
+
+"Then," returned Peckover, still cool and unmoved by his friend's
+thumping and shouting, "you'd better make it your business to see who
+that is prowling round the booth."
+
+Gage's irate eyes followed Peckover's nod to the window.  Outside, just
+discernible in the dusk, the figure of a man was moving to and fro.
+Gage jumped up and threw open the French window.
+
+"Who are you?  What do you want here?" he demanded in a rough and
+unnecessarily loud tone.  Peckover rose and lounged against the
+mantelpiece, cigar in mouth, lazily interested in the encounter.
+
+The man outside stopped, turned, brought his heels together, and made a
+low bow.  "Have I the honour to address myself to his Excellency the
+Lord Quorn?" he asked in a high-pitched voice and foreign accent.
+
+"You have.  What do you want?" was the ill-matching, even brutal, reply.
+
+The man approached the window; then bowed again.  "I have the honour of
+the friendship of the most gracious Lady Ormstork," he said.  "As one
+who enjoys that privilege, I trust I may not be regarded as a
+trespasser."
+
+He spoke with such ceremonious politeness that Gage was shamed into
+gulping down his ill-humour and softening his mode of address.  "What
+can I do for you?" he inquired.
+
+"I have," said the stranger with another courteous flourish, "already
+given myself the high pleasure of surveying your charming park and
+castle by moonlight.  It is romantic, it is enchanting.  And now there
+but remains to me to crave the honour of a short conference with your
+lordship.  Am I permitted, then, to flatter myself that my request is
+granted?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Step in," said Gage, not over cordially.
+
+"Before I so unceremoniously cross the threshold of your window,"
+observed the man with another bow, "permit me to announce myself--my
+name and condition."  With more flourishes he produced a pocket-book
+almost entirely covered with an immense gold coronet and cypher,
+extracted therefrom a card of unusual dimensions, and with a deep bow
+presented it to Gage, who drew back into the light, glanced at it, and
+showed it with a wink to Peckover; that worthy greeting the information
+it conveyed with a low whistle of amusement.
+
+"Your friend----?" said the stranger with a low bow to Peckover.
+
+"Mr. Gage."
+
+"Ah?  I have heard of him too.  Mr. Gage, I have the honour."  And he
+bowed again.
+
+When at last he resumed an upright position with some prospect of
+permanency, the friends could see what manner of man the stranger
+looked.  He was small, wiry and rather bald.  His bristling moustache
+turned up from under the longest nose and above the most prominent jaw
+nearly into the fiercest eyes they had ever seen.  With less
+aggressively piercing eyes he would have been rather a comical figure;
+as it was, except when he shut them (which he had a trick of doing), or
+hid them by bowing, he was no laughing matter.  His jutting chin wore a
+closely clipped Vandyck beard, and his clothes were black.
+
+Both men, as they regarded him, tried to persuade themselves that they
+were amused, without, however, the result being quite convincing.
+
+"I have the honour," said the stranger, inclining his head and shutting
+his eyes, "to request--I do not say, demand--the grace of a few words
+with my Lord Quorn and his honourable friend."
+
+"Have a glass of wine?" Gage proposed.
+
+The stranger made a stately gesture of refusal.  "We have a proverb in
+my country, Spain," he said, "'The thistle before the fig.'  You are
+too kind.  But with your permission I will defer the acceptance of your
+gracious hospitality for the present."
+
+"Not a cigar?" Peckover suggested, pushing along the box.
+
+Again the pantomime of refusal.  "At considerable pain to myself, I
+must decline--at least till I have done my poor best to make myself
+understood," the man replied, with his eyes shut.  "Nevertheless, you
+will not impose upon me the heavier penalty of seeing you forego the
+enjoyment of your own cigars?"
+
+They bowed, none the less appreciatively that neither man had
+entertained the slightest intention of doing so.  But they were
+strangely subdued.  Somehow, ridiculous as they assured themselves it
+was, the stranger's personality chained and fascinated them.  He was a
+little man with an absurd nose, but----  They found themselves staring
+at him, drinking in every detail, every flourish, as he drew forward a
+chair with a gesture of asking permission, then sat down and faced them
+with a quiet mastery of the situation which was horribly disconcerting.
+So they waited in a silence, half apprehensive, half quizzical, for him
+to begin, not without a shrewd idea of the purport of the approaching
+communication.
+
+At length with a preliminary flourish of a ringed hand, and an
+effective raising and dropping of the fierce eyes, he began.
+
+"You will have already graciously noted by the acceptance of my poor
+card that it is the Duke of Salolja, Hereditary Grand Sword Bearer to
+his Most Gracious Majesty the King of Spain, Lord Keeper of the Royal
+Vaults, Duke also of Oswalta, Marques of Risposta, with many other
+titles and offices, and a Grandee of Spain,"--at the recital of each
+succeeding dignity he raised his voice till at the culminating title
+the reverberation made the glass rattle--"who has the honour to address
+your grace."
+
+Both men bowed, and at the same time did their best not to feel much
+smaller than the diminutive duke who held them as an undersized
+rattlesnake might fascinate a couple of finches.
+
+"I must begin," said the duke, with what looked like the dangerous calm
+of a quiescent volcano, "by craving your grace's most amiable patience
+while I touch, very briefly, on a few points which stand out in my
+family history, the chronicles of the noble House of Salolja, of which
+I have the honour to be the present unworthy representative."
+
+Peckover glanced at Gage and his look said, "Family history.  We've got
+hold of a crank," and they both looked less uneasy.
+
+"Families have their characteristics and idiosyncrasies," pursued the
+duke, nodding his head to and fro sententiously.  "In my country,
+Spain, this is peculiarly the case.  Family tradition is strong, it is
+tenacious, inexorable, immovable."  At each succeeding adjective his
+voice rose till it reached the climax in an intense scream.  Then he
+dropped back quite casually into a conversational tone, and proceeded--
+
+"It is a notorious tradition in my family that we never suffer an
+interloper in affairs of the heart."
+
+The faces of his two listeners indicated a realization that he was now
+coming to business, and their interest visibly quickened.
+
+"In the year," the duke threw back his head, as though searching for
+the date in the ceiling, "1582, my noble ancestor, Alfonzo de Salolja
+was pleased to love a Castilian lady of great beauty, Donna Inez de
+Madrazo.  A certain vain Hidalgo, one Lopez de Fulano, was rash enough
+to cast eyes on her and enter the lists with him.  Alfonzo did not
+insult the lady by questioning her preference.  He ran de Fulano
+through the heart.  His blood is still to be seen on the Toledo blade
+which hangs in my poor palace in Segovia."
+
+He paused to let the anecdote soak in, before pouring out another.  His
+audience looked interested, but uncertain in what spirit to take the
+recital.
+
+"Nearly a hundred years after that," the duke resumed, chattily
+reminiscent, "a rash Frenchman, the Comte de Gaufrage, suffered himself
+to indulge a passion for the lovely Donna Astoria de Rivaz y Cortano,
+heiress of the de Rivaz lands and wealth.  Duke Miguel de Salolja, who
+at that date represented my honoured family, heard of this breach of
+punctilio on the morning of the day he had appointed for offering the
+fair Astoria his hand and dukedom.  By noon the Comte de Gaufrage was
+in Purgatory and Duke Miguel in Paradise."
+
+"Both killed?" asked Gage.
+
+"Cut him out?" suggested Peckover.
+
+"My ancestor," the duke replied in stately tones and with a flash of
+the eyes, "did not die till thirty years later.  And," he turned to his
+second questioner with a bow and a wave of the hand, "permit me to tell
+your Excellency, no duke of the Saloljas ever stooped to 'cut out' as
+you term it.  We do not enter into competition.  We have a shorter and
+more effectual way.  I may explain that by noon the Comte was in his
+coffin, and Duke Miguel accepted by the lady."
+
+The tone seemed to snub their denseness of comprehension.  Peckover
+accepted the elucidation with a faint and inept smile.
+
+For a few moments there was silence as the duke sat immobile; confident
+in, as it were, the cloak of homicidal tradition in which he had
+wrapped himself.
+
+Then with a suddenness which made the two jump (for he was beginning to
+get on their nerves) he plunged again into his blood-stained narrative.
+
+"To pass over many like instances of this family trait, and come to
+comparatively modern times," he said pleasantly, "it happened to my
+great grandfather, Duke Christofero, to commit a deplorable mistake.
+He and his neighbour, the Prince de Carmona, unknown to each other,
+loved two sisters, the daughters of the Marques de Montalban.  One
+night they both determined to serenade their respective lady-loves.
+When the duke arrived at the Castle he heard a guitar, and came upon
+the unfortunate Prince beneath the windows of the ladies' apartments.
+Only when he was drawing his rapier out of the Prince's left lung did
+he learn that it was Donna Maria and not Donna Lola for whom the
+compliment had been intended.  It was unfortunate; nevertheless it
+tends to illustrate the working of the traditional law which governs
+our house."
+
+"Oh, yes.  I believe that sort of mistake did often happen in the good
+old times," was the not altogether confident remark of Peckover, who
+felt he must make a stand against this sanguinary catalogue.
+
+A flash from the duke's remarkable eyes, brought any further tendency
+to volubility to a full stop.
+
+"Such occurrences," he said pointedly, "are, pardon me, by no means
+confined to bygone times.  The traditions of my house will end only
+when my race is a thing of the past.  In the year--to venture with your
+courteous permission to resume--in the year 1841, a titled compatriot
+of your own, Sir Digby Prior, allowed himself at one of the Escurial
+balls the freedom of paying too much attention to my father's
+_fiancee_, the sainted lady whose unworthy son I have the honour to be.
+Next morning they met on the Buen Retiro Park, from whence in that same
+hour Sir Digby was carried with a bullet in his brain.  Yes!"  He
+sighed reflectively.  "It is not perhaps a cheerful, or agreeable
+record; still it is curious and interesting to trace the same
+inevitable characteristic of our blood in almost each succeeding
+generation."
+
+"Very," Gage agreed.
+
+"Most singular," Peckover chimed in mechanically, as he tried to fall
+into a pose of polite indifference under the duke's eye.
+
+The little man received their appreciative commonplaces with a grave
+bow.  "We have now arrived at a point," he said glaring at them, but
+speaking with quiet if significant deliberation, "when it becomes my
+duty to claim the honour of your unwavering attention."
+
+The request was in the highest degree unnecessary.  Both men were
+incapable of greater heed than they were already giving.  "Now it's
+coming," was the simultaneous and uneasy thought in their minds.
+
+"But I fear the politeness with which your graces have brought
+yourselves to listen to my long preamble has caused your cigars to
+extinguish themselves," remarked the duke, with an ambassadorial smile.
+"Pray let me have the supreme pleasure of seeing you relight them."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+"Having now," resumed the duke, when the two men had, with a fine
+affectation of nonchalance, but with somewhat unsteady hands, lighted
+up again, "taken you through as much of the history of my family as to
+persons of your acuteness of perception is necessary, I have the honour
+to invite your attention to the moral of my house's story."
+
+His listeners, by this time mentally detached from each other, and held
+pitilessly and without respite by those auger-like eyes, puffed
+nervously at their now tasteless cigars, and by their apprehensive
+silence bade him proceed.
+
+"The present unworthy holder of the dukedom of Salolja," that person
+continued, with a deprecatory gesture, "--to leave ancient history
+behind us--is for the moment in one of those inexpedient positions to
+which his ancestors were occasionally liable, and from which they
+invariably took prompt measures to extricate themselves.  In the
+province where we hold sway there is a proverb, 'A Sololja's rival
+should make his will.'  When one wishes to describe a useless action,
+'It is like granting a lease to the rival of a Salolja.'  Meaning that
+he does not live to enjoy it.  The phrase is expressive."
+
+"Rather neat," commented Peckover, with an effort.
+
+"Now to come to the point," pursued their tormentor, his fierce eyes in
+singular contrast to his bald head and deliberate speech, "the present
+Duke of Salolja--to keep the discussion conveniently impersonal--has
+made up his mind to contract an alliance with a certain English lady; a
+commoner, it is true, but one whose beauty and wealth may claim to make
+up, in a measure, for genealogical deficiencies.  The lady's name is
+Miss Ulrica Buffkin."
+
+Both hearers nodded an acquaintance with it.
+
+"It has come to the duke's knowledge," continued that same nobleman,
+raising his tone to a slightly minatory pitch.  "That another person,
+an Englishman, I should say an English nobleman, has, unwittingly I am
+ready to allow, been led into paying certain attentions to the lady in
+question.  I am sure that to capable and clever men like yourselves it
+is not necessary for me to set myself the disagreeable task of pointing
+out the inevitable result of such an unwarranted and deplorable
+interference should it be persevered in."
+
+He paused, took out a silk pocket-handkerchief embroidered with a
+flamboyant coronet and cypher, and passed it lightly across his lips,
+never taking his vicious eyes off the two men who had by this, under
+the paralysing gaze, assumed the appearance and almost the condition of
+a pair of waxworks.
+
+As the lengthening pause seemed to demand a response, Gage with a great
+effort roused himself from the Tussaudy rigidity, and, with a desperate
+attempt at boldness, replied--
+
+"You might let us know, while we are on the subject."
+
+"No harm in mentioning it," Peckover chipped in with a somewhat ghastly
+pretence of a smile.
+
+The little duke thrust back the handkerchief into his breast pocket,
+and then threw out his hands expressively.  "I should have imagined,"
+he replied, with a transcendentally threatening eye, "that men of the
+sagacity and penetration of your graces would have found no difficulty
+in deducing from the instances you have just heard with such admirable
+patience, the fate in store for any one who is rash enough to enter the
+lists with a Duke of Salolja."
+
+His voice, rising with abrupt suddenness, thundered out the last words
+with a volume and intensity which made his rivals fairly jump in their
+uneasy seats.  Anyhow, the wordy Grandee had come to the point, and the
+point had to be faced or run from.
+
+Gage, whose mode of life had kept his nervous system in better order
+than his companion's, was the first to reply.
+
+"That's all very well," he said, bracing himself to join issue with the
+fiery little Castilian, and assuming a courage he did not feel.  "But
+this is a free country; and in these enlightened days you can't run a
+man through the body before lunch because your best girl has the good
+or bad taste to prefer him."
+
+Fury leapt like a flame in the duke's eyes, but he replied calmly, even
+suavely, "Your excellency is wrong.  What is to prevent me?"
+
+"The police," Peckover suggested promptly, trying to catch boldness
+from Gage's attitude.
+
+The duke burst into a loud and particularly unpleasant laugh.  "The
+police?  Really, your graces compel my amusement.  May I ask you three
+questions?"
+
+"Three dozen, if you like," answered Gage unsteadily.
+
+The duke accepted the bounty with a bow.  "Three will suffice."
+Whereupon very loudly, "One."  Then in a normal tone, "How many police
+have you within a radius of, say, three miles from Staplewick Towers?"
+
+"One or two," Gage was forced to answer rather sheepishly.
+
+The duke bowed, this time with a sarcastic smile.
+
+"Two."  Again the disturbing, superfluous shout.  "How long would it
+take you to send for the nearest, supposing you found him at home?"
+
+"Oh, about twenty minutes," Gage tried to reply casually.
+
+Once more the absurdly loud enumeration.  "Three.  And how long do you
+consider it would take me to put a bullet through your body?"
+
+Simultaneously with the question a glittering object shone in his hand.
+It was the highly polished barrel of a revolver which he had whipped
+out casually with a deftness which seemed born of practice, and with
+which he now covered his rival.
+
+Both men started to their feet with blanched faces.
+
+"Here, I say!" Peckover remonstrated in ill-concealed terror.
+
+"How long?" sang out the little demon of a duke in his commanding
+voice.  "Oblige me by answering the question."
+
+"A second, I suppose," gasped Gage.  "Now please turn that revolver
+away."
+
+"That is," proceeded the duke in a tone of satisfaction, "nineteen
+minutes and fifty-nine seconds before the policeman arrives."  Still
+holding the weapon in his hand, but now pointing to the floor, he rose,
+brought his heels together and bowed.  "I trust, milord Quorn and Mr.
+Gage, my most honourable friends, that at length we understand one
+another."  Then he sat down again, his aggressive eyes moving with
+mechanical regularity from one man to the other, since the exigencies
+of the moment had sent the friends apart.
+
+But now, throughly roused by the critical situation, Peckover spoke.
+"I don't know, my lord dook, whether you are aware that we have strict
+laws in this country against murder."
+
+"And," put in Gage, "against carrying firearms without a licence."
+
+The duke laughed scornfully and with superfluous volume.  "Do your
+Excellencies think we have no such laws in Spain?  And do your graces
+suppose that if the Dukes of Salolja had cared a fig for them the
+occurrences which I have narrated to you would have happened?  You hang
+a man for what you call murder here.  But have you ever heard of your
+English law hanging a Grandee of Spain?  And do you think you would be
+allowed to do so?  Pah!"  He snapped his fingers with a noise like the
+crack of a whip.  "What is your English law compared with the
+immemorial traditions of the Saloljas?  NOTHING!  Shall it stand
+between a Salolja and his vengeance, his desire?  NEVER!"
+
+He shouted the answers to the last two of his many questions with
+scornful vehemence.  His manner was, no doubt, irritating, and that,
+perhaps, accounted for Peckover's boldness.
+
+"You don't bluff us you are above the law," he said, trembling at his
+own temerity.  "If we haven't hung a Spanish Grandee as yet, it's
+because none of you have killed anybody over here that I remember."
+
+The demon duke grinned and spread out his hands before him, as though
+sweeping away a feeble protest.
+
+"My gracious friend, you jump at hasty conclusions.  Who talks of
+killing, of murder.  Faugh!  It is a vulgar word.  Accidents happen,
+here as in Spain; deplorable, fatal accidents.  Firearms go off, almost
+of themselves; it is sad to think how easily they go off.  I could tell
+you stories of such miserable fatalities in my own family, but you have
+probably heard enough of the ways of the Saloljas for one evening.
+Death is very near us always," he continued sententiously.  "So near
+that the healthiest of us is only just alive.  Which of us bears a life
+worth an hour's purchase?  NONE!  And the man who trifles with a
+Salolja cannot call the next moment his own.  There it is.  Accept it
+or not, it is the truth, the eternal, bitter, naked truth."
+
+His voice was like a Nasmyth hammer, now pounding, roaring, seeming to
+shake the room, now gentle and soft as a shy schoolgirl's.  As he
+concluded his speech his tone sank into a solemn hush, indicative of
+the awesome inevitable.  For some moments there was silence in the
+room, save for the ticking clock.  Then, when the tension had lasted as
+long as was desirable, the duke rose, and advancing to the table took
+the finest peach in the dish.  The flashing had now faded from his
+eyes, and the expression on his face was truculently amiable.
+
+"I sincerely hope I have not wearied your excellencies," he observed.
+"It has been most condescending and gracious of you to let me explain
+myself at such length.  A veritable poem of a peach; I have not met its
+fellow in England.  May I now, since our slight misunderstanding is at
+an end, do myself the honour of drinking a glass of wine with your
+graces?"
+
+Rousing themselves from the gloomy preoccupation of their discomfiture,
+their graces, with a quite futile pretence of ease, hastened to
+minister to their undesirable visitor's request.  That worthy proceeded
+to toss off a couple of bumpers with a relish commensurate with his
+long and thirst-giving harangue.  "If I ask further for one of your
+graces' excellent cigars," he suggested with a pleasantness which could
+not seem other than grim, "it is as another proof of how unwilling I am
+to bear malice.  Ah!"  He lighted the cigar and blew out a long cloud
+with evident enjoyment.
