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 t.i.tle. 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-cla.s.s 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 trans.m.u.ting power of wealth, of changed circ.u.mstances 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 t.i.tle, 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 att.i.tudes of the conscious pair.

CHAPTER x.x.x

"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 att.i.tude 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 gla.s.s 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 t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tle. 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 trespa.s.ser."

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.