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 s.e.x. "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 una.s.sailable 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 quant.i.ty.

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."