+
+"Unlike my ancestors I make allowances," he declared significantly.
+"Unlike them again, I never strike without warning.  Yes," he added,
+dropping his voice into a genial tone; "it is perhaps well for us that
+we did not live, and in the same relations one to another, a hundred,
+two hundred years ago.  At least we should not all three be enjoying
+these superb cigars."
+
+It was a difficult sentiment for the smarting pair to respond to.
+"Just so," was all Peckover, with an awkward laugh, could think of.
+
+"I am ashamed to have stayed so long," said their guest, with an
+expressive glance at the clock.  "But it is better to risk missing the
+strict punctilio than to have to intrude again.  Your excellency's
+house and park are delightful.  I felicitate myself on my visit.  Your
+cigars are exquisite.  I take another, in token of our better
+understanding, to enjoy on my way to your somewhat depressing Great
+Bunbury.  Good-night, milord Quorn.  Good-night, Mr. Gage.  A thousand
+compliments and adieux to you both.  May it never be necessary for us
+to meet on less amicable terms than those which prevail between us at
+present.  Once again my most distinguished homage.  Adieu."
+
+With his heels together he made to each man a most profound bow; then
+turned to the window, opened it with a sure touch upon the latch,
+turned again, bowed, and disappeared into the night.
+
+For some moments the two men stood staring speechless into the
+darkness.  Then their eyes met.
+
+"This is a glorious title," said Gage, clipping out the words with
+bitter intensity.  "I am having a ripping time with it.  It's a fine
+thing to be alive just now."
+
+"All things considered, it's lucky we are alive," was Peckover's dry
+but feeling response.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+"Tell you what it is, Percival, my boy," said Gage at breakfast next
+morning; "I've had about enough of nobility.  Grandeur and aristocracy
+have too many inconveniences to suit me.  I've a mind to clear out, and
+hand you back this precious title of yours."
+
+Peckover laughed awkwardly.  "Don't do that yet awhile, old man," he
+urged.  "You haven't given it a fair trial."
+
+"It has given me one," was the prompt and pointed retort.  "And it
+strikes me if I don't look sharp and get out of the peacock's feathers
+I shall soon be pecked to death.  That Salolja chap last night was an
+eye-opener."
+
+"Unpleasant customer," his friend agreed.
+
+"Unpleasant?  Noisy little devil!"
+
+"Barking dogs don't bite," observed Peckover, but without conviction.
+
+"I wouldn't trust him," returned Gage with the firmness the other's
+remark lacked.  "These Spaniards are the very deuce when they're
+jealous.  They get simply mad.  And nobody on this earth is safe from a
+loose madman if he takes it into his head to go for you.  Our friend,
+the duke, meant business."
+
+"Only so long as you interfere between him and Miss Buffkin," Peckover
+agreed.
+
+"How was I to know what I was being let in for?" Gage exclaimed in an
+aggrieved tone.  "When the old lady mentioned a foreign chap who'd been
+dancing after Ulrica I naturally thought it was some monkeyish fellow
+who'd squirm if you shook hands too hard, and would cry if you spoke to
+him unkindly.  She never gave us a hint she'd got a bald Beelzebub with
+a voice that sends you the jumps and a homicidal history that gives you
+the shivers--to say nothing of that sickening revolver.  Ugh!  I can
+see the gleam of it now, as I've seen it all night.  I was on the point
+of trying to get in first shot with a champagne bottle."
+
+"Yes," Peckover admitted; "I've spent a pleasanter five minutes than
+when he was playing with the highly polished popper."
+
+"Well, much more of this and I go back to plain Mr. Gage," that
+gentleman declared in a disgusted tone.  "They talk of the fierce light
+that beats on royalty, but I didn't know the nobility lived in a
+set-piece of fire-works with occasional red-fire."
+
+"They can't all of them do it," argued Peckover.
+
+"They are all of 'em liable to it," Gage returned.  "The squibs are
+there, only waiting for some little complication to come along and
+touch 'em off.  It is getting on my nerves, and I'm wondering where the
+next little disturbance is coming from."
+
+It seemed almost in answer to his thought that, just as he had voiced
+it, Bisgood announced that Lady Agatha Hemyock was in the drawing-room.
+Theirs was a late breakfast; still the call was early.
+
+"That's where it's coming from," Peckover observed with an uneasy grin.
+
+Lady Agatha was sympathetically troubled as she shook hands with them.
+Her preliminary business was to ask them down to the Moat to tea that
+afternoon; but as the men, exchanging significant glances, gladly
+accepted the invitation as affording an asylum from any immediate
+complications connected with the Duke of Salolja, they both felt that
+something more was coming, and of greater moment than a message which a
+note would have adequately conveyed.  They were not long left in doubt.
+
+"I had another object," said Lady Agatha, pursing her lips and looking
+unutterably important, "in paying you this unconventional visit.  One
+has heard from various sources of the advent of Lady Ormstork to this
+neighbourhood.  I have even been informed that the lady in question has
+gone so far as to call upon you, which is the reason why the Colonel
+thought it would be only neighbourly and friendly to give you a word of
+warning."
+
+"Anything wrong," Peckover asked apprehensively.  His nerves had not
+recovered from the previous night's disturbance.
+
+Lady Agatha took a letter from her pocket with business-like
+deliberation.  "Very wrong--or likely to be," she replied as she slowly
+unfolded it, "from what my friend, Lady Bosham tells me.  I happened in
+writing to mention Lady Ormstork's name as having taken a furnished
+house near here, and my friend writes by return imploring me to have
+nothing to do with her.  A most dangerous woman," she added, presumably
+quoting from the closely written letter.
+
+Gage and Peckover caught each other's guilty and apprehensive eyes.
+
+"She has," continued their visitor, confident in the effect she had
+produced, "I believe, a young person--a young lady nowadays she would
+be called--with her.  A Miss Buffkin.  A mysterious Miss Buffkin, given
+out as an heiress."
+
+"Isn't she an heiress?" Peckover inquired rather foolishly.
+
+Lady Agatha shrugged.  "Possibly.  That is a matter known only to Lady
+Ormstork and Miss Buffkin.  But the more vital question is what are
+Lady Ormstork's character and intentions."
+
+It was somewhat a relief to both men to find someone else's intentions
+called in question.
+
+"Lady Bosham says," proceeded their visitor, "and indeed one has heard
+something of the kind vaguely oneself, that Lady Ormstork is notorious
+for getting hold of good-looking girls, often of very doubtful origin,
+and finding husbands for them--for a consideration."
+
+Both men expressed a surprise which they could scarcely be said to feel.
+
+"According to Lady Bosham, she is a determined and most unscrupulous
+woman," continued Lady Agatha, apparently quoting from the report.
+"Once she gets people into her toils they find it no easy matter to
+extricate themselves."
+
+It occurred to her hearers that there were other titled spreaders of
+nets besides the histrionic Lady Ormstork, but they did not say so.
+
+"Of course," said Lady Agatha, with apologetic plausibility, "it is
+perhaps a great liberty which I take in venturing to warn you.  But
+being such close neighbours and friends, and knowing you to be,
+comparatively speaking, strangers to this country and some of its less
+desirable features, we thought it only right to do so."
+
+"Much obliged to you, I'm sure," responded Gage.
+
+"Quite so," added Peckover.
+
+"Of course," Lady Agatha pursued tentatively, "I am unaware how far
+this Lady Ormstork," she spoke the name with withering emphasis, "may
+have forced her intimacy upon you.  Still, it is better to be
+forewarned, even if yours is as yet nothing beyond a formal
+acquaintance."
+
+"Just so," Gage agreed with balking irresponsiveness.
+
+"Lady Bosham is very strong on the undesirability of these people's
+acquaintance," said Lady Agatha rising.  "She, that is, Lady Ormstork,
+is a terrible old woman when once she gets her tentacles fixed on the
+victim she has marked down.  But there, I trust I have said enough to
+sensible men like yourselves to put you on your guard."
+
+"Quite," replied Gage, wondering where, in it all, the Duke of Salolja
+came in.
+
+Lady Agatha took her leave, having made them promise to come early to
+the Moat that afternoon.
+
+The promise was faithfully kept, since it seemed expedient to both men
+to avoid their friends from The Cracknels, at any rate till they saw
+how their Castilian rival was going to be disposed of.
+
+"They are bound to come up this afternoon as usual," Gage observed to
+his friend.
+
+"With that Spanish terror after them, shouldn't wonder," said Peckover.
+"We're best out of the way."
+
+"Ethel and Dagmar will be poor fun after Ulrica," Gage remarked
+gloomily.
+
+"Tell you what it is, my friend," said Peckover.  "The sooner you bring
+yourself to consider Ulrica a thing of the past the better chance
+you'll have of making old bones.  Ethel and Dagmar may not be all our
+fancy painted, but at least they haven't got a blood-thirsty Spanish
+nob hanging about them with traditions and a nasty way of talking
+polite flummery with a revolver playfully pointed at the vital parts of
+your anatomy all the time.  You won't have a ducal freak poking his
+long nose in there."
+
+"Well, we had better go down, have a fling with the second quality
+beauties and then clear out of the place till things cool down," said
+Gage with the air of a man who has made up his mind.
+
+Accordingly, after an early luncheon, they went down to the Moat, and
+flirted so recklessly with the not unduly obdurate young ladies, that
+Lady Agatha was induced to dismiss from her mind a grand plan she had
+been formulating for the recapture of John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, and
+even went so far as to canvass the respective claims of pink and
+apple-green in connexion with the general scheme of colour for a double
+bevy of bridesmaids.
+
+It was late, as late for safety as they could make it, when Gage and
+Peckover returned home, discussing plans for a sudden flight next
+morning.
+
+"Lady Ormstork called?" Gage asked Bisgood carelessly, as he turned
+into the smoking-room for a cigarette before going up to dress.
+
+"Yes, my lord.  And Miss Buffkin."
+
+"You gave her ladyship my message?"
+
+"Yes, m'lord."
+
+"Did she say anything?"
+
+"Her ladyship said she would wait, my lord, as she had something very
+important to tell your lordship."
+
+"Ah," Gage said knowingly.  "Did she wait long?"
+
+"Her ladyship and Miss Buffkin are in the drawing-room, my lord."
+
+The cigarette fell from Gage's parted lips, thrust out by a profane
+charge which exploded behind it.
+
+"In the----" he turned helplessly to Peckover.
+
+"Percival, old man, they're waiting for us," he gasped.
+
+"Anybody else?" Peckover inquired of Bisgood, with a vision of a pair
+of terrific eyes backed by a bald head and set off in front by a long
+nose and a gleaming revolver barrel.
+
+"No one else, sir," Bisgood answered with as much surprise as that
+functionary ever permitted himself.
+
+"Better scoot, eh?" suggested Peckover in a panic-stricken whisper, as
+the butler left them.
+
+"No.  Let's go and hear what the old bird has to say," Gage replied,
+after a few moment's hesitation.  "If any one is equal to tackling that
+Spanish nuisance she's the person.  Let's go and hear how she takes it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Lady Ormstork received them with pleasure tinged with just a shade of
+vexation.  "We were so disappointed at not finding you at home to-day
+of all days," she exclaimed.  "We heard this morning of an absurd
+misunderstanding which we were anxious to set right without delay.  And
+we have been waiting nearly four hours."
+
+"You've had tea?" Gage suggested, somewhat beside the point.
+
+"Oh, yes, thank you," Miss Buffkin assured him.
+
+"We heard casually," pursued Lady Ormstork, "that you had gone to call
+at the Moat, and naturally expected you would be back soon.  But no
+doubt,"--this with a world of spiteful significance--"Lady Agatha
+Hemyock made a point of keeping you there as long as she could.  I know
+her."
+
+"Of course," said Gage gallantly, ignoring the suggestion, "if we had
+known you were waiting we should have been back long ago."
+
+"Not if Lady Agatha knew it," was the tart reply.  "But never mind
+about that hateful woman.  I have waited to see you on a more important
+subject."
+
+She glanced at Miss Buffkin, who rose with an amused face and sauntered
+to the window.  "I'll take a turn among the flowers while you are
+telling the tale, Lady Ormstork," she said casually.  "I'm getting a
+little tired of it."
+
+Both men looked longingly after her as she strolled across the lawn,
+but a consuming anxiety to hear the latest news of the duke curbed the
+desire to invent an excuse for making after her.
+
+"The Duke of Salolja, tiresome person," Lady Ormstork began, "called at
+The Cracknels this morning, and upset us very much by telling us of a
+visit he had the impudence to pay you last evening."
+
+"Yes; we had a pleasant hour of him here," said Gage, grimly
+reminiscent.
+
+"He tells me," proceeded the lady in a tone of righteous anger, "that
+he has, in the most unwarrantable manner, suggested the existence of an
+engagement between himself and dear Ulrica.  Is that so?"
+
+"He suggested that he wasn't going to allow anybody else to be engaged
+to her," Peckover replied.
+
+"Most improper!" commented Lady Ormstork.  "And most unwarranted.  Dear
+Ulrica detests him.  But he is most absurdly persistent."
+
+"Yes, he's a bit of a nailer," Peckover agreed feelingly.
+
+"Was he very rude?" the lady inquired.
+
+"No, he was polite; the most confoundedly polite cuss I ever
+encountered," answered Gage.
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," said Lady Ormstork.  "And so your interview,
+preposterous as it was on his part, was quite amicable?"
+
+For a moment neither man felt equal to answering the question.  Then
+Peckover said, "Quite amicable, only a touch one-sided.  You see, it
+don't exactly pay to be nasty when a fellow's sitting over you with a
+revolver."
+
+Lady Ormstork threw up her hands.  "A revolver?  Ridiculous person!
+Really--I hope you told the foolish man that that sort of thing was
+quite out of date."
+
+"The revolver wasn't though," objected Peckover with a reminiscent
+shiver.  "It looked quite new, with all the latest improvements and in
+first-class working order."
+
+"Really?" cried the lady incredulously.
+
+"As far as we could judge.  Didn't want any closer inspection.  I'm
+content to take a revolver's business capacity for granted."
+
+"But surely," remarked Lady Ormstork with an amused curl of the lip,
+"you don't mean to say that you allowed this droll Salolja to alarm
+you?"
+
+The men glanced at each other with long faces.
+
+"We weren't exactly sorry when he said good-bye," was Gage's evasive
+answer.
+
+"Oh, but this is too absurd," protested the lady.
+
+"The funny side wasn't exactly turned to us last night," said Peckover.
+
+"I have," proceeded Lady Ormstork coolly, "told the duke he is making
+himself ridiculous."
+
+"And how did he take it?" Gage inquired with considerable curiosity.
+
+The lady shrugged.  "It is hopeless to argue with that sort of person.
+And naturally dear Ulrica is, from every point of view, a girl whom
+even a duke would find it difficult to give up hopes of.  But her
+father, a man of great discernment and determination would never hear
+of such an alliance.  A foreign title does not appeal to him.  So, my
+dear Lord Quorn, you need have no fears that Ulrica is in any danger of
+becoming Duchesse de Salolja."
+
+This was pretty direct speaking.  "It would be a pity," Gage agreed
+warily, "if Miss Buffkin should be coerced into a distasteful marriage."
+
+"There is," replied Lady Ormstork resolutely, "no chance of that.  I
+have told the duke so in unmistakable language.  And I also gave him a
+piece of my mind with regard to his uncalled-for interference between
+Ulrica and yourself.  He had the impudence to suggest that you were at
+his bidding ready to break off your understanding with Ulrica and
+relinquish her to him.  To him!  To a man whom she detests, I simply
+laughed at him, as I hoped you had laughed too."
+
+Gage started up.  "You didn't tell him I was engaged to Ul--to Miss
+Buffkin?" he gasped.
+
+"Naturally I did," was the composed answer.
+
+"But--but I'm not," he protested.
+
+Lady Ormstork gave a smile of pitying encouragement.  "My dear Lord
+Quorn, you are not going to allow yourself to be frightened out of your
+engagement by the bluster of that grotesque little Spaniard?"
+
+"But," he urged wildly.  "Spaniard or no Spaniard, I am not engaged."
+
+Lady Ormstork shrugged.  "Anyhow, Ulrica is under the impression she is
+betrothed to you.  I have even gone so far as to inform Mr. Buffkin of
+the engagement, being, as you will understand, responsible to him for
+Ulrica's well-being.  You cannot in honour even pretend to be induced
+by threats to repudiate it.  You have your own reputation as well as
+Ulrica's to consider.  That is why I spoke so straight to the duke this
+morning."
+
+Her tone was resolute and conclusive.  Gage knew not whether to look
+upon it as a well-arranged piece of bluff or as his dying knell.
+
+"It's all very well," he replied wildly.  "I'm very fond of Ulrica and
+all that.  But the traditions of the Salolja family have, from time
+immemorial, pointed to killing their rivals on sight.  There's not much
+use to either of us in my being engaged to Ulrica if I'm to be shot
+next minute."
+
+"Even if you anticipated such a contingency," Lady Ormstork replied
+coolly, "it would not justify you as an English nobleman in jilting
+Ulrica.  It is a point of honour.  You see that, don't you, Mr. Gage?"
+she demanded, suddenly turning to the deeply interested Peckover.
+
+"Just so," he answered with a start.  "Only it's poor fun having your
+wedding and your funeral on the same day."
+
+"I do not," Lady Ormstork declared, "understand such pusillanimity.
+After all," she urged, "you are man to man.  Why should you be more
+afraid of the duke than he of you?"
+
+"I've no homicidal traditions in my family," Gage explained.
+
+"A jealous Spaniard is the very devil," supplemented Peckover, whose
+experience of foreign temperament was derived from penny serials and
+half-crown melodrama.
+
+"Fact is," added Gage, "what I want is a good time, without any fuss or
+bother from Spanish dukes or anybody else.  I'm willing to do the right
+thing, so far as it can be done without friction."
+
+"A somewhat shallow, not to say unromantic, view of life," was Lady
+Ormstork's sarcastic comment.  "I must confess it never struck me that
+the Duc de Salolja carried such terror in his absurd person.
+
+"He carries a revolver on his absurd person," was Peckover's pointed
+rejoinder.
+
+"Ulrica will under no circumstances be allowed to marry him, even if
+she wants to," the lady declared, changing her tone.  "I have announced
+to her father that she is going to be Lady Quorn, and am certainly not
+going to take upon myself the odium of suggesting that Lord Quorn has
+been frightened out of the match by the first ridiculous little
+Spaniard who chooses to flourish in his face his family traditions and
+a--possibly unloaded--revolver."
+
+"We didn't go into that question," Peckover remarked with a reminiscent
+shiver.
+
+"The whole business is too droll," said Lady Ormstork with an amused
+smile.  "But of course we cannot submit to the duke's impudent
+coercion.  It is, however, easily obviated.  I will take the matter in
+hand, since you seem reluctant to do so.  I am responsible for dear
+Ulrica's welfare and happiness.  It is my business to see the sweet
+girl does not fall a prey to a foreign fortune-hunter.  Yes, dear Lord
+Quorn, you may leave the matter with absolute confidence in my hands.
+You may depute me, as Mr. Buffkin has already done, to deal with the
+Duc de Salolja."
+
+Gage did not receive the assurance in the spirit in which it was so
+confidently given.  On the contrary he looked more uncomfortable than
+ever.
+
+"All very well," he said, after an embarrassed pause, "but the more you
+insist on sticking me up the more he'll feel called on to knock me
+down.  Eh, Percival?"
+
+"Right you are," was Peckover's gloomy response.
+
+"I'll take care of that," Lady Ormstork assured him.
+
+"He won't go for you; he'll go for me," urged Gage.
