"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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sured 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.body, 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 t.i.tle and a new one as between new wine and old," she a.s.serted dogmatically.

"Granted, mother," Dagmar a.s.sented 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 sh.e.l.led 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 pa.s.sed 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?"