Gage, _soi-disant_ Quorn, was, to put it mildly, anything but pleased
at Peckover's manoeuvre, Nevertheless he did not take the first
opportunity of proposing to the fascinating Miss Buffkin. In point of
fact he preferred the role of Philander to that of Benedick. He was in
no hurry to settle down, however strongly the superb Ulrica might tempt
him to matrimony. He was more than rich enough to treat her wealth as
a negligible quantity; added to which he desired to taste the sweets of
life as dished up to a bachelor peer, and this was the first of them
which had not turned sour in his mouth.
Naturally he was not going to allow any interference or competition on
the part of his paid confederate, Peckover. That gentleman, had, he
considered, put off the trappings of nobility for a handsome
consideration, and was in honour bound not to start an opposition
business on his own account, nor to obtain credit in the guise of a
millionaire, within an equitable radius from Staplewick, or, indeed,
from the person, wherever it might be, of the peer by purchase.
The first practice of the scheme not having produced the desired
effect, namely a proposal, it was arranged to repeat it next day; but
Gage was too resentfully wide-awake to be taken in again. He stuck to
Peckover with all the persistency, and much more than the annoyance, of
his shadow, and finally took care as the hour of their visitors'
arrival drew near to post himself at the point of interceptance; the
wily Peckover remaining at the house in a state of tantalizing
discomfiture.
But Lady Ormstork, who had not lived in vain in a world where even
peeresses play "beat my neighbour," was equal to the occasion, and more
than equal to the suddenly alert Mr. Gage. Perhaps she had anticipated
his move; anyhow, she was prepared with a prompt counter.
As Gage met the carriage by the lodge, the driver, being either new or
instructed, did not pull up for a hundred yards or so. Then Lady
Ormstork quickly alighted and the carriage bowled on at a good pace
towards the Towers.
With a wealth of amiability the lady advanced towards Gage who was
hurrying up with a lowering face.
"Where's Miss Buffkin?" he cried in a cold, exasperated voice.
Lady Ormstork held out both hands gushingly. "So delighted to come
again. So sweet of you to have us!" she crowed. "Another quite
heavenly day. And the dear old park looking more lovely than ever."
"But where's Miss Buffkin?" Gage demanded hoarsely, clutching the old
lady's double-dealing hands and thinking unutterable things.
"Oh, dear Ulrica is rather tired," was the plausibly artless reply.
"She went for a walk to the Scotton Woods this morning. So she has
gone on in the carriage and will make herself at home till we come. I
am sure that you, as the soul of hospitality will not mind that."
Mr. Gage looked as though he did mind it very much indeed. However, he
shut his lips, perhaps to keep back the unspeakable, and began to move
on towards the house.
"The park is truly delightful to-day," exclaimed his companion with
studied rapture. "The air is simply life-giving. Do let us stroll up
by the beech avenue, dear Lord Quorn. It is a sin to hurry indoors on
an afternoon like this. Ulrica will not mind."
Gage's face suggested thoughts too poignant for words.
"Shall we stroll round by the rhododendron walk?" Lady Ormstork
suggested with a fine air of ignorance of anything abnormal in the
situation.
"Must go up to the house first," Gage insisted bluntly, his rage being
almost too great for coherent speech. "Was on my way there when you
drove in. Just remembered, forgot to give Bisgood an important order."
"Oh, then do let us go by all means," the lady assented graciously, her
heartiness stimulated by a wave of satisfaction in thinking that the
proposal could not be far off now. "If only you had told us, you might
have got into the carriage and driven up with Ulrica. What a pity."
Considering the steps she had taken to obviate such a contingency this
was a somewhat bold speech on Lady Ormstork's part. But the grand
manner carries a certain, if not altogether convincing, plausibility
with it, and disarms rude censoriousness.
So they walked towards the house together; the gracious dowager
finding, as was natural, the slight incline up to the Towers rather
against anything like pace.