+
+"Not he.  I'll draw him off," said the lady.
+
+"Suppose he won't be drawn off?" suggested Peckover.
+
+"Trust me," replied Lady Ormstork, grandly confident of her powers.
+"Diplomacy counts for much."
+
+"Strikes me it will count revolver shots if we aren't careful," said
+Gage dryly.
+
+Lady Ormstork drew back her mouth in a pitying smile.
+
+"My dear Lord Quorn!  This is unworthy of you," she declared.  "Do
+think of Ulrica.  Have you so little regard for her?  Is not
+she--superb creature!--worth a little daring?"
+
+"Certainly," Gage assented doubtfully.
+
+"All you want to do," continued the lady, following up her successful
+appeal, "is to show a bold front, and the terrible Duke of Salolja will
+run away."
+
+"Think so?" asked Peckover, his secret hopes reviving.
+
+"I am sure of it," said their visitor, rising.  "There, I am certain
+you never meant, dear Lord Quorn, to repudiate in earnest your
+understanding with the dear girl.  Ulrica will be the loveliest and
+most queenly peeress in the kingdom.  And with her immense wealth, the
+alliance is most desirable in every way.  Don't give the wretched,
+preposterous duke another thought.  Do, like a sensible man, dismiss
+him from your mind.  And if he should have the impudence to intrude
+here again show him the door and tell him to go back to his own----"
+
+"Perhaps you'll do that for us, Lady Ormstork," said Peckover, whose
+restless eyes had been kept on the window.  "There he is."
+
+The others looked round with a start.  There sure enough was the Duke
+of Salolja, stalking, with as long strides as his short legs would
+allow, across the lawn, obviously in pursuit of the fair Miss Buffkin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+The sight of yesterday's visitor seemed to paralyse both men, and the
+grim fascination that had held them before now clutched them again.
+Gage, who had, under the influence of Lady Ormstork's bitterly
+persuasive tongue, began to pluck up courage, and to view the
+magnificent Miss Buffkin once more in a proprietary right, now visibly
+wilted.  He even glanced round at the door, as though meditating
+flight.  Peckover whistled uncomfortably and tunelessly through his
+clenched teeth; a more elaborate expression of feeling he did not feel
+equal to.  Then they both glanced somewhat helplessly at Lady Ormstork
+in search of some indication of a plan of campaign.
+
+"Actually intruding here again," the lady exclaimed indignantly, as the
+duke's purposeful strides took him out of sight behind a hedge of
+laurels.  "If I were you, Lord Quorn, I would not hesitate in ordering
+him out of your grounds."
+
+Gage did not look the least inclined to act upon the suggestion.  "Oh,
+let him walk about there, if he likes," he replied with a weak laugh.
+
+"Walk about?" repeated the lady warmly.  "But he's walking after
+Ulrica.  It is not to be tolerated.  I was under the impression that I
+had given him his _conge_.  Lord Quorn--Mr. Gage," she turned fiercely
+upon Peckover, "as Lord Quorn seems content to endure this intolerable
+conduct rather than be man enough to protect his future wife from this
+tiresome person, perhaps you will go and intimate to the duke that his
+presence is undesirable."
+
+Peckover's reception of the order did not suggest alacrity.  "No affair
+of mine," he protested with a resolution born of care for his own skin.
+"Don't believe in interfering in other people's business.  My motto
+is----"
+
+"Motto!" cried Lady Ormstork scornfully.  "Is chivalry quite dead, that
+a lovely girl like dear Ulrica must be persecuted and victimized by an
+under-sized desperado, and two Englishmen stand by tamely and allow it?"
+
+Notwithstanding this somewhat pointed appeal, the two Englishmen seemed
+still disinclined to sally out and try conclusions with the Spanish
+terrorist.  Luckily, however, the argument was diverted by the
+appearance on the lawn of three persons, the duke, Miss Buffkin, and
+Lord Quorn, all with looks of stress on their faces.
+
+"Ah, here they come," said Lady Ormstork with her teeth set ready for
+battle.  "Who, may I ask, is that person with them?" she asked,
+lowering her eye-glasses and turning to the men who were for the moment
+preoccupied in weighing the merits of the respective courses of
+standing their ground or seeking a sanctuary in the wine cellars.
+
+"That?  Oh, that's Jenkins," answered Gage, wondering what he was doing
+in the _galere_.
+
+"Jenkins?" Lady Ormstork echoed the name, as though it did not convey
+very much to her.
+
+"One of my people," Gage explained, in an agony of indecision as to the
+propriety of flight.
+
+By this time the approaching trio had reached the window, inside which
+Lady Ormstork stood grimly waiting for them.  Next instant the duke had
+thrown it open and was with a flourish and a bow inviting Ulrica to
+enter.  A similar though modified pantomime having been gone through in
+the case of Lord Quorn the three at length stood inside the room, with
+the irate Lady Ormstork facing them, and with Gage and Peckover within
+jumping distance of the door.
+
+"Duke," Lady Ormstork's sharp tone rang through the room like a defiant
+bugle-call, "this is most extraordinary, not to say unseemly, conduct
+on your part."
+
+The representative of the Saloljas was, however, far too busy in
+distributing elaborate bows and extravagant greetings all round to be
+in a position to give heed at once to the lady's challenge.  In Spain
+punctilio gives way to nothing, not even to an angry old lady's
+impatience.
+
+Presently when Messrs. Gage and Peckover had been favoured with bows
+and compliments into which they were inclined to read their death
+warrants, the duke raised the top of his coercive head the whole of his
+five feet three inches from the floor and observed blandly--
+
+"Ten million apologies, most noble lady.  I am ashamed to confess I did
+not hear the remark you did me the undeserved honour to make."
+
+In no wise disconcerted, the most noble lady repeated the remark,
+slightly strengthening the language in which it had originally been
+couched.
+
+"Ah--h!"  The duke's grimace and pantomime expressed deprecation with a
+more elaborately hideous vim than that feeling had probably ever been
+clothed with before.  "Most illustrious lady," he protested, "what
+would you have?  The state of my unworthy heart is well known to you.
+And the heart excuses everything--everything."
+
+The repetition of the last word had a sinister sound in the ears of
+Gage and Peckover.  With its dire comprehensiveness it seemed to
+include their lives in its sweeping embrace.
+
+But Lady Ormstork, with sundry material reasons to influence her
+judgment, was far from accepting the proposition.  "It does not," she
+objected stoutly.  "To force your attentions where they are distasteful
+is inexcusable."
+
+"It is," rejoined the duke, with the light of battle in his eyes,
+"clearly my duty to render acceptable the homage of my affection."
+
+"It is quite hopeless," declared Lady Ormstork curtly.
+
+"I believe not," insisted the duke with, under the circumstances, an
+admirable display of assurance.
+
+Lady Ormstork glanced with equal confidence at her _protegee_.  "Miss
+Buffkin will bear me out."
+
+"Yes.  It's no good, duke," said the young lady with discomfiting
+promptness.  "You are not my sort."
+
+The duke accepted the verdict with a shrug, and at once proceeded to
+misread it.  "The Dukes of Salolja," he said with a touch of defiant
+pomposity, "have never permitted inequality of birth to be a bar in
+affairs of the heart."
+
+Lady Ormstork had also her personal rules of life.  And one was never
+to allow herself to be bluffed out of a possible advantage.  "You
+mistake, duke," she said suavely.  "Miss Buffkin wishes delicately to
+suggest that she does not return your affection, and therefore, the
+alliance you propose is out of the question."
+
+"I can," replied the duke, in no way abashed, "afford to wait for the
+return of my affection."
+
+As he glanced significantly round at the three silent men he seemed a
+very monument of determination.
+
+"But," Lady Ormstork maintained, "we do not wish you to wait.  There
+would be no point in your waiting.  Miss Buffkin has made up her mind
+to contract a quite different alliance."
+
+"Ah?"  The duke opened his mouth wide and emitted an exclamation in
+tone and mode of utterance worthy of a surprised hyaena.  Then shutting
+his mouth and opening his eyes whose light the facial contortion had
+absorbed, he added with, to certain of the party at least, disquieting
+significance, "Our Spanish proverb says, 'He who buys ground may rest
+under it before he can repose above it.'  May I, without offence, ask
+the ever gracious Miss Buffkin whether you correctly interpret her
+sentiments and intentions?"
+
+The ever gracious Miss Buffkin looked as defiant as her questioner--and
+much less polite, as she answered, "That's right enough.  I'm going to
+marry an Englishman, for one thing."
+
+"Ah?"  Again the zoological grimace.  "Has the radiant Miss Buffkin
+honoured any particular Englishman with her much-to-be coveted
+preference?"
+
+The question, accompanied as it was, by a sweeping and minatory glance,
+had the immediate effect of making two Englishmen in the room try to
+look severely recusant and anti-matrimonial.
+
+And under the influence of that fell glance Gage took a desperate
+resolve.
+
+Lady Ormstork, who believed in coming to the point where her own
+interests were concerned, answered with bold preciseness, "Certainly.
+Miss Buffkin is going to marry Lord Quorn."
+
+At the declaration the duke made a face which raised his bristling
+moustache till his eyes glared through a fan-like screen of hair, the
+real Lord Quorn uttered an exclamation which conveyed no definite
+sentiment, Gage turned the colour of the fruit associated with his
+name, and Peckover, trying to persuade himself that the discussion did
+not touch him, whistled softly through his teeth.
+
+"Lord Quorn!" repeated the duke in a tone of bland surprise.  "No.
+That may have been.  But I fancy, most illustrious lady, you are
+mistaken.  Milord Quorn has renounced all pretentions to the lady's
+hand."
+
+"Lord Quorn has done nothing of the kind," Lady Ormstork denied stoutly.
+
+The duke turned to Gage, polite yet threatening.  "Doubtless milord
+Quorn will do me the honour to confirm what I have stated."
+
+"Lord Quorn," interrupted the old lady, "will do nothing of the sort."
+
+The duke raised himself on tip-toe and fixed the apprehensive Gage with
+his fiercest glare.  "Milord Quorn will do so--or lay himself open to
+the consequences," he insisted, with a truculent nod of command.
+
+"I--er--of course I--I have no wish to stand in the lady's light," Gage
+stammered weakly.
+
+"Light?" echoed Lady Ormstork in a high-pitched voice.  "I fancy, my
+dear Lord Quorn, we are the best judges of the quarter the light shines
+from."
+
+"It shines," observed the duke with grim imperturbability, "from Spain."
+
+"It shines," retorted the dowager with haughty insistence, "from
+Staplewick Towers."
+
+"I am deeply grieved," said the duke, "to sound a discordant note in
+the symphony of your distinguished plans.  But I declare that the
+adorable Miss Ulrica shall never marry Lord Quorn."
+
+"I say she shall," retorted Lady Ormstork defiantly.
+
+"She shall not--even if a regrettable necessity should dictate that
+there be no Lord Quorn for her to marry."
+
+Thus the duel proceeded; the passes growing hotter and keener every
+moment.  Miss Buffkin had subsided on a sofa and from her attitude
+might have been an uninterested and slightly bored spectator.  And all
+the while the three men who looked on said nothing, wisely, perhaps.
+But their interest in the encounter was not to be judged by their
+silence, as they watched their champion's efforts with mixed feelings.
+They were, all three, in love with the beautiful Miss Buffkin, but each
+was likewise consumed by an intense regard for his own safety.
+
+"It is not," said Lady Ormstork with dignity--and that aristocratic
+matrimonial agent could be very dignified when she chose--"the fashion
+among English gentlemen to indulge in absurd threats when their
+pretensions are rejected.  In this country we took leave of the Dark
+Ages long ago."
+
+"Absurd threats, eh?" the little duke repeated, with a laugh which fell
+chill and jarring on, at any rate, Gage's ear.  "We shall see.  Yes, we
+shall see--those of us"--he glanced fiercely round the room--"who are
+alive next week--how far my threats are vain."
+
+"Ridiculous nonsense!" Lady Ormstork exclaimed with a scornful and
+somewhat stagey laugh.
+
+The duke bowed.  "I have the honour, most illustrious lady, to receive
+your ultimatum, and to accept it.  It is horribly unfortunate that we
+find ourselves diametrically opposed.  But so it is; and I have no more
+to say--to you, except to bid you _au revoir_, with my most
+distinguished compliments."
+
+He bowed very low to her, then to Ulrica, after which with a kind of
+fiendish politeness to each of the three men, taking Gage with marked
+intention last.  "Milord Quorn," he said, drawing back his lips till
+his moustache stood up like two wings against his cheeks, "I regret
+that my friendly hint has not been taken.  You have called the game.  I
+shall have the honour of playing it--as," he raised his voice, "as my
+honoured and distinguished ancestors have always played it."
+
+"Don't talk nonsense, duke," said Lady Ormstork sharply.
+
+The representative of the distinguished and bloodthirsty Saloljas
+raised himself abruptly from a bow he was elaborating, and faced the
+lady.  "A Salolja," he said, with as much dignity as a short stature
+coupled with a long nose is capable of, "never talks nonsense."
+
+"If you presume," she continued threateningly, "to annoy Lord Quorn----"
+
+"A Salolja," he interrupted, with a significant smile, "never annoys."
+
+"Or threaten--' pursued Lady Ormstork.
+
+"A Salolja," he returned, with a Castilian gesture of deprecation,
+"never threatens.  It is only within the last hundred and fifty years
+that he has condescended to warn."
+
+"We can warn too," retorted the lady doggedly.  "Warn the police."
+
+The duke looked quite tickled.  "Most gracious lady," he replied,
+showing his teeth in a grin from which none of his male listeners
+derived any mirth, "you make me smile.  I think the question of your
+police we have already analysed, I and the excellent Lord Quorn.  If
+your graces have no more notable argument to put forth to arrest the
+traditions of the Saloljas I will ask your gracious permission to take
+my leave--for the present."
+
+He accompanied the last three words with a glance which boded battle,
+murder and sudden death to at least one of his hearers.  Then, with a
+sweeping bow, he turned to the door.
+
+"Stop!" cried Gage in a voice resonant with fear.  "You are all making
+a mistake.  I am not Lord Quorn!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+At the startling declaration the duke swung round and eyed Gage with a
+glance that seemed capable of penetrating an inch board.  Lady
+Ormstork, surprised for a moment out of her transcendent
+self-possession, stared aghast at the object of her designs; Ulrica
+looked half astonished and half relieved; Peckover's mien was one of
+abject discomfiture; while Quorn's showed grim expectation.
+
+"Not Lord Quorn?" screamed Lady Ormstork incredulously.
+
+"So?  Not Lord Quorn?" repeated the duke, prepared to resume the
+aggressive.
+
+"No, I'm not," Gage declared stoutly.  "If I ever was, I've had enough
+of it.  But I never was by rights."
+
+"Not Lord Quorn by rights?" gasped Lady Ormstork.
+
+"Never.  At least never no more.  So you'll please to consider me out
+of this little complication."
+
+"This," observed the duke, truculently thoughtful, "is very singular."
+
+"Very," Lady Ormstork agreed.  "One would like to have some explanation
+of such an extraordinary statement."
+
+"We must know how we stand," said the duke, who had assumed the
+attitude of a stunted bravo.
+
+"I tell you," Gage maintained, "I am no more Lord Quorn than you are."
+
+There was a short silence.  Then Lady Ormstork demanded pointedly,
+"Then who, may I ask, is Lord Quorn?"
+
+Gage indicated the unwilling Peckover.  "This is Lord Quorn.  I am
+plain Peter Gage."
+
+Quorn, the real Quorn, laughed scornfully, and seemed to see light.
+
+Miss Buffkin clapped her hands.  "You Lord Quorn?  How lovely!" she
+exclaimed, beaming at Peckover.
+
+"Aha!  So you are Lord Quorn?" cried the duke transferring to that
+person his highly undesirable attention.
+
+"No, I'll be hanged if I am," protested the abnegating Peckover.
+
+"You'll be shot if you are," observed Gage half aloud, with a glance at
+the highly-stoked little Spaniard, who stood pulling his quill-like
+moustaches, and whose unswerving glance confirmed the forecast.
+
+Ulrica had jumped up.  "There, we've settled it already, dear Lady
+Ormstork," she cried.  "Isn't it lucky!"
+
+"Lucky?" echoed Lady Ormstork, rather non-plussed.
+
+"Yes," Ulrica assured her.  "We've settled it between ourselves.  I
+like him.  He's my sort."
+
+From the duke came a deep, rumbling "Oom!" as a grim commentary on the
+reshuffle of the position.
+
+"But I'm not Lord Quorn," Peckover urged vehemently, beginning to be
+seriously alarmed.
+
+"You are!" maintained Gage.
+
+"One of you must be," said the duke, as though merely anxious not to
+make a mistake in the selection of his victim.
+
+"Not me!"  To such a state of poverty was Peckover's vocabulary reduced.
+
+"Oh, Percival!" Ulrica exclaimed reproachfully.  "Don't deny it."
+
+"He can't," declared Gage, under the influence of the baleful Salolja
+eyes and moustaches which dominated the scene.
+
+"May I ask," said Lady Ormstork with dignified severity, "how you came
+to call yourself Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Well," replied Gage frankly, "I thought I'd like to see how it felt to
+be a lord.  And," he added pointedly, "I don't care much for the
+feeling."
+
+"And may I ask," continued the dowager, addressing herself to the
+bothered and daunted Peckover, "how it was you came to renounce your
+title?"
+
+"I made it worth his while," Gage explained shortly, determined to be
+off with the galling honour.
+
+The real Lord Quorn in his corner gave a long whistle of
+semi-enlightenment.
+
+"I never had it," protested the unhappy Peckover.
+
+The duke, bristling, took a step forward.  "Lord Quorn!" he snapped his
+fingers loudly and contemptuously.  "It is no matter.  You are at least
+a suitor of this lady?"
+
+Happily Lady Ormstock saved Peckover from replying to the delicate
+suggestion.  "Not unless he is Lord Quorn," she declared resolutely.
+
+"I tell you," cried Peckover desperately, "I am not Lord Quorn."
+
+"Then you are a fraud," Gage asserted roughly.
+
+"I never said I was Lord Quorn," urged Peckover.
+
+"You never said you weren't," rejoined Gage.
+
+The fiery blood of the Saloljas was beginning to weary of these
+polemics and to be impatient for its cue.  "It is no matter," he said
+with loud, painfully loud, authority.  "I take it"--to Peckover--"that
+you are Lord Quorn, and you have, for reasons inexplicable to a Spanish
+nobleman been pleased to divest yourself temporarily of your rank.  You
+have addressed yourself to this lady--as Lord Quorn or by a humbler
+name, it matters not.  I have the honour to request a few words with
+your excellency in the garden."
+
+His excellency's countenance expressed a strong disinclination to any
+such _al fresco_ conference.  Indeed, so far was he from complying with
+the duke's haughty and peremptory invitation that he sat down on a
+chair which stood handy.  "Not much," he said vernacularly.  "I'm not
+taking any just at present, thanks all the same."  He felt himself
+comparatively safe where he was.  Even a Spanish duke of vindictive and
+homicidal idiosyncrasies could scarcely have the face to murder him
+coolly in a room before four non-accessory witnesses.
+
+Whether the duke realized that the refusal contained a certain
+admixture of defiance is uncertain.  Anyhow, he took two strides with
+his short legs, and, at uncomfortably close quarters, repeated the
+invitation.
