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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 repet.i.tion 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 circ.u.mstances, an admirable display of a.s.surance.

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 a.s.sociated 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.ses growing hotter and keener every moment. Miss Buffkin had subsided on a sofa and from her att.i.tude 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 ill.u.s.trious 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."