"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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.sault 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 subst.i.tuted 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 t.i.tle without a t.i.tle, 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 succ.u.mbed 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 circ.u.mscribed 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 att.i.tude 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 gra.s.sy 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 att.i.tude, 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 b.u.mping 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 att.i.tude 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 grat.i.tude. 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."