+
+But Peckover sat tight.  "I'm not Lord Quorn," he maintained doggedly,
+"and I've had as much fresh air as I want for one day."  His complexion
+was green with fear.  With the searching fire of those eyes upon him he
+felt it was as much as he could do to keep from shrivelling up; still,
+what mind panic had left him was dominated by the assurance that once
+in the garden it would be all over with his somewhat luridly chequered
+career.  The Salolja eyes held him.  He tried to glance round for
+encouragement, for a touch of companionship even, at the others in the
+room who, however, watched the scene in grim and more or less
+embarrassed silence.  But though for a moment his eyes sought them, he
+saw nothing, and next instant they were riveted again on the demon
+duke, now so near that he could feel his fiery breath.  But he kept his
+seat with a drowning man's desperation.
+
+"Will your grace come?" rang out the sharp, staccato tones.  "Or will
+it be necessary for me to drag your excellency out by the nose?"
+
+The alternative was not attractive, and its proposer looked quite
+capable of putting it into execution.
+
+"I tell you I am not Lord Quorn, and never was," yelled the wretched
+Peckover, now simply beside himself.  "If you want him, there he is."
+He pointed to the corner where stood the real peer, looking, however,
+particularly unlike one, and in a high state of doubt as to the line he
+should take.  He compromised with the question by giving, in the first
+instance, a loud, derisive laugh.
+
+"Very pretty, Mr. Gage, or whatever your alias is.  So I'm Lord Quorn,
+am I, when it suits your book?  That's a rich idea.  Ho! ho! ho!"  And
+he laughed again with offensive resonance.
+
+"Who," demanded Lady Ormstork in a tone of disgust, "is this noisy
+person?"
+
+"Lord Quorn," was Peckover's prompt reply.
+
+"What?" cried Gage in bewilderment.
+
+"Milord Quorn, eh?" said the duke, transferring his bristling attention
+to the latest participant in that questionable distinction.
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed Lady Ormstork, obviously judging by appearance,
+which certainly did not go far to suggest a member of the peerage.
+
+Quorn laughed again, less comfortably this time under the observation
+of the duke.  "Of course I'm not," he said, in a tone which lost in the
+utterance its original intention of irony.  "How can I be, except in
+these gentlemen's imagination?"  For he had a shrewd idea, as things
+were going, that, at the moment, the title carried certain unpleasant
+contingent liabilities with it.
+
+The duke pursed his face into a quizzical sneer.  "No, I do not think
+you are milord Quorn, my good fellow," he concluded, taking Lady
+Ormstork's view of the badly groomed object of his scrutiny.
+
+"He is Lord Quorn," Peckover insisted vehemently, "if anybody is."
+
+"Of course," retorted Quorn with withering point, "I am Lord Quorn when
+it is necessary."
+
+The duke, manifestly tiring of the question of identity and resolving
+(possibly Castilian fashion) to settle the point for himself, was about
+to resume his somewhat drastic argument with Peckover when Ulrica
+interrupted the genial intention.
+
+"I believe this person is Lord Quorn," she said, with pointed reference
+to the real man.  "He told me so himself just now in the garden.  He
+said the other was an imposter and advised me to have nothing to do
+with him."
+
+"My dear Ulrica!" cried Lady Ormstork, half doubtingly; then turned to
+Quorn with a face prepared to beam on the shortest notice.
+
+"What did I tell you?" exclaimed Peckover realizing it was a case of
+_sauve qui peut_.
+
+The duke, almost forgetting punctilio in his cumulative exasperation,
+turned again to Quorn, resolved to be at definite issue with somebody,
+while his jealousy was spurred by Lady Ormstork's evident readiness to
+establish as Miss Buffkin's suitor the right Quorn, if only she could
+get hold of him.
+
+"So you are Lord Quorn, my fine fellow," he exclaimed with a mock bow
+(for, as we know, Quorn was shabby).  "You are eager to pay your
+addresses to this adorable lady, and are doubtless prepared to accept
+the consequences?"
+
+Quorn, at a loss for a reply, stared stupidly at his fierce
+interrogator, while Peckover judged himself sufficiently reprieved to
+venture to wink at Gage.
+
+"I don't do anything of the sort," Quorn at length said weakly.
+
+"Oh, Lord Quorn," protested Ulrica mischievously.  "You know you said I
+was to marry the right Lord Quorn, and you were the man."
+
+"So?" cried the duke, with fell conviction that he had at last got his
+man.  "It is well.  You are Lord Quorn.  _Je l'accepte_.  May I request
+the honour of a private word with your illustrious lordship in the
+garden?"
+
+"Not exactly," was that illustrious noble's pithy reply to the
+invitation.
+
+Of the duke's Castilian stock of patience very little was left.  "It is
+necessary," he insisted with a ferocious grin.  "I am not to be denied.
+Your grace shall come--now."
+
+"You will not be so absurd as to go, Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork
+with time-serving sympathy.
+
+Quorn did not look in the least like committing the absurdity.  He set
+his teeth and glared round at the other men in a sort of forlorn hope
+of assistance.  But they, though naturally deeply interested, made no
+sign.  The conditions were, at the moment, too complex for a clear line
+of altruism.
+
+"Your excellency shall come," said the duke through his teeth.  "I am
+the Duke of Salolja, and a Grandee of Spain.  I will not be balked."
+
+But the representative of the British aristocracy still hung back.  "I
+insist," maintained the Spaniard, darting forward and seizing a
+reluctant arm.  The Englishman's counter move was to sit down on a
+chair which stood beside him.  Anticipating the move, the duke pulled
+him sharply away.  The consequence was that Quorn sat down on the
+floor.  Not quite seeing his way to conduct his adversary from that
+posture into the garden, the duke was fain, while seeking a feasible
+plan, to spurn the lowly nobleman with his foot.
+
+"For shame!" cried Lady Ormstork.
+
+"If you kick me I'll hand you over to the police," said Quorn unhappily
+and speaking at a certain disadvantage.
+
+The duke gave a crowing laugh of scorn, a favourite trick of his when
+"the force" was mentioned.  "The police!  Hah! hah!  Where are they,
+your police?"
+
+The question was answered by Bisgood, who at that juncture opened the
+door, and, subduing with difficulty all outward signs of a pardonable
+astonishment, announced--
+
+"Detective-Inspector Doutfire from Great Bunbury wishes to speak to
+your lordship."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Mr. Doutfire came in close upon Bisgood's announcement, and threw a
+severely professional eye round the company.  His manner, in fact,
+suggested, in a measure, that he was raiding a gambling den; but then
+the suspicious habit had become characteristic with him.  And indeed,
+the attitudes of the party might be said to have justified mistrust, or
+at any rate an inquisitorial curiosity on his part.  He bowed to Gage
+with a nicely adjusted balance between the homage due to a peer of the
+Realm and a due regard for the Law whose representative he was and
+which boasted itself no respecter of persons.  It is, perhaps, scarcely
+necessary to state that Peckover viewed his advent with an uneasy eye.
+
+"Beg pardon, my lord," Doutfire said in his consequential, witness-box
+manner, "sorry to intrude upon your lordship, but I considered it my
+duty to inform your lordship that a certain suspicious character has
+been noticed hanging about the grounds here, and I took it upon myself
+to just step up and warn your lordship."
+
+The somewhat tense silence which followed was broken by the duke's
+staccato tones.  "So this is milord Quorn, eh, policeman?"
+
+Mr. Doutfire looked not merely scandalized, but ready at a moment's
+notice to take the representative of the lordly Saloljas into custody.
+
+"Detective-Inspector is my rank and appellation, sir, begging your
+pardon," he said severely.  "With regard to your question, sir, I have
+every reason to believe I am right in stating that this gentleman--I
+should say nobleman--is Lord Quorn."
+
+"So?  Thank you, detective," said the duke with a bow of acknowledgment
+for the information, and a smile for the futility of the police, once
+again preparing to focus his traditional aggressiveness upon the
+unhappy Gage.
+
+But that gentleman did not propose to sit again.  "It's all a mistake,"
+he protested loudly.  "I am not Lord Quorn.  There he is, so far as I
+can make out."
+
+He pointed to the real Quorn, who had retained his seat upon the floor,
+and whom, owing to his position behind the door, Doutfire's eagle
+glance had so far not taken in.  That alert officer now, however, lost
+no time in wheeling round and fixing the lowly peer with a glare of
+more than suspicion.  "This?" he exclaimed incredulously.  "Why, this,"
+he darted his head forward and sideways with the sure air of a master
+of the art of criminal indemnification, "this is the party I have just
+mentioned to your lordship.  A suspicious character who has given us
+the slip as well as a lot of trouble.  A party known to us as Peckover."
+
+"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, turning from the sedentary nobleman with
+a face of contemptuous disgust.  "I said it was impossible he could be
+Lord Quorn."
+
+"I know him as Peckover," Mr. Doutfire maintained with authority.  "A
+party against whom a charge of being in possession of and uttering
+counterfeit coin was lately preferred, but which charge the Treasury
+has now seen fit to withdraw."
+
+"Oh!"  Peckover's face brightened at the news.  "But he is Lord Quorn,"
+he insisted.
+
+Mr. Doutfire, who had been keeping that nobleman under observation with
+a wary and scornful eye, looked as though quite unable to reconcile the
+statement with its object's position on the floor.  "Do I understand
+that he states he is Lord Quorn?" he asked severely, taking out a large
+note book with bodily contortions and ominous play with its broad
+elastic band.
+
+"On the contrary, I've said nothing of the sort," objected Quorn.  "Did
+I?" he added appealing to the company above him.
+
+Mr. Doutfire's look suggested that to his mind that assertion, even if
+correct, did not fully account for the suspect's position on the
+carpet.  "Well, bring yourself up," he commanded roughly.  "And let us
+get at the rights of the question."
+
+Thus bidden, Quorn rose, and faced the officer of the law, defiantly
+reticent.
+
+"You shall find out at once which of these gentlemen is Lord Quorn,"
+ordered the Duke of Salolja, folding his arms.
+
+"By your leave, sir----" began Doutfire in a tone of trenchant reproof.
+
+"Sir?" cried the duke, speaking very fast and staccato.  "My rank and
+appellation are the Duke of Salolja, I am, moreover, a Grandee of
+Spain."
+
+Mr. Doutfire covered the hit by a business-like action of putting the
+point of a stubby lead pencil in his mouth.  "I'll make a note of
+that," he said, to all appearances unmoved by the momentous
+announcement.  And he proceeded to do so, taking a subtle revenge by
+making the haughty Castilian spell his title, and furthermore
+suggesting that his pronounciation of the alphabet was suspiciously
+misleading.
+
+"Your grace," he observed sternly, when the elaborate entry had been
+made and deliberately revised, "may trust me to take the steps, if any,
+necessary to clear up this matter."  He turned from the fuming
+Spaniard, and addressed himself pointedly to the rest of the company.
+"Do I understand," he asked approaching the extraordinary complication
+with an absence of emotion which suggested that the tackling of such
+questions was with him an every-day occurrence, "do I understand that
+there is some doubt as to the identity of Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Precisely," replied the duke.
+
+Mr. Doutfire by an authoritative wave of his notebook enjoined the
+Castilian despot to silence.  "I ask you, sir," he said, pointedly to
+Gage, "whether you are or are not Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Not I," was the prompt and comparatively cheerful answer.
+
+Mr. Doutfire accepted it with a suggestion of reserving all comment on
+the surprising statement till a later stage.  "Perhaps, then, you will
+be good enough to tell me who is," he said.
+
+Gage pointed with his thumb to Peckover.  "If it's not this gentleman,
+I don't know who it is," he replied indifferently.
+
+"Nothing of the nobility about me," Peckover declared in answer to
+Doutfire's interrogative glance.  "I tell you that is the individual,
+over there," indicating Quorn, who was now sufficiently recovered from
+the ducal onslaught to laugh jeeringly.
+
+"I like that!" he exclaimed.  "Making me Lord Quorn when it comes
+useful."
+
+"You are Peckover?" demanded Mr. Doutfire confidently.
+
+"If you say so," was the reply.
+
+"I do say so," said Doutfire, whose reputation clearly hinged on the
+correctness of the statement.
+
+"I knew he was not Lord Quorn," put in Lady Ormstork.
+
+"He told me he was," observed Miss Buffkin.
+
+Mr. Doutfire turned a threateningly suspicious glance on the stolid
+Quorn, then pursed his mouth with a pitying smile of non-acceptance as
+he shook his head emphatically at the young lady.  "He's Peckover all
+right, miss," he assured her.  Then glared at Quorn as though
+challenging him to deny it.
+
+And Quorn, although not overburdened with intellect, had sense enough
+to recognize that his game just then was to lie low and admit nothing
+if he could help it.
+
+"My dear Ulrica," said Lady Ormstork in her superior fashion, "how
+could you allow yourself to be taken in by such a transparent pretence?
+Does the person look in the least like Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Or any other nobleman?" supplemented Doutfire, with menacing sarcasm.
+"Of course," he added, in a more uncompromisingly professional tone,
+"if he has been defrauding any of you ladies and gentlemen, under the
+false pretence that he is Lord Quorn, I'll take him now to Bunbury
+against your preferring a charge against him."
+
+His enquiring look round meeting with no response, save a scornful
+smile from Quorn, Doutfire proceeded, eyeing the suspect malevolently,
+"I don't know how he comes to be here, in this house, but----"
+
+"He stopped my horse that was running away with me," Gage explained
+chivalrously.
+
+"Oh!"  Mr. Doutfire's face hardened, as though that in itself were a
+questionable circumstance, and made the doubtful record worse.  "Well,
+of course," he continued, not seeing his way to any active measures
+under the reprobative circumstances, "if you are satisfied, it is no
+business of mine.  I've merely done my duty."
+
+The Duke of Salolja who had endured this discussion with ill concealed
+impatience, now spoke again.
+
+"Then it is one of these gentlemen who is really Lord Quorn, eh,
+constable?"
+
+"Detective-Inspector, if your grace has no objection," was the
+withering correction.  After giving the same time to take effect, he
+addressed himself to deal with the question.  "As to which of these
+gentlemen is his lordship, I do not, in the absence of any stated
+charge or legal reason feel myself called upon to decide.  Speaking
+unofficially and without prejudice, I should, if interrogated, incline
+to the opinion that this gentleman," he indicated Gage with a passing
+and casual wave of his pocket-book on the way to its resting-place in
+his coat-tail, "would answer to the description.  But I have no _locus
+standi_ in the dispute, and therefore merely express an opinion, as a
+matter of courtesy, that if the question of identity should be gone
+into, the gentleman by the palm-stand may possibly be found to be Lord
+Quorn."  After which impressive and useful dictum he bid the party
+"Good evening," and took a somewhat abrupt departure, fearful, perhaps,
+of being led into giving an opinion which might at some future time be
+inconveniently used against him.
+
+As the door closed on him Lady Ormstork said, in a tone of repressed
+and compromising exasperation, "This is altogether a most
+extraordinary, unheard-of proceeding.  Perhaps by to-morrow more
+sensible counsels will have prevailed, and we shall know who is and who
+is not Lord Quorn.  But," she added significantly, "I do not overlook
+the fact that each one of you gentlemen, and consequently whichever of
+you bears the title, has proposed an alliance between himself and Miss
+Buffkin.  Is that not so, Ulrica, dear?"
+
+"Yes; they've all said as much," replied that young lady casually.
+
+"So?"  The Salolja growl reverberated through the room like the first
+muttering of thunder.
+
+"And," concluded Lady Ormstork, ignoring the minatory rumble, "Miss
+Buffkin will marry whichever of you turns out, when this absurd mystery
+is solved, to be Lord Quorn."
+
+"Will she?" observed the duke from the depths of his thickset throat.
+
+"Undoubtedly," was the determined and conclusive reply.  "Come, dear.
+We must be getting home."
+
+"I shall," said the duke, suddenly galvanizing himself into his native
+politeness, "do myself the distinguished honour of constituting myself
+your graces' escort.  Have I the much prized permission?"
+
+"We will give you a lift--without prejudice," replied Lady Ormstork,
+with the laudable object of drawing him off from further exercise of
+his powers of intimidation upon whichever might be the prospective
+bridegroom.
+
+The duke bowed himself into a right angle.  "Your illustrious kindness
+transcends my poor deserts.  I am overwhelmed by this distinguished
+mark of your favour."  He straightened himself, pivoted on his heels
+till he faced the three men, and bowed to them, this time stopping at
+an angle of 45 deg.  "Your excellencies, I shall further do myself the
+supreme honour of returning to pursue my enquiry as to which of you I
+may have the inestimable privilege of addressing without fear of
+contradiction as milord Quorn."
+
+He pivoted again till he faced the door, took a phenomenally long
+stride to it, recovered himself, flung it open, and with a ceremonial
+which had quite a mediaeval flavour about it, and, indeed, had been
+probably handed down from one generation of the amiable house of
+Salolja to another, conducted the ladies to the hall, leaving the three
+men inert with gloomy anticipations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+So paralysed were they that it was not till the crunching of the
+carriage wheels on the gravel roused them from their lugubrious stupor
+that they found tongue to discuss their situation.
+
+"Nice let-in for my money and trouble," said Gage writhing in the
+Nessus shirt of that fatal peerage.
+
+"At any rate you can't blame me for this pleasing little episode,"
+returned Peckover dispiritedly.
+
+"I like your swearing you are not the rightful Quorn," said Gage
+huffily.
+
+"I'm not, whoever else may be," maintained his late confederate with a
+glance at the real man, who met it by an irresponsive glare.
+
+"I only took it for as long as I fancied," urged Gage.
+
+"A bargain's a bargain," observed Peckover.  "You can't take on a title
+and give it up as though it were a furnished house."
+
+"Can't I?" his friend rejoined vehemently.  "Anyhow, I mean to.  I've
+had too much of it.  I didn't suppose it included Spanish bullies and
+Australian bush-rangers."
+
+"You can do as you like about giving it up," retorted Peckover.  "Only
+it don't come back to me I promise you.  I didn't sell it on appro."
+
+Quorn, who had been ruminating on the events just past in glowering
+silence, looked up quickly.
+
+"Sell?" he demanded suspiciously.  "What do you mean by sell?"
+
+"Mind your own business," returned Gage snappishly.  "That's the worst
+of men like you.  You do a fellow a service and then there's no end to
+the advantage you take of it.  Thrusting yourself in and talking absurd
+rot to the girl.  If you don't keep in your place I shall have to put
+you there."
+
+"That's what I'm going to trouble you to do before you're much older,"
+retorted Quorn darkly.
+
+Gage looked puzzled.  "What was your reason," he demanded, turning to
+Peckover, "for sticking out that he was Lord Quorn?  Were you pulling
+that infernal little fire-brand's short leg, or did you mean it?"
+
+Peckover considered a moment, then replied with a nod at Quorn, "You'd
+better ask him."
+
+Gage did accordingly ask him.
+
+"Mind your own business," was the unsatisfactory answer.  "If you are
+Lord Quorn nobody else can be.  But it would be interesting to know how
+you came into the title."
+
+"What the deuce does it matter," Peckover protested.  "That conundrum
+will keep.  That little devil will be back here directly.  What we've
+got to talk about is how we are going to tackle him."
+
+The suggestion was so profoundly to the point that a depressing silence
+fell on the trio.  They all three jumped when Bisgood came in softly to
+announce that dinner had been ready half-an-hour.
+
+"Dinner?" cried Gage.  "No dinner for me.  I'm off."
+
+"Don't be silly," Peckover remonstrated.  "We'll have our dinner first.
+A bottle of champagne is the stuff to bring us into condition.  Come
+on, Jenkins, old man.  You're dining with us to-night."
+
+An exacting afternoon had left the trio in a state so low that
+sustenance was imperative, wherefore they went gloomily in to dinner.
+The meal was taken hurriedly, and, with regard to the wine, copiously.