"We have had rather a disagreeable surprise to-day," said Lady
Ormstork, summoning back to her side the irritated Gage whose
impatience kept him farther in front of her than politeness might have
dictated.
"Oh?" he responded discouragingly, wishing she would keep her breath
for the pedestrian effort and defer conversation till the Towers and
the elusive Miss Buffkin were reached.
"Yes," she proceeded. "I think I told you--or was it Mr. Gage?--of a
very persistent suitor of dear Ulrica's, the Duke of Salolja, a fiery
Spaniard, who had been paying her great attention in town last season.
In fact it was mainly to escape his importunities that we came down
here."
"Oh, then you didn't come to see Staplewick?" he observed, between
chafing and chaffing.
"That was my object," the lady maintained with dignity. "And I brought
dear Ulrica with me to Great Bunbury as to a sanctuary where we could
be safe from the duke. Judge, then, of our embarrassment when, driving
up the High Street, we saw him coming from the station."
"Awkward, if you've been fed up on him in town and don't want any
more," Gage commented.
"Very. He proposed five times at least to Ulrica, and would not take a
refusal."
"It's a way they have in Spain, I believe," remarked Gage, wondering
gloomily how this new development might interfere with his amusement.
"Still," continued Lady Ormstork, "as I think I told Mr. Gage, one
cannot have the dear girl forced into a marriage, even with a Spanish
duke, against her inclination. One cannot blame him, poor man; she is
lovely, and altogether most adorable; but from our point of view why
should she exile herself in Spain for the sake of a man she does not
care for?"
"Why, indeed?" assented Gage, wondering what the odds were on the
Spanish duke's being a creature of the old lady's imagination.
Meanwhile the fatigued Miss Buffkin had come as an agreeable surprise
upon the baffled Peckover, and that alert opportunist had lost no time
in making the most of his good fortune.
"Dear old Ormstork has hooked Quorn down by the lodge," she explained
laughingly. "But I expect they'll be up here before long by the look
on his face as she fastened on him and he saw me bowling on up here."
"Shouldn't wonder," said Peckover with a grin. "Well, if we've got to
make him jealous, don't let's lose any time in preliminaries."
"Mr. Gage, you are too absurd," Ulrica remarked as she unwound her
feather victorine.
"Don't see much absurdity in that suggestion, anyhow," he returned.
"What's the good of a chance if you don't take it?"
"We need not exactly act in earnest," she suggested.
"I've always thought that make-believe was poor sport," he rejoined
engagingly. "We were getting on nicely yesterday; if only----"
"Ah, yes," she continued archly; "there's always an if only----"
"If only," he continued, "Quorn wasn't on our track, we need not be in
such a hurry to say what's uppermost in our minds. As it is----"
His arm seemed, to her alert eyes, to have a caressing twitch about it.
"Shall we go out into the garden?" she proposed, by a plausible
manoeuvre putting the table between them.
"Too many men about, setting the place straight," he objected
knowingly. "Safer here, and snugger too, Ulrica!"
"Oh, Mr. Gage!" she expostulated, as by a swift dart he got round to
her side of the table.
"Ulrica," he said seriously, for since yesterday a wild design and hope
had taken possession of him, "Ulrica, need you marry Quorn? Tell me,
like a dear girl. You don't love him as much as all that, do you?"
She laughed. "How do you know? I'm not going to tell you."
"It's only for the title," he pleaded, feverishly anxious to arrive at
an understanding while the chance lasted. "That's nothing. It can be
bought, if you go the right way about it. Ulrica, I don't believe you
like him as well as you like me. Tell me you don't. Tell me the
truth, dearest."
He seized her hands insistently. There was no doubt about his
earnestness and she could hardly laugh at him now.
"I like you well enough," she answered.
"Darling!" he cried with genuine rapture. "Then you'll marry me?
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 title. 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-class 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 transmuting power of wealth, of changed
circumstances 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 title, 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 attitudes of the conscious pair.