"Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness. "I dare say she prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her."

"But--but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture, "do you call this person a good match?"

"I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless reply.

"That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin.

Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery, the others following at a safe distance.

The enlightenment of the Hemyock family as to the ident.i.ty of the real Lord Quorn had been, for obvious reasons, delayed by the parties most interested in keeping them in the dark. But now that the new-found peer was not to fall to Lady Ormstork's bag, that spiteful dowager determined to let the cat out of it.

"May I order my carriage, Lord Quorn?" she said in her most distinct and penetrating tones. "It is getting late."

As Quorn rose in his lumbering fashion and rang the bell, the Hemyock girls who had been gaily chattering to Gage became abruptly silent, and Lady Agatha looked stonily nonplussed.

"Lord Quorn?" she said, with a brave attempt at a successful smile.

"Surely this is not Lord Quorn?"

"I'm n.o.body else," Quorn a.s.sured her bluffly.

"How very singular," said Lady Ormstork icily, "that you should not have known it."

"Not at all," rejoined Lady Agatha promptly. "We have for weeks past understood this gentleman was Lord Quorn."

"I didn't like to contradict you," said Gage on being indicated.

Lady Agatha, for once too dumfounded for speech, could only give a significant look of appeal to her daughters. And at the look John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook, who had taken the precaution to get near the door, opened it quietly and slipped out.

Meanwhile the brown eyes of Miss Ethel and the black orbs of Miss Dagmar were fastened searchingly on Lord Quorn, and they transmitted to their owners the impression that he was not an attractive personage.

In truth there was yet a good deal of the Jenkins about him. His clothes looked as though he had been in the habit of going to bed in them, and his hair cried out for the barber. For the moment, at any rate, he was not to be jumped at, and with that conviction the original impulse to spring was stilled. Lady Agatha rose, with a lofty ignoring of Lady Ormstork's exultant smile.

"If," she said to Gage, "you are not Lord Quorn, as you have all along thought proper to pretend to be, may one ask who you are?"

"I am Peter Gage," he answered with a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt.

The eyes of Lady Agatha and her daughters met, and all that could be read in them was an indignant perplexity.

"It is all very extraordinary." Colonel Hemyock's thin voice sounded through the room, but his family heeded it not. Their minds were busy with the enigma of the position which was too complicated, not to say suspicious, to be comprehended at once. Only one thing in all the business seemed safe, and their minds jumped together to it. They recoiled, as by a single impulse, from the unattractive personality of Lord Quorn, from the doubtful individualities of Gage and Peckover, and their eyes by common consent sought the spot where their sheet-anchor had lately rested.

"Sharnbrook!"

"Where is he?"

They ran a dead heat to the door, charged through it, and so out into the garden. But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook's start served him well, and he was at that moment sprinting homewards down the drive with a canny smile on his simple face.

Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.

_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

THE MASTER SPIRIT

_Liverpool Post_ says:--"The study of the prostrate man giving the best of his brains to the a.s.sistance of Herriard is beyond all praise. It is one more variant of the 'double' theory, but it is one of the best achievements of its kind."

_The Tribune_ says:--"It must be admitted that Sir Wm. Magnay knows London life better than many novelists, that his men talk like gentlemen, and that his pictures of society are clever and truthful."

_The Manchester City News_ says:--"This well written and attractive story outlines a true picture of the vanities and insincerities of fashionable society in London."

_The Road_ says:--"Few plots in even the best up-to-date novels of to-day are as strongly drawn as this one, which has all the freshness of absolute novelty to recommend it."

_The Court Journal_ says:--"The intensely interesting situation is developed with much ingenuity and power. It is a capital story, told with far more literary skill than is usual. A really fascinating story."

FAUCONBERG

_The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"Good and well written, readable from opening chapter to finish."

_The Ill.u.s.trated Mail_ says:--"The story teems with incident, moves briskly and as a narrative is very readable."

_The Field_ says:--"The ultimate fate of Fauconberg is always in doubt from the beginning to the unexpected ending. The book has grip and should be a success."

_The Aberdeen Journal_ says:--"From start to finish the story is full of striking situations and Fauconberg will unfailingly appeal to all who love a vigorously told narrative."

THE RED CHANCELLOR

_Lloyd's News_ says:--"One of the most readable novels of the adventure type that we have taken up. A story full of action with its characters strongly drawn. Adventures and hair-breadth escapes abound, the style is refreshingly crisp, and the book altogether is one that can be most heartily recommended."

_The King_ says:--"A romance of stirring adventure. Excitingly narrated, and the book in every way ought to prove one of the best reading romances of the season."

_The Swansea Gazette_ says:--"A very thrilling and interesting book, and commands in every page the reader's attention."

_The Irish Times_ says:--"A most thrilling story, well written and cleverly put together, the romance is a fascinating one."

_Public Opinion_ says:--"It positively bristles with adventure. A capital book, wildly exciting."

_The Daily Telegraph_ says:--"A story which is distinctly good."