+So by degrees they began to feel in a less abject state of panic.
+
+"Why did we let that fool of a detective talk himself off the
+premises?" said Peckover regretfully.  "Anyhow, we had better have the
+local man up here in case that nuisance of a duke tries his 'Come into
+the garden, Maud,' again with us."
+
+"What good will that chaw in uniform be against that little devil?"
+objected Gage drearily.
+
+"He's somebody," urged Peckover.  "And he's got the law behind him."
+
+"And the traditions of the Saloljas in front of him," rejoined Gage.
+
+Nevertheless, to strengthen the garrison, the local constable was sent
+for, and the three resumed their repast with a slightly enhanced
+appetite.  They had arrived at the sweets stage, and Peckover was
+wondering whether it was the last apple-tart he was destined to taste,
+when a clangorous peal at the bell followed by a thundering knock at
+the door sent the diners' hearts into their mouths.
+
+"If--if that is the Duke of Salolja," said Gage, sick with fear, to
+Bisgood, "show him into the library.  Don't let him--that is, his
+grace, come in here."
+
+"Very good, my lord," responded Bisgood, whose imperturbability--and
+immunity--he would have given a fortune to possess.
+
+None of the three men could sit quiet.  Gage, after a restless turn
+round the table, went to the door and listened.  As he did so a shade
+of relief came over his face.  "That's not the little brute's voice,"
+he declared hopefully.
+
+"Isn't it?  He has got so many," Peckover said dubiously.  They
+scuttled back to their places as the men returned.
+
+"Mr. Carnaby Leo, my lord," Bisgood announced in a tone which suggested
+a month's notice on his part.
+
+"Has he gone?"
+
+"No, my lord.  He said he must see your lordship, so I showed him into
+the library."
+
+"Miss Leo is not with him?" Quorn asked anxiously.
+
+"No, sir," answered the footman, the great Bisgood declining to notice
+the question.
+
+"Better turn the key on him," suggested Peckover.
+
+This unheard-of order Bisgood took upon himself to ignore likewise.  In
+the abnormal state of affairs the strain on his dignity was nearly at
+breaking point.
+
+A footman who looked like going to put the suggestion into practice was
+loftily, but _sotto voce_, rebuked by his superior, and abandoned his
+intention.
+
+"I'll go and do it, by Jove," exclaimed Quorn, jumping up and leaving
+the room, at which action the scandalized Bisgood made no effort to
+hide his disgust.
+
+Quorn returned.  "Got him safe," he said.
+
+"Is the library safe, though?" Peckover suggested shrewdly.
+
+"As if," remarked Gage bitterly, "we hadn't got our hands full without
+that great nuisance turning up to complicate matters.  Let's get on
+with the wine while we've got any taste left in us," he added, filling
+his own glass and sending round the decanters.
+
+As Bisgood and his satellites withdrew, eager to find vent for their
+disgust in the servants'-hall, Peckover jumped up.  "An idea!" he
+cried, brightening.  "What do you say having this beast, Leo, in, and
+passing him off to the duke as Lord Quorn?"
+
+"Not a bad idea," responded Gage, thinking it out.
+
+"Dashed good one," Peckover insisted.
+
+"How can you pass him off," objected Quorn.  "He'll say he is not
+Quorn."
+
+"We've all said that," rejoined Peckover shrewdly.  "All the same, one
+of us is that noble lord.  We'll tell the duke that he is incog. for
+certain private reasons, and let 'em fight it out between themselves."
+
+"If any one can tackle that little spit-fire it's Carnaby," said Gage.
+
+"And if any one can hustle Carnaby it's the duke," added Quorn.
+
+"Whichever way it goes we shall be gainers," observed Gage.  "But how
+about Ulrica?"
+
+"Oh, we'll work her into it all right," Peckover replied confidently.
+"Let's have the ruffian in and give him some pop."
+
+"Hark!" cried Quorn, holding up his hand.  As Gage opened the door
+there came across the hall from the library sounds suggestive of a
+domestic tornado.  Their obvious message was that Mr. Carnaby Leo had
+discovered, and was resenting, the fact that he was more or less in
+durance, and was communicating his state of feelings through the medium
+of double-soled boots to the furniture in general and to the mahogany
+door in particular.
+
+"Let's buck up, and release the brute before he wrecks the place," said
+Peckover; "or he'll have no kick left in him for that Spanish beauty."
+
+He walked boldly to the door, and threw it open.  "Anything wrong?" he
+inquired, with what was, under the circumstances, an irritating
+blandness.
+
+"Anything wrong?" roared Mr. Leo, lashing out backwards and kicking a
+chair, quite futilely, to a remote corner of the room.  "No.  But
+there's going to be.  Lock me up, will you, you pair of skunks?"  For
+Quorn had withdrawn to a somewhat obscure position.  "I'll teach
+you----!"
+
+"The lock's out of order," Peckover explained with admirable
+plausibility.  "Slips forward when the door's banged.  See?  We were
+just coming to ask you to join us over a bottle of champagne."
+
+The proposal had an immediately mollifying effect on the rampageous
+visitor.  "Lead the way, then," he responded thirstily.  "I've got a
+word or two to say to you from my sister Lalage, and I can talk better
+when the hinges of my voice-box are oiled."
+
+They returned to the dining-room, and Mr. Leo began to pay an
+unremitting attention to the lubricant which, according to his
+statement, should have conduced to unusual eloquence.  Anyhow, he
+spoke, when at last he found time, if not rhetorically, at least to the
+point.
+
+"What I've come to say to you scallywags," he began politely, in a tone
+which made his hearers look round to be sure the doors were fast shut,
+"is that we, me and my sister, splendid girl, have just about had
+enough of this shilly-shally nonsense.  We want Lord Quorn, dead or
+alive, and, what's more, we mean to have him."
+
+He banged his great fist down on the table and glanced at the three
+men.  Gage and Peckover looked politely tolerant, while Quorn regarded
+his bugbear now for the first time at close quarters, with an attention
+bordering on fright.
+
+"As," proceeded the gentle Carnaby, "I have said before, and say now
+for the last time you'll have ears to hear it, I and my beloved sister
+have not come ten thousand miles to be made fools of."
+
+Gage and Peckover made sympathetic responses, and Quorn exhibited signs
+of marked uneasiness.
+
+"The man," their amiable guest resumed, "who tries to make a fool of us
+is a goner."  He caught up a large apple from a dish.  "I take the
+skunk in hand like this.  See?"  He twisted the fruit in halves which
+he casually threw over his shoulders.  They reached the sideboard,
+where one accounted for a tray of liqueur-glasses, while the other took
+effect upon the globe and chimney of a tall lamp.
+
+"See?" he repeated, with a certain pride in the rather extravagant
+object lesson.  "See?"  He turned suddenly upon the much-impressed
+Quorn and thundered the somewhat superfluous question at him.
+
+"Ye-es, I see," he answered, jumping half out of his chair and trying
+to look amused.
+
+"Then why the blazes don't you say so?" Carnaby demanded, ignoring the
+fact that the comment he looked for was clearly unnecessary.  "Who is
+this silly mug?" he added, with evidence of a natural antipathy to
+persons who received his feats in presumably unappreciative silence.
+
+"Jenkins," answered Quorn hastily, rattling his wits together.
+
+"Jenkins?" echoed Carnaby in loud scorn.  "He looks it.  Well, now, see
+here, Jenkins Esquire, my beauty.  Just fancy yourself for the moment,
+if Jenkins is equal to the strain, fancy yourself Lord Quorn.  He's a
+skunk, so perhaps it'll come easy to you, Jenkins."
+
+Quorn could but smile uneasily at the pleasantry.
+
+"Now, I should say to you," proceeded his urbane neighbour, making the
+most of a happy stroke of innuent personification, "Look here, Quorn,
+my dasher, the man, lord or lout, or both, who makes love to my sister,
+my lovely Lalage, and engages her affections has got to marry her.
+See?"
+
+The uncomfortable personator of himself signified promptly his entire
+comprehension.
+
+"If you jib," continued the Antipodean Chesterfield, "if you kick, if
+you try to slip out,--well--you've got to settle with the strongest man
+for his weight in the continent of Australia; a man, mark you, whose
+trade is fighting, against odds for preference, and who means business.
+See?"
+
+The fascinated Quorn signed his complete grasp of the speaker's meaning.
+
+"A man, I repeat," Carnaby went on, after seeking fresh ideas in a
+further libation, "who sticks at nothing where his honour and the
+honour of his family are concerned.  Law?  What's the law to me?
+Nothing.  They know that out there.  The law where I came from gives me
+a wide berth.  It knows me.  When a slink calls himself a nobleman,
+he's got to act as a nobleman, or I'll make him act as a swab and scrub
+the place down with him.  See?"
+
+He glared round at his three auditors who were listening to his
+edifying account of himself and his proposals with rapt attention.
+
+"I've not seen the man I'm after, unless I see him before me now," Mr.
+Leo proceeded, waxing truculent.  "But I presume he has a nose."  This
+supposition remaining unchallenged, he took up a banana, and proceeded,
+"There it is."  He wrenched off the end of the fruit and tossed it in
+the air whence it came down plump into Quorn's forgotten glass of wine.
+Ignoring the episode, the pretty fellow continued, "He has, or as a
+nobleman, should have, two eyes."
+
+No one had a word to say against the computation.
+
+"Here goes," said Carnaby, accompanying the words by a graphic
+illustration (using the remaining portion of the banana for the
+purpose) of the latest and most approved method of removing the human
+eye without having recourse to a surgical operation.  Then, the
+experiment having been brought to an eminently impressive conclusion,
+the performer playfully took aim with the residue at a portrait of
+Everard, ninth Baron Quorn, and was successful in hitting that nobleman
+in the middle of his somewhat vacuous face, and rendering the likeness,
+if any, for the time unrecognizable.
+
+Emboldened by the effect produced not only on the face of the family
+portrait but on those of his living hearers, Mr. Leo became even more
+ruthlessly virulent.
+
+"Lord Quorn!" he cried in thick accents of withering scorn, "If Lord
+Quorn or any other man, noble or otherwise, plays fast and loose with
+my glorious sister, I'll just take him and twist his head off his
+shoulders.  Won't I?"
+
+He glared round as though some one had had the temerity to contradict
+him, which, however, was not the case.  His question meeting with no
+material response, he next, in pursuance of his pomological method of
+illustration, snatched up a pineapple.  "Twist his head off his
+shoulders," he repeated somewhat unnecessarily, "like this."  With a
+frantic effort he tugged and twisted the cactus-like plume till it came
+away from the fruit.
+
+"That's the style," he roared exultingly, "I'll treat any man who gets
+in my light or annoys my sister.  See?  I'll scatter his carcass to the
+four winds of heaven.  See?"
+
+Suiting the action more or less to the words he flung the fragments
+viciously into various corners of the room, where they did more or less
+damage, coming in their flight unpleasantly near his interested
+audience.  Then turning round with a ferocious action, he heaved the
+body of the pine in another direction.  This happened to be towards the
+door, which had just opened to admit an addition to the cheerful party.
+Next instant a cry of rage made it apparent that the heavy fruit had
+struck in the middle of his waistcoat no less a personage than his
+Grace the Duke of Salolja.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+The hit was greeted by an offensive laugh of exultation by the thrower,
+with a gasp of subdued rage by the receiver of the spinous missile, and
+by the rest of the company with various indications of apprehensive
+curiosity.
+
+"Now," murmured Peckover through his teeth, "we're going to see
+something."
+
+An Englishman, under the same circumstances, would probably have picked
+up the weighty fruit and returned the shot.  Not so the little
+Castilian, whose dignity was in no direct ratio to his inches.  Quickly
+recovering from the discomposing impact, and forcing his sinister
+features as far into a smile as his mental attitude would allow, he
+bowed ceremoniously, although the full effect of the salutation was
+somewhat marred by the fact that, following close on the shot, it had
+rather the appearance of a doubling-up caused by physical derangement.
+However, he presently straightened himself and regarded the party with
+comparative, if delusive, serenity.
+
+"Your excellencies are pleased to be merry to-night," he observed, in a
+tone which seemed to promise a speedy end to the merriment.
+
+The duke now addressed himself to Mr. Leo.  "Your grace is an admirable
+shot," he observed pleasantly.  "If, that is, my poor person was chosen
+as the mark for your grace's aim."  Then suddenly changing his manner
+from the courteous to the terrific, till he became five feet three of
+incarnate bristling, scintillating ferocity, he added, "I too, as I
+shall hope soon to convince your grace, am a tolerable shot, although
+not with articles of dessert."
+
+The pug-dogged look of aggressive impudence faded from Carnaby's face,
+giving way to an expression of foolish discomfiture.  Nevertheless he
+replied, with a not too convincing nod of assurance.  "All right, my
+prime bantam, I'll show you something."
+
+But for the moment all he showed his challenger was his back as he
+turned and walked to the other end of the table, where he grabbed up a
+fistful of cigars.
+
+"Who," asked the duke, suddenly polite again, "may I inquire, is this
+distinguished gentleman?"
+
+For reasons best known to himself the distinguished gentleman seemed
+inclined to let the question of his identity remain in suspense rather
+than hold further communication with the questioner.  Apparently he was
+too deeply engrossed in lighting one of his raided cigars to notice the
+query.
+
+But here the ever-alert Peckover saw and seized his opportunity.  With
+a pantomime of mystery he called the duke aside.
+
+"That's him; Lord Quorn.  The real man and no mistake," he said rapidly
+under his breath, "Calls himself Leo, for private reasons, you
+understand.  Threatens to kill us if we give him away."
+
+"Oho!  So?"  The duke turned an ominously interested eye on the latest
+idea of the interloping nobleman, his mind, meanwhile, rapidly running
+over the probabilities of the case.  Mr. Leo, having recovered from his
+late upset by the aid of a bumper of old port wine, was now lounging
+against the mantel-piece with that easy air of proprietorship which
+stature and muscle coupled with low brain power are apt to give.  He
+might, indeed, have fitted in very well just then with a foreigner's
+idea of a bucolic English milord, and as such his appearance commended
+him to the ferocious Spaniard's purpose.  The Duke glanced searchingly
+at his informant, however, as though determined to make certain before
+turning his polite attentions to the new candidate for a thrill.
+
+"Why did your excellencies one after another call yourselves milord
+Quorn?" he demanded pertinently.
+
+"We had to.  He made us," was the ready answer.  "Says he'll twist the
+neck of any man who calls him Lord Quorn."
+
+The duke received the information with a grim elevation of his thick
+eyebrows.  "So?  We shall see.  But Miss Buffkin?" he asked sharply.
+"There is nothing between them?"
+
+Peckover made a grimace which might be understood to signify amusement
+at the suggestion.  "Isn't there?" he replied, "when she is brought up
+here every day to see him.  That's why he's keeping himself dark," he
+added slyly.  "There's another lady in the question; see?  And he's all
+for Buffkin."
+
+A roar came from the fireplace.  "What are you mumping about there, you
+little rats?  Speak up, and let's hear all about it before I shake it
+out of you.  I've got my say to finish when you've done croaking."
+
+The muttered conference therefore ceased.  Peckover resumed his seat,
+and the duke turned and regarded Carnaby with an attention which was
+doubtless somewhat irritating to that sensitive gentleman.
+
+"What are you staring at, smallbones?" he demanded fiercely as though
+lashing himself into a fury to counteract the effect of the Salolja
+eye.  "When fools stare at me I scoop their eyes out to teach 'em
+better manners."
+
+The duke accepted the interesting statement with a bow.  "Yes?" he
+responded appreciatively.
+
+"Yes, I do," maintained Mr. Leo savagely.  "I'm a man, as I've been
+telling these scallywags, who stands no nonsense."
+
+Again the duke bowed.  "I applaud your grace," he said.
+
+A horrible suspicion that he was being laughed at seemed to take hold
+of the doughty Mr. Leo.  "You applaud my grace, do you?" he cried,
+forcing his voice into a sneering squeak.  "Who asked for your
+halfpenny opinion?  You keep your sauce to stew that over-grown nose in
+when I've pulled it off."
+
+For an instant, at the dire insult, there was a flash of murder in the
+duke's eyes.  Then, with an air of storing up what he had received for
+cumulative repayment he inquired softly, with his eternal bow, "I have
+the distinguished honour of addressing milord Quorn?"
+
+"You're an undersized liar," was the somewhat pointed reply.
+
+"I think not," rejoined the duke confidently, "although it will be my
+duty to remember that your grace has called me one.  Lord Quorn----"
+
+"My name's Leo!" came with a roar.
+
+"I believe not," insisted the duke.
+
+"Lord Quorn!  I'd like to catch him!" cried Carnaby.
+
+The duke smiled indulgently, yet with a homicidal preoccupation.  "I
+believe," he said coolly, "I have had the good fortune to catch him."
+
+"Where is the skunk?" demanded Mr. Leo, with a noticeable falling off
+in the volume of his tone.  It was clear that his opponent's
+steadfastness was beginning to tell.
+
+"May I ask," observed the duke, "as a favour, that your grace will not
+make so much noise, but will accord your most humble servant the
+supreme privilege of saying a few words to you?"  His voice had begun
+to come out in bursts, in the fashion which had created such a
+disagreeable effect on Gage and Peckover at the first interview.
+
+Mr. Leo, inclined to wilt, made yet a gallant effort to pull himself
+together.  "If you want to jaw," he replied with scarcely equal
+courtesy, "go into the next room and jaw your jaw off.  You won't spoil
+your beauty, for plain reasons.  I'm getting sick of you.  You spoil
+the flavour of this cigar."
+
+"I intend to," was the hardly expected retort.  "Although it is a pity,
+as it is possibly the last your grace will ever smoke."
+
+The dark eyes were now fixed on his grace with all their scorching
+ferocity.  Mr. Leo looked as though the cigar or something else had
+indeed disagreed with him.  The three spectators of the duel wanted
+only the sense of complete personal immunity to enjoy it hugely.
+
+"I have not the honour of knowing," proceeded the little Spaniard,
+holding the big bully in his best rattlesnake fashion, "whether your
+grace is aware that I am the Duke of Salolja, and a Grandee of Spain,
+the present and, alas, unworthy representative of the noble house of
+Salolja, a family which has preserved its traditions and its honour
+intact from time immemorial."
+
+The effect of the announcement on Mr. Carnaby Leo was not quite
+apparent, except that he seemed in two minds whether to crunch up his
+diminutive opponent or to give way to abject terror.  "What's all that
+to me?" he returned, in a voice that seemed to be getting rather out of
+control.
+
+The duke shrugged.  "It is customary," he explained, "in my country,
+that in affairs of honour strict punctilio should be maintained.
+Further, I wish to do myself the honour of informing your grace that my
+family, the Saloljas, have never permitted an injury or an insult to
+pass unavenged."
+
+"Same with me," responded Mr. Leo, addressing himself, however,
+possibly for convenience' sake, to the men at the table.
+
+"It is," pursued the duke, intensifying his steady glare, "a matter of
+felicitation that our sentiments agree upon the point.  But enough.  I
+come, as you British say, to business.  I have the honour to be the
+aggrieved party.  Your grace is probably aware that I purpose to ally
+myself matrimonially with Miss Ulrica Buffkin?"
+
+The apparent irrelevance of the observation prompted Mr. Leo to pluck
+up a little courage.  "No," he answered with a touch of his old manner,
+"I don't know, and I don't care."
+
+"So?"  The little man steadied his rage by tugging at his portentous
+moustache.  "Your grace refuses then to recognize my pretensions?" he
+demanded menacingly.
+
+Mr. Leo gave a stupid laugh.  "You don't," he retorted with clumsy
+humour, "expect me to take off my hat to them, do you?"
+
+The duke accepted the defiance with a bow.  "Perhaps not," he returned
+viciously.  "So we will leave that affair for the present.  It may be
+we shall never arrive so far together.  There are, happily, other
+matters which have the precedence."
+
+"What are you mumbling about?" Mr. Leo inquired with characteristic
+politeness.
+
+"As I entered the room," continued the duke, ignoring the interruption,
+"I was struck on the--breast by a pine-apple thrown by your grace.  Is
+it not so?"
+
+Mr. Leo forced a laugh.  "Didn't see you coming," he explained weakly.
+
+The duke drew back a pace with every indication of astonishment.  "Is
+it possible then," he demanded severely, "that your grace asks me to
+believe that you scatter fruit about your room for amusement?"
+
+"Sometimes," Carnaby replied uncomfortably.
+
+His tormentor waved aside the answer as frivolous.
+
+"Subsequently to that blow which only blood can efface," he resumed
+impressively, laying his hand on the spot where the shot took effect,
+"your grace was pleased to distinguish my poor self by certain
+opprobrious remarks and designations, in the hearing of these
+honourable gentlemen.  Your grace permitted yourself to allude
+disrespectfully to my stature.  Your grace will understand that the
+character and deeds of the Saloljas are not measured by inches," he
+added proudly.
+
+"Glad to hear it," Mr. Leo growled rashly.
+
+"Your grace was further led," proceeded the duke, raising his voice
+ominously, "to speak in unbecoming terms of my opinion and of my nose.
+It is a matter of regret that my judgment and my features do not meet
+with your grace's approval, but it is the judgment and it is the nose
+with which Heaven has been pleased to endow my poor self, and up to the
+present the noble house of Salolja has had no serious cause of
+complaint against Heaven in respect to its gifts."
+
+Mr. Leo tried to give sign of amusement, but the laugh stuck somewhere,
+and did not reach the surface.
+
+"Your grace," the little demon went on, "also took upon yourself to
+cast an aspersion on my veracity.  A Salolja," he continued with
+pompous dignity, "does not lie.  No Salolja has cause to lie.  Pride is
+truth.  Lying is for slaves and shopkeepers.  Now when a man insults me
+it is something to pay for, when in my person he insults the most noble
+family of Salolja it is everything.  He shall pay with the last drop of
+his blood."
+
+The somewhat one-sided conversation was evidently making for a climax.
+The interest of the three men had become breathless.  Mr. Leo,
+literally and metaphorically with his back to the wall, realized that
+his reputation was about to be put to the touch; also that he was, all
+things considered, in a somewhat parlous situation.  His dull brain
+became obsessed by a lively regret that he had addressed his diminutive
+adversary in terms which were conspicuous by their disregard for the
+noble duke's personal dignity.  Still something had now to be done.  He
+must assert himself and at once.  The instinct of the coward and the
+bully wrestled sharply within him.  But the promptings of fear were not
+to be followed, since retreat dignified or otherwise, was out of the
+question The tricks of his old trade were the only resource left him,
+and so he was forced blindly to fall back on them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+With a prodigious effort Mr. Leo pulled himself together.  "We've had
+enough of your lip," he declared in a loud voice.  "I don't jaw, I
+fight.  Look here."  He caught up the fire-irons one after another and
+went through the rather too familiar business of twisting and snapping
+them.  The duke watched the performance with folded arms and a
+sarcastic smile.  Mr. Leo, lashing himself into as much of a fine fury
+as he could attain, and losing his head in the process, took a silver
+goblet from a niche in the overmantel and with a mighty play of muscle
+squeezed it out of shape, not altogether to the silent Lord Quorn's
+satisfaction.  "That's the way I talk," he cried, with gathering
+confidence, as he tossed the shapeless cup on the floor.  "Any man who
+argues with me knows what to expect.  It's too late to apologize when
+I've snapped your legs and arms for you and dislocated your neck."
+
+The duke intimated politely to his fuming opponent his entire agreement
+with the remark.  "I am sorry," he went on suavely, "if I have spoken
+in a language which has not appealed to your grace.  Perhaps I may yet
+be so fortunate as to be able to make myself better understood."
+
+As he spoke he took a candle from the table, and, flicking off the
+shade, set it on the side-board.  Then he pivoted round and stepped ten
+paces across the room, turned, whipped out his revolver, took instant
+aim and fired.  The candle stood as before, but extinguished.  The duke
+advanced and bowed with something, it must be confessed, of the air of
+a music-hall performer.  "That," he said quietly, "is how I reply to
+your grace's remarks.  I trust I have the good fortune to make myself
+understood.  No?"
+
+Quite gratuitously imagining a negative on Mr. Leo's part, which that
+redoubtable fighter was far from expressing, the duke made a swift
+movement and tore down a rapier which hung as an ornament on the wall.
+After making a few passes, which seemed to have Mr. Leo's person for
+their ultimate destination, he spitted the shade of another candle,
+flung it aside, and drawing back, put himself in fencing attitude, and
+lunging furiously, after a grand flourish, just hit the wick and
+extinguished it likewise.  Then he favoured his impressed audience with
+a deprecating gesture intimating that his exhibition of skill was a
+matter of small account, after which, without waiting for comments or
+applause, he turned with startling ferocity upon Mr. Leo and in an
+unpleasantly resonant tone commanded him to take down the fellow weapon
+and defend himself.
+
+Mr. Leo showed no sign of falling in with his desire, but made a
+ghastly attempt to laugh the order to scorn and then to treat it with
+the contempt due to such an out-of-date proposal.  But as it is
+difficult to preserve an attitude of dignified opposition in the
+neighbourhood of an aggressive and business-like hornet, so the
+Antipodean giant found it impossible to treat the duke with the passive
+scorn which prudence dictated.  For the little Castilian had now
+arrived at a stage when he considered he might fairly let himself go,
+and let himself go he did.
+
+He simply danced like a blood-thirsty Rumpelstilzchen before the
+anxious man of muscle, making his sword cut the air as though it were a
+riding whip, and describing inconvenient circles and passes with it in
+close proximity to the more cherished portions of his unwilling
+opponent's anatomy.
+
+Mr. Leo looked very unhappy, and in the deplorable condition of a man
+who is consumed by the knowledge that he ought to be very angry and
+retaliative, and yet dares not.  As he continued to hang back with a
+suggestion in his stupid face of how much he would give to be safe at
+_The Pigeons_, the duke's aggressiveness increased to the extent of
+prodding the massive frame before him with playful sword thrusts.  This
+was more even than the abject Mr. Leo could stand.
+
+For an instant he looked dangerous; then with a roar, of rage or pain
+according to the fancy of the audience, he made a snatch at a decanter
+with the object of hurling it at his tormentor.  But before he could
+raise it for the fling the little rapier came down with a smart flash
+upon his wrist and the decanter fell shattered to the floor.
+
+"That your grace's idea of fighting a Grandee of Spain, you abominable
+great hulks?" cried the duke viciously.  "You want a lesson, milord,
+you foolish breaker of tongs.  When shall you begin to snap my legs and
+arms and to screw my neck, you quaint elephant?  You shall go down on
+your knees and apologize to me or I will run you through your absurd
+body and let the saw-dust run out.  Shall I not, eh? eh? eh?"  He
+accompanied each note of interrogation by a stinging slash of the
+flexible steel, and Mr. Leo began to look very weary and unwell.
+
+But Lord Quorn's face was beaming as though a load had been taken off
+his mind.
+
+For an instant Mr. Leo seemed to be gathering himself together for a
+bull-like rush, then the intention died away in helplessness.  "It's
+all a mistake, I tell you," he blurted out in a quavering roar.  "The
+pine was not intended for you."
+
+"Indeed?  So?" cried the duke incredulously, making the point of his
+sword whirl within two inches of the herculean thorax.  "And the
+allusions to my nose, the Salolja nose, which is historical, and to my
+stature and to my veracity--they were not intended for me?  Eh?"
+
+"If you touch me again with that beastly sword I'll have the police on
+to you, duke or no duke," Mr. Leo declared, falling back somewhat
+feebly behind the shelter of the law.
+
+It was with some consternation that he noticed that not only the duke,
+but the whole party seemed to derive genuine amusement from his threat.
+
+"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the little terrorist in his window-rattling
+tones.  "The police!  How rich!  How exquisite!  When a man insults a
+Salolja he does not call in the police, but the undertaker."
+
+Mr. Leo's bronzed face had now that greenish tinge so much the fashion
+in modern sculpture.
+
+"How are you going to send for your police?" laughed the duke,
+emphasizing his question by a playful prick in Mr. Leo's biceps.
+"Before you touch the bell or the door-handle you are a dead man."
+
+Mr. Leo looked as though he reluctantly accepted the probability.
+
+"Now, your grace will go down on your knees, won't you, you absurd
+hippopotamus, and make your humble confession and apology for having
+treated disrespectfully a Grandee of Spain and a Salolja, before you
+pay the penalty of your mistake."
+
+There was a painful flourish of the rapier, and a gentle stab on the
+lobe of Mr. Leo's large right ear.  With a howl he went down on his
+knees, with another he begged for mercy, and it was a third howl of a
+very different character which made the duke and the other men turn to
+the window, at which some one stood rattling.
+
+[Illustration: "With a howl he went down on his knees, and with another
+he begged for mercy."]
+
+The ever-alert duke opened it, as though nothing unusual were
+occurring, giving entrance to Miss Leo, who with a manly stride came in
+only to stand dumfounded before the abject spectacle of her brother's
+abasement.
+
+"Carnaby!" she cried in a voice calculated to put fire into a lump of
+wet clay.  "You great oaf!  What fool's game is this?"
+
+The duke explained.  "It is simply the result of a slight personal
+difference between his grace and my humble self."
+
+"Get up, you great booby!" Lalage commanded, naturally thinking that
+the slight personal difference between the two men should have reversed
+their positions.
+
+"Stay where you are," cried the duke in his most stentorian tones.  And
+Mr. Leo stayed.
+
+"Quorn!  At last!"  The cry came in a tone of menacing rapture from
+Lalage who had now found time to glance round the table.
+
+"Hold on!" was that nobleman's chilling response, as he rose and
+stretched out a fending hand in front of him.
+
+"My Quorn!" repeated Miss Leo with native tenacity.
+
+"Quorn?" cried the duke in a voice of puzzled exasperation, "Quorn
+again in that quarter.  I get tired of this Quorn here, Quorn there."
+
+"This is Lord Quorn," Lalage declared with an exultation which,
+considering the position her champion occupied at the moment, was
+scarcely justified.
+
+"So?  Are you sure?" the duke demanded searchingly.
+
+"Sure?  I knew him in Australia.  I have come over to marry him," was
+the convincing answer.
+
+"So?"  The fiery little Castilian turned to Quorn.  "You marry this
+lady, eh?"
+
+"No," he returned, ungallantly.  "I'm hanged if I do."
+
+"Carnaby!" cried his sister in a ringing voice.  "You hear that?"
+
+"Yes," said Carnaby impotently from the floor.
+
+"Let the poor fellow alone," recommended Quorn.  "He's a thing of the
+past."
+
+But his crow was cut short by the duke.  "So, your grace thinks to
+marry Miss Buffkin?"  No answer.  "In spite of your engagement to this
+handsome lady?"  The duke's wry face was lost in a grin.  "May I
+request once again the honour of a few words with your grace in
+private?"
+
+"You may, but you won't get it," was the dogged reply.  "I stop here."
+
+"So?  I believe not," said the duke, turning on his vindictive glare to
+the full.  "I have been long enough made a fool of with your different
+Lord Quorns.  I am sick of Lord Quorn.  I put him away, and if I make a
+mistake--ah!"
+
+He turned swiftly with the cry of an enraged tiger.  Prompted by signs
+from his sister, Carnaby had taken advantage of the duke's back being
+turned to rise from his undignified position and stealthily approach
+his little adversary with the idea of taking him unawares from behind
+and trying what muscle would do.  But the Spaniard, whose energies and
+faculties were concentrated in a small space, was too wide awake for
+him.  With the turn he sprang back and whipping round his rapier
+brought it with a swift cut across Carnaby's ample countenance.  As Mr.
+Leo roared and danced with pain, and Lalage, throwing her arms round
+the duke's, shouted to the three to help her, if they were men, in
+disarming the wriggling Grandee, the door was thrown open and Mr.
+Doutfire came quickly in, followed by the local constable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Mr. Doutfire with professional promptitude at once proceeded to adapt
+himself to the situation.  He planted himself in business-like fashion
+before the wriggling duke, and with a wave of both hands, suggested to
+his captor that she should release him.
+
+"Let go, ma'am," he said reassuringly.  "It's all right now.  I'll rake
+the fire out."
+
+Thus bidden Miss Leo relaxed her clasp, not however, before Mr.
+Doutfire had, with a practised twist, wrenched the sword from the ducal
+grasp.
+
+"Now, then," he demanded in a tone of stern reproof, "what's this all
+about?  What's the trouble now?"
+
+"You shall not interfere," foamed the duke.  "You are not wanted,
+policeman."
+
+"Detective-Inspector is my rank," Mr. Doutfire reminded him with a
+touch of severity.  "Looks as though I was wanted," he added with a
+curl of the lip and a confident glance round the company.
+
+"You are not," insisted the duke in his fiercest tone and with his most
+appalling glare.  "I am the Duke of Salolja, and I tell you you are to
+go."
+
+He might as well have glared at the spattered portrait of Everard,
+ninth Baron Quorn, on the wall for any effect his eyes produced on the
+uncompromising and unimaginative official.
+
+"I should like that corroborated," was all the response he got from Mr.
+Doutfire.
+
+"No, don't go!" cried Mr. Leo with a subdued and, painful roar.  "He
+has assaulted me, stabbed me, threatened to shoot me.  I give him in
+charge.  Take him.  I----"
+
+"Has he got firearms on him?" enquired Mr. Doutfire severely.
+
+For answer the duke whipped out his revolver.  But swift as the action
+was, Mr. Doutfire's counter move was quicker.
+
+With practised skill he clutched the dangerous wrist and with a
+business-like jerk held it in the air with the revolver pointing to the
+ceiling.
+
+"That'll do, my lord duke," he said with playful insistence.  "Better
+let me take care of that.  It's a dangerous plaything."
+
+But the duke's characteristic under-estimation of the power of the
+British police system prompted him to resist and to struggle violently
+to release his hand.  Mr. Doutfire gave a well-understood nod to his
+subordinate, and that functionary smartly acting upon it, came behind
+the duke and pinioned his arms.  Next moment the revolver was detached
+by a knowing professional trick, and was in Mr. Doutfire's pocket.
+"You can let go, Tugby," he said with calm authority, and the raging
+noble was free to dance and gesticulate in a very tornado of rage.
+
+He was understood to intimate that the insult put upon him, a Duke of
+Salolja and a Grandee of Spain, by a mere paltry English policeman, in
+not allowing him free vent for his display of _force majeure_ and
+homicidal proclivities was one which would not only be the cause of
+private and personal bloodshed, but would in all human probability
+result in a devastating war between the two Powers, from which the
+least unpleasant outcome England could expect would be the loss of
+Gibraltar and the bulk of the British fleet.  Mr. Doutfire received the
+intelligence with a tolerant stolidity.  Custom had made him impervious
+to threats and sceptical of the practical value of vindictive
+utterances.  His scornful and unmoved attitude had the effect of
+raising to a still higher pitch the rage of the Spanish fire-eater, who
+seemed now to have lost all that self-control which before had been so
+telling.  He had, in fact, become inebriated with wrath and excitement.
+
+"Scoundrel, villain!" he cried, shaking both fists in the air before
+the imperturbable Doutfire.  "You lay your ignoble hands on the Duke of
+Salolja!  I will have your life."
+
+"Steady!  Steady!" responded Mr. Doutfire in a tone of gentle warning.
+
+"I shall not steady," roared the duke, whose face had now assumed the
+look of the false nose, eyes and moustache of a carnival mask.  "You
+shall not defy me.  You shall go this moment, or I will run you through
+your wretched body."
+
+With a sudden dart he snatched up the sword from the floor and began a
+series of flourishes which threatened seriously to embarrass Mr.
+Doutfire.  "Steady, now," commanded that gentleman, but instead of
+complying, the duke seemed to be ferociously bent on selecting a
+suitable point of impact in the detective's thick-set figure.
+
+"Lay hold, Tugby."
+
+The duke comprehending the order, jumped round swiftly, bringing the
+sword point in opposition to Mr. Tugby's advancing tunic.  But the
+diversion was enough for Mr. Doutfire's purpose.  He seized the
+Spaniard's flourishing arms from behind, then planting his knee in the
+small of the ducal back, by way of purchase, he held the heir of all
+the Saloljas trussed.
+
+"Take the sword away from him," he ordered his subordinate.  "Now,"
+when that was, after a short but fierce struggle, accomplished, "you
+had better slip on the bracelets."
+
+Accordingly, with some difficulty and much explosive language the hands
+of a Grandee of Spain were, it is sad to relate, for the first time on
+record, fastened behind his back by a pair of vulgar English handcuffs,
+and the traditions of the Saloljas were, for the moment, rendered a
+negligible quantity.
+
+In his violent struggles the duke had stumbled backwards into a low and
+deep-seated armchair.  From this he was, from the fact that his hands
+were fastened behind him, unable to rise or regain his balance.  All he
+could do was to kick furiously and to make loud use of expletives
+which, although couched in the Spanish language, were obviously of an
+exceedingly florid, even ensanguined, character.  To quiet him and to
+prevent possible mischief, Mr. Doutfire and his underling, approaching
+the job on either side from behind, each seized a ducal leg, and tucked
+it in comparative harmlessness under his arm.  It may be doubted
+whether in the long and blood-stained annals of the house of Salolja
+any member of that distinguished and ruthless family had ever occupied
+quite so undignified a position before.
+
+"Dangerous party to deal with, my lord," remarked the panting Mr.
+Doutfire jerkily, owing to the convulsions of the Salolja leg,
+addressing himself impartially to the three men, any one of whom might
+be Lord Quorn.  "I'm afraid we shall have to see him safe to Bunbury
+and give him a night in the cells, in default of bail."
+
+The prisoner laughed in the very impotence of his rage.  "You shall
+have your absurd Great Bunbury pulled down about your ears if you do
+not instantly release me," he spluttered through his teeth.
+
+"All right, my lord duke," Doutfire returned, with a wink at the
+company.  "We'll keep in the middle of the street in case the buildings
+should come down on our hats.  Now, when you're ready, sir, we'll make
+a move as it's getting late.  Sorry to have to put the bracelets on a
+gentleman of your position, but I take the responsibility.  In this
+country even dukes have got to behave themselves, and we don't allow
+tricks with these dangerous playthings."
+
+He pulled the duke up and set him on his feet, then took up the rapier
+and revolver and handed them to his subordinate.
+
+"You shall release me at once," hissed the duke through his wolfish
+teeth, "or it will be the worse for you."
+
+"All right.  We'll see about that," replied Mr. Doutfire in the tone he
+might use to a naughty child.  "I understand the prisoner threatened
+and assaulted you, Mr.----?" he added to Carnaby, producing his note
+book.
+
+"Yes," affirmed that valiant gentleman.  "I'm cut and stabbed all over."
+
+"Tut!" cried the prisoner explosively.  "The fellow is a great coward.
+He cries if you prick him."
+
+"You will," continued Mr. Doutfire, unheeding the interruption, "charge
+the prisoner, I presume, with feloniously cutting and wounding?"
+
+"That's it," replied Mr. Leo, regaining confidence.
+
+"Carnaby, you great fool, why didn't you wring his neck and fling the
+little brute into the dust-hole?"
+
+Carnaby failed to impart into his expression any regret that he had not
+endeavoured to forestall the suggestion.
+
+"Good job he didn't try it on, ma'am," observed Mr. Doutfire dryly.
+"Whether he succeeded or not, in either case it might have been awkward
+for him.  You'll attend at 10.30 a.m. to-morrow at the Court House,
+Great Bunbury," he added.  "And some of you gentlemen had better be on
+hand to give evidence if required."
+
+He nodded to Tugby, and each taking an arm of the speechless duke they
+conducted him, with certain indications of unwillingness on his part,
+to the door.  This the representative of the Saloljas favoured with a
+mighty kick, by way of protest and also doubtless of letting off some
+of his compressed rage.  Mr. Doutfire pulled him unceremoniously back,
+then, as Tugby opened the door, shot him forwards, and in such
+humiliating fashion did the manacled Grandee disappear from the scene
+of his brief triumph.
+
+Those who remained were now at liberty to take more precise and less
+preoccupied notice of one another.
+
+"So I've got you at last, Lord Quorn," observed Miss Leo with somewhat
+menacing satisfaction.
+
+"No, you haven't," objected that person, coolly lighting a fresh cigar."
+
+"Oh, haven't I?" the lady rejoined.  "You hear that, Carnaby dear?"
+
+"Don't worry dear Carnaby," put in Peckover.  "He has got a headache."
+
+Mr. Leo's stony stare of discomfiture did not relax to traverse the
+statement.  Mechanically he put forth a great hand and poured himself
+out, as in a dream, an overflowing glass of port wine.  He then, still
+in a state of mental apathy, sought, with cowed and lacklustre eye, the
+cigar-box and absently helped himself--to more of the contents than he
+could smoke at once.  But he made no other and more relevant answer to
+the bugle-call of his sister's question.  It was felt by the three men
+that the legend of his doughty deeds was a myth; as a terrorist he
+belonged to ancient history.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+The hour of 10.30 next morning saw the depository of the Salolja
+traditions, a defiant and fretful Castilian porcupine with quills
+erect, standing in the dock of an occasional court, composed of one
+alderman of Great Bunbury (incidentally a family grocer), one
+public-spirited local doctor, and a couple of fussy half-pay colonels,
+to answer the serious charges of threatening to murder divers of His
+Majesty's subjects, and also with feloniously stabbing and wounding
+another, to wit, one Carnaby Leo, described somewhat vaguely as of
+Australia.
+
+Mr. Doutfire here saw an opportunity for more than regaining some loss
+of prestige which he had lately incurred, of course through no fault of
+his, but of a cheese-paring Treasury; and moreover for handing his name
+down with undying fame in the criminal annals of Great Bunbury.
+
+The Duke of Salolja insisted upon regarding the whole business as
+beneath his serious notice.  His line of defence was to maintain a
+haughty and contemptuous silence, at the same time to shrivel up his
+very common-place judges by focussing upon them in turn his most
+ferociously fascinating glare.  Alas!  He misjudged the stuff of which
+British parochial authority is composed.  Even if he had succeeded in
+terrifying the retired colonels, there was still the florid general
+practitioner to reduce to a quite improbable state of collapse, and it
+is well known that a family grocer fears nothing in this world--except
+another family grocer.
+
+Evidence sufficient to justify a remand was taken, and the prisoner,
+who seemed to emit sparks of indignation was told that he would
+eventually be sent to Quarter Sessions.  Then in pursuance of a plan
+which Peckover had concocted overnight, Gage and Lord Quorn offered
+themselves as bail for the duke.  This was, after some demur and
+difference of opinion, accepted, the two colonels being dead against
+allowing a foreigner of homicidal tendencies to be at large, while the
+doctor and the grocer took a higher position and declared themselves in
+favour of doing no act that should endanger the _entente cordiale_
+between Great Britain and Spain.  So finally, bail was accepted for the
+duke's appearance on the following Saturday.
+
+Upon his release from durance his sureties and Peckover sought an
+interview with the irate nobleman, and, ignoring certain dark and
+direful threats, gently but convincingly hinted to him that the only
+way to avoid a considerable term of imprisonment with its incidental
+tarnish on the scutcheon of the Saloljas was to lose no time in putting
+the English Channel and the republic of France, to say nothing of the
+Pyrenees, between himself and the Great Bunbury Bench.  At first the
+duke, pulsating with a sense of injury, declared that sooner than run
+away from a handful of English shopkeepers, he would put the whole of
+the inhabitants of Great Bunbury, as given in the last census return,
+to the edge of the sword.  On its being pointed out to him, however,
+that his plan, attractive in itself, was deficient in certain elements
+of feasibility, he consented to meet the objection by reducing the
+number of his intended victims, and intimated that his thirst for blood
+might be satisfied by the immolation of the mayor and corporation, the
+heads of the fire brigade and the police force, the town clerk, town
+crier, the station master and a picked half-dozen of the principal
+tradesmen on the altar of his vengeance.
+
+When he was made aware of certain practical objections which stood in
+the way of the town of Great Bunbury falling in with this modified
+suggestion, the noble Castilian proposed as a last alternative that he
+should meet a selected dozen men of the township's best blood in a
+suitable arena, and should engage these representatives one after the
+other in a duel _a outrance_.  On this proposal being ruled out of
+order owing to the deplorably faulty state of the English law, the
+duke, glaring and bristling with suppressed vindictiveness, declared
+that he must do something to remove the stain that had been cast upon
+him and his house; whereupon Peckover suggested that the best thing he
+could do to prevent the said stain from spreading would be to disguise
+himself as the representative of a firm of Spanish claret merchants,
+and take the 1.15 train on the way to Dover.
+
+This plan did not, however, commend itself to the representative of a
+Spanish house, whose trade appeared to be, not the bottling, but the
+spilling, of claret of a very different type.  "It is very amusing,
+very clever of you, gentlemen," he objected in withering scorn.  "You
+wish to get me out of the way that you may pay court to Miss Buffkin.
+I am not an idiot."
+
+"You'll be a convict this day fortnight if you don't clear out,"
+remarked Peckover.  "Great Bunbury is not to be trifled with."
+
+The duke laughed discordantly.  "Great Bunbury!  It makes me laugh."
+
+"You'll have plenty of time for laughing," observed Peckover, "in jail.
+You can do a lot of smiling in twelve calendar months if you stick to
+it."
+
+The duke snapped his fingers, but he looked uneasy, and the snap wanted
+tone.  Perhaps the fingers were clammy.  "I shall not go," he
+maintained, "till I have killed some one in Great Bunbury."
+
+"Not good enough," argued Peckover.  "If you kill anybody here you'll
+be hanged.  And you couldn't kill anybody worth a duke's being hanged
+for.  Why, the best man you could select for the purpose in the town
+wouldn't rise above an auctioneer or a brewer.  It wouldn't be a fair
+deal."
+
+Still the duke was obstinate.  "I marry the adorable Buffkin," he
+declared, "in spite of Great Bunbury."
+
+"All right.  Here she is," said Gage, pointing to an open carriage
+which was approaching.
+
+A portmanteau shared the box with the driver.  Inside were three
+people, Lady Ormstork, Miss Buffkin and a middle-aged man with
+greyish-red hair and a face which partook curiously of the
+characteristics of the fox and the sheep.  He was a common-looking
+person, and, as such, had the air of being out of place in that company.
+
+Lady Ormstork stopped the carriage and hailed the group on the
+pavement.  "My dear Lord Quorn, this is fortunate," she exclaimed,
+addressing her remark to the three possible holders of that title, with
+a leaning towards Gage.  "What absurd goings on at Staplewick!  How
+d'you do, duke?  I always said your wilful ignorance of our English
+ideas would land you in trouble.  Well, and how has the ridiculous
+business at the Court House gone off?  Laughed out of court, I presume."
+
+As the duke seemed inclined to impart no more precise information than
+could be gathered from a bow and a scowl, Peckover answered the
+question.  "Remanded on bail."
+
+Lady Ormstork threw up her hands in amused horror.  "A Salolja, a
+Grandee of Spain, remanded on bail by a bench of provincial
+cheese-mongers!" she cried.  "Really, it is the very acme of the
+ridiculous.  It is only fit for a burlesque.  My dearest Ulrica, do
+think of it!  Oh, dear me, it is too absurd for comment."  And she went
+off in a fit of rather stagey laughter.
+
+"It is no laughing matter--for somebody," hissed the duke darkly.
+
+Lady Ormstork's burst ended with an abruptness which suggested a doubt
+as to its genuineness.  "It is really so diverting," she said, "that I
+am forgetting to introduce Mr. Buffkin, dear Ulrica's father, to Lord
+Quorn."
+
+The inference to be drawn from Mr. Buffkin's demeanour was that he was
+not in the habit of being suddenly presented to peers of the realm.
+Lord Quorn, however, relieved his embarrassment by seizing his hand
+with a cordial grip.  "Glad you've come down," he remarked, with his
+eyes on Mr. Buffkin's daughter.
+
+"Pleased to meet your lordship," responded Mr. Buffkin.
+
+Lady Ormstork raised her eye-glasses in diplomatic caution.  "You don't
+mean to say you are Lord Quorn, after all?" she asked with a hedging
+smile.
+
+"I'm nobody else," was the confident reply.
+
+"He's Lord Quorn right enough," corroborated Peckover, with a chastened
+confession of a truth which could no longer be kept in the well.
+
+"How singular," murmured Lady Ormstork, only half convinced and
+wondering how, if it turned out to be true, she would stand.
+
+A professional-looking elderly man with a brief bag in his hand who had
+been regarding the group with some attention now came forward.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" he said, addressing the peer.
+
+Quorn jumped round.  "What, Powler!" he cried.  "Just the man, in the
+nick of time.  Here, you can tell this lady whether I'm Lord Quorn or
+not.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is Mr. Powler, my lawyer, of the firm
+of Powler, Gaze and Powler, Lincoln's Inn.  Come down to see me, eh?"
+
+"Getting no reply to our letters since your lordship left town, I
+thought I would just run down to Staplewick and see how things were
+getting on," Mr. Powler explained.  "Yes," he continued, "I am quite
+prepared to vouch for the identity of this gentleman as Lord Quorn."
+
+"There!" cried Lady Ormstork, "I always said so.  What a splendid
+practical joke, though, to try to take us all in.  How well you played
+the part," she said guilefully to Gage.  "Dear Lord Quorn," she
+continued gushingly, "this is all most interesting.  May we come up
+this afternoon us usual?  Mr. Buffkin is so anxious to see beautiful
+Staplewick."
+
+"Come as soon as you like," said Quorn promptly.
+
+"How sweet of you," murmured Lady Ormstork.  "Dear Ulrica would be
+sorry to miss her daily ramble in the lovely park.  Wouldn't you, dear?"
+
+"I dare say I should," responded Miss Buffkin indifferently, with a
+half grimace at Peckover.
+
+"I have," the duke suddenly burst out, "a word to say to Miss Ulrica.
+I do myself the honour of following your distinguished carriage to The
+Cracknels."
+
+"Please don't," both ladies protested.  "I fear," the elder continued.
+"I cannot, after this _esclandre_, undertake to receive you."
+
+The duke gave a mingled shrug, scowl and bow.  "It plunges me into
+despair," he said, with just a suspicion of sarcasm, "to be deprived of
+the supreme happiness of milady Ormstork's coveted society.  Perhaps,
+though, I may be humbly permitted an interview with the distinguished
+Mr. Buffkin?"
+
+Mr. Buffkin, whose distinction required the penetrating eye of the
+Spaniard to notice it, and whose conversational powers did not seem to
+be of a high order, looked aggressively uncomfortable.  "Is this," he
+inquired bluntly, "the Spanish gentleman who has been pestering
+Barbara--I mean Ulrica--with his attentions?"
+
+The duke made a prancing step on the pavement.  "Pestering?" he
+repeated hoarsely, pulling his moustache with nervous fury.
+
+"That," replied Lady Ormstork uncompromisingly, "is the person; the
+Duke of Salolja."
+
+"I have," said the duke, with a flourish, "the honour to desire a
+matrimonial alliance with your gracious and adorable daughter."
+
+"No, thank you."  Mr. Buffkin's voice was high-pitched, almost squeaky,
+and quite common.  "We don't desire any foreign alliance."
+
+"As Duchesse de Salolja"--began the duke.
+
+"No good," interrupted Mr. Buffkin, with a decisive shake of his very
+commercial-looking head.  "Spanish titles are not a line I care to
+handle.  I've told Bar--Ulrica she can marry whom she likes, but if
+it's a foreigner, duke or fiddler, she'll have to do it on three
+hundred a year."
+
+The Salolja lip curled.  "His excellency jests.  The renowned
+millionaire Buffkin allows his daughter, the Duchesse de Salolja, three
+hundred pounds a year!  It is rich!"
+
+Mr. Buffkin looked particularly irresponsive.  "Who says I am a
+millionaire?" he demanded shrilly.  The duke bowed and indicated Lady
+Ormstork.  "A _facon de parler_," that lady explained.  "Anyhow, a very
+rich man."
+
+"Divide it by ten," said Mr. Buffkin with a twinkle.
+
+The duke looked suddenly chastened, not to say depressed.  "The
+glorious Miss Ulrica," he said with an obvious effort, "would be an
+inestimable prize without a penny of dowry."
+
+"That's about what she'll have if she marries you," returned Mr.
+Buffkin, whose eloquence, if not exactly copious, was considerably to
+the point.
+
+"Shall we drive on?" suggested Lady Ormstork.  "_Au revoir_, Lord
+Quorn," she gushed.  "Till this afternoon, then.  _Au revoir_, Mr.
+Gage."  Not knowing Peckover's name, since the reshuffle, she
+discreetly left him out.
+
+But Ulrica's parting nod was for him alone.
+
+As the carriage rolled away up the High Street the duke was the first
+to speak.
+
+"What time does that infernal train leave your unsavoury town of Great
+Bunbury?" he inquired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+Sharnbrook had called at Staplewick for an authoritative version of
+certain blood-curdling rumours which had reached him, and he stayed to
+luncheon.
+
+"Wish I'd known you were having such a thrilling time," he said
+regretfully.  "I'd have come up and helped.  Well, I say, with this new
+twist of the Quorn title our fair friends at the Moat will get a nasty
+shake, eh?  I'm ever so grateful for the way you fellows have relieved
+the pressure of the fair dodgers; they've eased off wonderfully of
+late, and I've got my wind again."
+
+"Glad to hear it," observed Peckover.  "Always willing to oblige a
+sportsman."
+
+"Ah," said Sharnbrook in a gratified tone, "if I'd only known you were
+having fits with that little Spanish bantam, I'd have brought along a
+rare good bull-dog that would have reduced him to fragments and pulp
+inside three minutes.  A nailing beast, knows his business from A to Z
+and quite a picture when he's----"
+
+"The little devil of a duke would have put a bullet through him," said
+Gage, "and that would have been a pity."
+
+"Yes," Sharnbrook agreed, "that wouldn't have suited me.  I've only had
+the beggar a month, and have just got fond of him."
+
+"Even a Spanish bluffer has his uses," observed Gage.  "He has knocked
+the stuffing out of Quorn's bush-ranger."
+
+"Yes," said Quorn, "that brute has no more terrors for me; I suppose,
+though, I shall have him and Lalage hanging about the place till I can
+afford to send them back."
+
+"Better keep the fire-irons out of the way," remarked Peckover.
+
+"I'll send the precious pair back home for you, if you don't get the
+Buffkin money," said Gage magnanimously.  "After all, I owe you
+something.  I can't say I've had much fun out of your title, and hope
+you'll do better with it.  But it has been an experience, and I
+certainly shan't hanker after the peerage again."
+
+Quorn thanked him.  "Hope you'll stay on here as long as you fancy," he
+said.
+
+Gage shook his head.  "No thanks.  I'm off to-morrow.  Too much Hemyock
+about for me.  But I'll run down later and see what you're making of
+it."
+
+"What's going to become of you?" he asked Peckover.  "Got anything more
+to sell that doesn't belong to you?"
+
+"You can't blame me," Peckover protested.  "I kept to my part of the
+bargain as long as you had any use for it.  And I couldn't help it.  If
+you hadn't made a bid for the title I should have had to take it on
+myself."
+
+"Right you are," responded Gage good-humouredly.  "Well, you had better
+come with me and show me round.  You can draw L300 a year as my
+secretary."
+
+"I'm your man," said Peckover with alacrity.  "What I don't show you
+won't be worth seeing."
+
+Lady Ormstork with Mr. and Miss Buffkin was announced.
+
+The dowager was full of gush.  "Dear Lord Quorn!  What an amusing
+incognito!  Quite like the lord of Burleigh.  One can quite understand
+your wishing to put people's real affection to the test."
+
+"We won't inquire how the article stood it," Quorn replied bluntly.
+
+"Quite romantic, as dear Ulrica was saying," the lady proceeded, quite
+unabashed.  "May we, before going out, look round the picture gallery?
+Mr. Buffkin would so like to see the interesting family portraits and
+wonderful old armour."
+
+If Mr. Buffkin's expression was meant to be corroborative it was a
+distinct failure.  Whatever sentiment might have been read in his
+commercial face, a yearning for the satisfying of an artistic curiosity
+was not there.
+
+No objection to the proposal being made, the party proceeded to what
+Peckover called the ancestral showroom.
+
+"Won't you look after dear Ulrica and show her round?" Lady Ormstork
+said pointedly to Quorn when the somewhat dreary gallery was reached.
+
+Quorn, nothing loath, attached himself forthwith to Miss Buffkin, who
+had somehow gravitated to the now negligible Peckover.  "Now, Mr.
+Peckover," he said bluffly, "you ought to know all about these fifth of
+November Johnnies.  Give us a bit of the showman.  Take us round the
+effigies, and don't be too long about it."
+
+On account, perhaps, of Miss Buffkin's obvious preference, Peckover was
+in higher spirits than his lot seemed to warrant.
+
+"All right," he responded, pulling a ramrod from an ancient gun for use
+as a showman's wand.  "Here goes!  Lord Quorn, ladies and gentlemen:
+with a view to combining instruction with amusement, I propose to give
+you some points concerning these noble effigies with which the spacious
+apartment is lined.  True, it is only the outer crusts of these
+distinguished warriors and sportsmen that I am able to bring to your
+notice.  The kernels are all gone, and the shells are--hem!--left
+tenantless.  But, as in these days the tailor makes the man, so we may
+say that in olden times the blacksmith made him, from which we may
+conclude that we have the best part," he tapped a suit of armour with
+his wand, "of the noble house of Quorn remaining with us to this day."
+
+"Hear!  hear!" cried Sharnbrook, with more appreciation than tact,
+while Miss Buffkin laughed sympathetically.
+
+"The clockwork has long since run down," continued Peckover finding the
+vocabulary of his former vocation coming in usefully; "the striking
+gear is out of order, on account of the dust getting into it.  The
+hands can point no longer, and the faces have lost their enamel.  But
+we have still the cases--some plain, like this,"--he tapped a suit of
+plate armour--"some engine turned, like that," pointing to an inlaid
+suit, "some with open faces, like this yawner," he rattled his wand in
+the cavity of a vizorless helmet, "some hunters, like this prancer,"
+indicating an equestrian portrait.  "To begin at the beginning."  He
+held up a dilapidated helmet in one hand and in the other a fragment of
+armour.  "Sir Guy de Quorn, founder of the family."
+
+There was a laugh from everybody, although Lady Ormstork's was rather
+belated, that astute dowager's sense of humour being outweighed by her
+concern at seeing that Ulrica was paying more attention to the flippant
+little showman than to the more solid worth of Lord Quorn.
+
+"Not much of him remaining," Peckover went on.  "Ladies and gentlemen
+of vivid powers of imagination may reconstruct in their minds from
+these scanty materials the noble mien, the imposing figure, of this
+doughty warrior.  Pass on to Sir Nicholas de Quorn," he pointed to the
+suit of armour that stood next, "in a high state of preservation.  A
+mighty man of valour, who had the advantage of living in times when he
+could knock a man out for sneezing in his presence without being liable
+to forty shillings or a month.  Sir Nicholas spent a useful life in
+trying his muscle and weight on other people, and was getting his name
+up nicely, when unfortunately setting out to attack the castle of an
+absent neighbour in a thunderstorm, his lance acted as a lightning
+conductor, and he was prematurely cremated.  Notice the aperture
+through which the electric fluid tunnelled its way to his knightly
+vitals, and the look of blank astonishment with a dash of 'uffiness on
+the champion's visage."
+
+The said visage being indeed a blank, this fancy seemed to tickle even
+the unimaginative Mr. Buffkin.  Peckover now directed attention to a
+weird-looking portrait.  "Sir Penning de Quorn, surnamed the Feckless.
+He never did anything distinguished, and only escaped being made
+Commander-in-Chief through one of the Royal Family fancying himself in
+a cocked hat."  He passed to another canvas.  "Sir Brian de
+Quorn--sometimes called the Buffer, as nothing made any impression on
+him.  He married four wives, three of whom survived him."
+
+Sharnbrook guffawed, and Lady Ormstork looked scandalized.
+
+"Sir Walter the Willing," proceeded Peckover, working up the showman
+business, as he pointed to the next portrait, "a distinguished
+advertising politician.  He pushed his way to the front and became a
+Cabinet Minister by his imitations of popular jesters, and by dyeing
+his raven locks crimson with a secret wash which he purchased from a
+bald Crusader who had no further use for it.  When at length the supply
+failed and the substitutes he tried to manufacture turned his hair
+green, and by their offensive odour left him alone on the Treasury
+Bench he was soon sent to the Upper House, becoming first Baron Quorn."
+
+Mr. Buffkin, for an out-of-place, commercial Philistine seemed, to
+Peckover's gratification, to be taking in the lecture with genuine
+amusement.
+
+Thus stimulated, the showman proceeded, "Harboro' de Quorn," he tapped
+a sporting portrait, "second Baron Quorn, and inventor of the Quorn
+Hunt.  He induced the noble Normans to abandon the shooting of foxes
+which they consented to, owing to gunpowder being in its infancy, guns
+taking a quarter of an hour to load and fire, and the wily animal being
+hard to hit with a bow and arrow.  He was the first M.F.H., and having
+an impediment in his speech he originated the expression, Yoicks!
+which, being interpreted, was his bovrilized way of cursing people who
+rode over the hounds."
+
+"Good man," ejaculated Sharnbrook.
+
+Peckover, encouraged by Ulrica's animated interest, went on with his
+lecture in spite of Lady Ormstork's obvious impatience.  His next
+object was a big suit of armour on which he irreverently rattled his
+wand.  "We now come to the third Baron, Marmaduke, surnamed the Masher.
+His fatal gift of beauty was the cause of some anxiety--to the married
+nobility, clergy and gentry of his acquaintance.  He was, as you will
+observe, very particular about the cut of his armour and the shape of
+his helmet, which was constructed with an extra-size pigeon-hole, in
+order that the full extent of his handsome physiognomy might be
+utilized to dazzle the doting damsels.  His end, ladies and gentlemen,
+was, I regret to say, a somewhat melancholy and unusual one.  While
+drinking a stirrup-cup, and trying at the same time to wink over the
+brim of the goblet at the young lady behind the bar, a portion of the
+pick-me-up went down the wrong way; to correct which mistake his
+faithful squire seized a spade and smote him therewith on the back.
+The clang of the blow on his armour startled his horse, which took to
+bucking, and at the first attempt laid the coughing nobleman in the
+ditch.  He never wunk again.  Notice the rectangular impression of the
+shovel between the shoulders, also the extra-sized sliding kissing-trap
+of the helmet so contrived for the purpose of simplifying the process
+of osculation to which he was addicted."
+
+A marked diversion was here created by the entrance at the farther end
+of the gallery of Bisgood ushering in the entire Hemyock family.  Their
+arrival was not greeted with that cordiality which is usually desirable
+and customary; it was, indeed, anything but welcome to any except two
+of the party.  As Quorn, followed by the rest, went forward to receive
+the visitors, Peckover and Miss Buffkin lingered behind together.
+
+"Like to see the view from the Tower?" he suggested with a grin.
+Ulrica laughed and they slipped unnoticed through a covered door.  From
+an octagonal chamber a winding stairway led up to the tower.  "Come
+along," said Peckover elatedly.
+
+Ulrica with a mischievous laugh followed, and they soon emerged at the
+top where floated a tattered flag from a tall staff.
+
+"How lovely," Miss Buffkin exclaimed.
+
+"Never mind the view," said Peckover desperately.  "How do you like the
+new Lord Quorn?"
+
+Ulrica pouted.  "I don't see myself Lady Quorn," she answered with a
+certain amount of decision.
+
+"No," Peckover agreed with conviction.  "He's not a bad sort, but he
+wouldn't be my fancy if I were a pretty girl."
+
+"He's too glumpy for me," Ulrica declared.  "And what's more I'm not
+going to have him."
+
+"What'll the guv'nor say?" Peckover asked dubiously.
+
+Miss Buffkin laughed.  "Oh, father won't mind.  You see," she went on
+confidentially, "this coronet racket isn't his idea at all.  Not it."
+
+"Yours?"
+
+"Not likely.  It is old Ormstork's.  We ran across her at the Grand
+Oceanic at Harrogate.  She hung on to us like a stoat on a rabbit.  We
+couldn't make her game out, till one day she asked father what odds he
+would lay her that I didn't marry a peer.  And she has been dragging me
+about the country ever since, till it has fairly come to pall."
+
+"I should think so," observed Peckover sympathetically.
+
+"I don't know," she continued, "how many noble heads I've been thrown
+at.  But somehow I've always managed to rebound, and sometimes hit the
+old lady in the eye.  You see, I like a live man, not a stuffed peer,
+with about as much soul as a gramaphone."
+
+"I wish I was a peer," he said ruefully.  "I'm alive all right."
+
+"So you are," she agreed, gazing round the depressing park.
+
+"Yes," he said with a wistful touch, "you said you liked me once, when
+you thought I was something else."
+
+"What was that?" she inquired naively.
+
+"A rich chap; a millionaire."
+
+"Well, aren't you?" she demanded.
+
+"Not exactly," he answered rather lugubriously.  "That dream's over.
+We've been playing a queer game, but it has come to an end sooner than
+I expected.  I'm a poor devil again now, and there's all about it."
+
+For a moment Ulrica's violet eyes rested on him sympathetically.  Then
+they looked away and seemed to be interested in the distant figure of
+Mr. Treacher who was slouching across the landscape.
+
+"If people are poor," she said presently in a low voice from which all
+feeling was rigidly excluded, "it doesn't make any difference with me,
+when I like them."
+
+Peckover jumped up.  He could do no less.  "Ulrica," he said and his
+voice trembled, "you like me?  Yes, you said you did once.  But I can't
+hold you to that for I was a regular fraud when I got you to say it."
+
+Miss Buffkin gave a little sigh, and with a lingering glance at the
+uninteresting Mr. Treacher, turned towards the stairway.  "All right,"
+she said with an affectation of indifference.  "I think I hear some one
+climbing after us."
+
+The steps were steep and awkward.  He had to take her hand, and at the
+touch his resolution (more honourable than many a better-bred man would
+have formed) gave way.  "Ulrica," he said with a diffident tremor, "you
+couldn't care for a little nobody like me?"
+
+She was gathering up her skirts for the descent.  "I always rather
+liked you," she confessed.
+
+"You wouldn't marry me?"
+
+"What would Lady Ormstork say?" she objected archly.
+
+"Ulrica, you are not fooling me?"
+
+"Not much," she answered.  "By the way, my real name is Barbara.  Only
+the old lady thought Ulrica more classy, and so it had to be Ulrica."
+
+In an instant he had sprung to the top step and his arms were round
+her.  "Barbara, my darling."
+
+"Hark!" she protested struggling.
+
+From below came Lady Ormstork's insistent call.
+
+"Barbara, quick!  Is it to be?"
+
+"Poor old Ormstork."
+
+"Bother her.  It's your father."
+
+"I think he likes you.  You're rather his sort, and Q. isn't," she said
+over her shoulder as she went down the winding stairs.
+
+At the bottom stood Lady Ormstork looking properly scandalized.  Apart
+from her charge's escapade, her meeting with Lady Agatha had not been
+conducive to serenity.
+
+"My dearest Ulrica," she said sourly, "how absurd of you to hide
+yourself away up in that horrid tower.  Lord Quorn is hunting for you
+everywhere."
+
+"I'm so glad he hasn't found me yet," was the not very soothing reply.
+
+"Are you mad, girl?" cried the dowager.
+
+"Not yet.  If I marry Quorn you may inquire again."
+
+Lady Ormstork's indignation was so great that she could only glare,
+first at Ulrica, then at Peckover.  "Is this," she demanded in her most
+withering tones, "the sort of person you prefer to Lord Quorn?"
+
+"All things considered, it is," answered Ulrica boldly.
+
+"You hear that?" screamed the irate dowager to Mr. Buffkin, who had
+just appeared in his flight from the embarrassing position of a target
+for the shafts of the Hemyock family.  "Your daughter actually refuses
+the ennobling alliance which I have been at such pains to arrange for
+her."
+
+"I'm not exactly surprised to hear it," was the unsympathetic reply.
+
+"Perhaps you will be to learn that your daughter has the unheard-of
+wrongheadedness to prefer a person of this most equivocal description,"
+Lady Ormstork indicated Peckover with a contemptuous wave of her
+glasses, "to Lord Quorn."
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness.  "I dare say she
+prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her."
+
+"But--but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture,
+"do you call this person a good match?"
+
+"I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless
+reply.
+
+"That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin.
+
+Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery,
+the others following at a safe distance.
+
+
+The enlightenment of the Hemyock family as to the identity of the real
+Lord Quorn had been, for obvious reasons, delayed by the parties most
+interested in keeping them in the dark.  But now that the new-found
+peer was not to fall to Lady Ormstork's bag, that spiteful dowager
+determined to let the cat out of it.
+
+"May I order my carriage, Lord Quorn?" she said in her most distinct
+and penetrating tones.  "It is getting late."
+
+As Quorn rose in his lumbering fashion and rang the bell, the Hemyock
+girls who had been gaily chattering to Gage became abruptly silent, and
+Lady Agatha looked stonily nonplussed.
+
+"Lord Quorn?" she said, with a brave attempt at a successful smile.
+"Surely this is not Lord Quorn?"
+
+"I'm nobody else," Quorn assured her bluffly.
+
+"How very singular," said Lady Ormstork icily, "that you should not
+have known it."
+
+"Not at all," rejoined Lady Agatha promptly.  "We have for weeks past
+understood this gentleman was Lord Quorn."
+
+"I didn't like to contradict you," said Gage on being indicated.
+
+Lady Agatha, for once too dumfounded for speech, could only give a
+significant look of appeal to her daughters.  And at the look John
+Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, who had taken the precaution to get near the
+door, opened it quietly and slipped out.
+
+Meanwhile the brown eyes of Miss Ethel and the black orbs of Miss
+Dagmar were fastened searchingly on Lord Quorn, and they transmitted to
+their owners the impression that he was not an attractive personage.
+In truth there was yet a good deal of the Jenkins about him.  His
+clothes looked as though he had been in the habit of going to bed in
+them, and his hair cried out for the barber.  For the moment, at any
+rate, he was not to be jumped at, and with that conviction the original
+impulse to spring was stilled.  Lady Agatha rose, with a lofty ignoring
+of Lady Ormstork's exultant smile.
+
+"If," she said to Gage, "you are not Lord Quorn, as you have all along
+thought proper to pretend to be, may one ask who you are?"
+
+"I am Peter Gage," he answered with a touch of amusement.
+
+The eyes of Lady Agatha and her daughters met, and all that could be
+read in them was an indignant perplexity.
+
+"It is all very extraordinary."  Colonel Hemyock's thin voice sounded
+through the room, but his family heeded it not.  Their minds were busy
+with the enigma of the position which was too complicated, not to say
+suspicious, to be comprehended at once.  Only one thing in all the
+business seemed safe, and their minds jumped together to it.  They
+recoiled, as by a single impulse, from the unattractive personality of
+Lord Quorn, from the doubtful individualities of Gage and Peckover, and
+their eyes by common consent sought the spot where their sheet-anchor
+had lately rested.
+
+"Sharnbrook!"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+They ran a dead heat to the door, charged through it, and so out into
+the garden.  But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook's start served him well, and
+he was at that moment sprinting homewards down the drive with a canny
+smile on his simple face.
+
+
+
+
+Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+
+THE MASTER SPIRIT
+
+_Liverpool Post_ says:--"The study of the prostrate man giving the best
+of his brains to the assistance of Herriard is beyond all praise.  It
+is one more variant of the 'double' theory, but it is one of the best
+achievements of its kind."
+
+_The Tribune_ says:--"It must be admitted that Sir Wm. Magnay knows
+London life better than many novelists, that his men talk like
+gentlemen, and that his pictures of society are clever and truthful."
+
+_The Manchester City News_ says:--"This well written and attractive
+story outlines a true picture of the vanities and insincerities of
+fashionable society in London."
+
+_The Road_ says:--"Few plots in even the best up-to-date novels of
+to-day are as strongly drawn as this one, which has all the freshness
+of absolute novelty to recommend it."
+
+_The Court Journal_ says:--"The intensely interesting situation is
+developed with much ingenuity and power.  It is a capital story, told
+with far more literary skill than is usual.  A really fascinating
+story."
+
+
+
+FAUCONBERG
+
+_The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"Good and well written, readable from
+opening chapter to finish."
+
+_The Illustrated Mail_ says:--"The story teems with incident, moves
+briskly and as a narrative is very readable."
+
+_The Field_ says:--"The ultimate fate of Fauconberg is always in doubt
+from the beginning to the unexpected ending.  The book has grip and
+should be a success."
+
+_The Aberdeen Journal_ says:--"From start to finish the story is full
+of striking situations and Fauconberg will unfailingly appeal to all
+who love a vigorously told narrative."
+
+
+
+THE RED CHANCELLOR
+
+_Lloyd's News_ says:--"One of the most readable novels of the adventure
+type that we have taken up.  A story full of action with its characters
+strongly drawn.  Adventures and hair-breadth escapes abound, the style
+is refreshingly crisp, and the book altogether is one that can be most
+heartily recommended."
+
+_The King_ says:--"A romance of stirring adventure.  Excitingly
+narrated, and the book in every way ought to prove one of the best
+reading romances of the season."
+
+_The Swansea Gazette_ says:--"A very thrilling and interesting book,
+and commands in every page the reader's attention."
+
+_The Irish Times_ says:--"A most thrilling story, well written and
+cleverly put together, the romance is a fascinating one."
+
+_Public Opinion_ says:--"It positively bristles with adventure.  A
+capital book, wildly exciting."
+
+_The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"A story which is distinctly good."
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF THE UNICORN
+
+An absorbing romance of modern life, depending for its interest quite
+as much on its vivid pictures of society as on its more sensational
+incidents.  Mr. E. F. Benson and Mr. Robert Hichens have more than once
+achieved the same effect in the weaving of stories of tense dramatic
+interest, and the present book is a strong and clever specimen of its
+class.  Without sacrificing the probabilities the author realizes with
+great skill the element of strangeness which often carries the
+circumstances of modern life even to the verge of fantasy.  It is an
+engrossing story, cleverly set forth.
+
+
+
+A PRINCE OF LOVERS
+
+_The World_ says:--"This story is delightful; full of life and
+movement, genuine human nature, and the stir of love and grief, good
+fortune and evil with so much reality in the persons on the stage that
+they enlist sympathy or excite animosity as fully as the author needs
+to desire.  The stars which Sir William Magnay has selected and set
+shining for us in an atmosphere well suited for their radiance are very
+bright and particular indeed."
+
+_The Dundee Courier_ says:--"We commend this book to any one on the
+look out for a thrilling, fascinating, and skilfully narrated tale.
+Each chapter abounds in exciting situations and daring deeds, one's
+anxiety to know what comes next increasing as the story unfolds."
+
+_The Portsmouth Times_ says:--"A brilliant romance crowded with
+stirring incident and is never for a moment dull."
+
+_The Morning Leader_ says:--"The story is spirited and exciting and may
+be read with pleasure by all who enjoy a stirring romance."
+
+_The Scotsman_ says:--"The story is full of exciting adventures
+skilfully narrated.  Swords are whirling in every page and so thrilling
+are the incidents that each chapter breeds anxiety to know the events
+of the next."
+
+_The Athenaeum_ says:--"Sir Wm. Magnay wafts us away to the realms of
+pure romance, where the hard facts of a prosaic century are forgotten
+in the Hercynian Forest of two hundred years ago.  The princess is
+loveliest of the lovely, the villains craftiest of the crafty; gallant
+deeds are done and gallant words are spoken, and the whole flows
+smoothly on to a happy conclusion, leaving the reader under a debt of
+gratitude for a pleasing entertainment."
+
+_The Birmingham Post_ says:--"The reader's enjoyment will be enhanced
+by delightful touches of humour which the author has interspersed among
+the many exciting and dramatic scenes of a stirring chronicle."
+
+_The Liverpool Post_ says:--"A book that maintains interest at a high
+pitch from start to finish, and should command immediate success."
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF THE HOUR
+
+_The Aberdeen Free Press_ says:--"Abounds in striking situations and is
+dominated throughout by strong dramatic power."
+
+_The Court Journal_ says:--"It is certainly one of the books of the
+hour, very interesting and distinctly clever."
+
+_The Dundee Courier_ says:--"The story is admirably constructed and
+highly dramatic."
+
+_Vanity Fair_ says:--"A very remarkably good story, told with much
+force and lightened by some very humorous observations of life and
+people."
+
+
+
+COUNT ZARKA
+
+_The Bristol Mercury_ says:--"A magnificent tribute to the author's
+power of imagination.  It is well written; the author keeping his
+characters in hand with marvellous skill, and works out an intricate
+plot to a dramatic conclusion."
+
+_The Yorkshire Herald_ says:--"Full of excitement.  The plot hangs upon
+the disappearance of a Prince who has been kidnapped by Count Zarka,
+his foe, who condemns him to cruel torture, and imprisons him in a
+cunningly devised room in his castle.  The story of the discovery of
+the Prince and of the final defeat of Zarka is a stirring one, and
+there is a strong love interest throughout the romance, which is
+heightened in the scene where the heroine is induced to fight a duel
+with swords by Zarka's jealous mistress."
+
+_The World says_:--"Sir William Magnay's novel _Count Zarka_ is a
+clever and entertaining story; it affords us glimpses of forest scenery
+which we like, and one remarkable departure from beaten tracks, a
+woman's duel in earnest."
+
+_The Dundee Courier_ says:--"The story is brightly and thrillingly
+told, and holds one through all its three hundred odd pages."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Poached Peerage, by William Magnay
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POACHED PEERAGE ***
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