A Poached Peerage Part 36

"You can't tell unless you give a fellow a chance," he said amorously, as his arm, extended behind her, somewhat unnecessarily, to put aside a bough, remained there. "Ulrica!" he murmured.

"Mr. Gage!"

"Percival--Percy," he suggested with empress.e.m.e.nt. "Ulrica, time's short, so don't let's quibble about trifles. You're the loveliest girl I've ever set eyes on," he continued with glib pa.s.sion, "and I'm desperately in love with you. I've been dying to tell you so all the time, but never could till this blessed chance came along. Ulrica, say you're a little fond of me, in return."

"Mr. Gage!" Ulrica's expression was compounded of indignation, scorn and amus.e.m.e.nt. But perhaps the last was the only sentiment that was genuine. "It is not necessary," she protested, "to overdo the part like this."

"The part?"

"Lady Ormstork's little scheme," she said coolly. "You need not take the trouble to make it quite so life-like."

"Oh, it's no trouble," he a.s.sured her promptly. "It is a pleasure."

"I understood," she observed laughingly, "that the idea was to put it into Quorn's head that he ought to be jealous."

"That's it," Peckover replied readily. "And I'm doing my very best to give him cause for jealousy."

"It is very spirited of you," she said, with her provocative, mischievous twinkle. "But you need not act quite so hard, need you?

At any rate till he sees us."

He made a wry face. "Not much fun in waiting till he sees us. It occurs to me this is a little game it pays to play in earnest. That is," he added pointedly, "if both parties are agreeable."

"Ah, that's the question," she said tantalizingly.

"Won't you answer it?" he asked insinuatingly.

"H'm! I rather like you," she admitted. "You are breezy."

"Thanks," he replied. "Then I ought to be in request on a warm day like this."

"Lord Quorn," she said with provoking irresponsiveness, "is breezy.

But with him it blows from a rather different quarter. And he is apt to be a little gusty."

"Ah, yes. Dare say he would be," Peckover agreed, recalling certain squally pa.s.sages in their intercourse. "Well, after all, a change of air ought to be grateful. Does you good."

Ulrica laughed. "With the wind chopping about there is likely to be a storm coming."

"Is there?" he returned. "Then let us take advantage of the fine weather while it lasts."

He was about to give a practical suggestion of how they might make the best of the sunny hours, with his arm only prevented from encircling her waist by a vigorous repulsive action on Ulrica's part, followed by a suggestion that the conditions did not exactly lend themselves to waltzing, when suddenly a man emerged from the bushes and stood in front of them. It was not the Lord Quorn they were expecting, but the real Quorn who had sighted them while prowling about the grounds, and now confronted them with an expression of jealous irritation on his now chronically aggrieved face.

"Hullo, my cunning little puppet," he exclaimed rudely. "Enjoying yourself this fine morning?"

"Trying to," replied Peckover, betwixt resentment and politic submissiveness.

"That's right," said Quorn with a distinctly objectionable sneer.

"Poaching on the preserves of the person who calls himself Lord Quorn, it strikes me."

"Who is this rude person?" asked Ulrica, not knowing whether to be amused or alarmed.

"Oh, he's all right," Peckover a.s.sured her uneasily.

"Yes," responded Quorn with dismaying suggestiveness. "I am particularly all right. About the only man on the place who is all right, it strikes me."

Peckover, reduced to an apprehensive and gloomy silence, noticed that Quorn's eyes were fixed on Ulrica with a look of unmistakable and more than pa.s.sing admiration. The aggressive manner was softening too, clearly for the lady's benefit, and indeed Miss Buffkin showed signs of a temptation to laugh at the embarra.s.sment of her cavalier.

"Right you are," Peckover said, nodding to Quorn as pleasantly as the situation permitted, and at the same time trying to get a chance of winking at Ulrica to intimate thereby that she need not take the new-comer seriously. "Well, we must be getting up to the Towers now."

But Quorn showed no intention of budging from their path. His eyes were still fixed in the same resolute admiration on the fascinating Ulrica, and it was manifest that the spell of her beauty was holding him more strongly every moment.

"You run off to the Towers, old man," he ordered Peckover, with a wave of the arm, while his eyes never left the object of their attraction.

"You're wanted up there at once. I'll escort the lady."

There was a note of determination in his voice that Peckover had not noticed before. Doubtless it was derived from the enchantment of Miss Buffkin's personality. Peckover dared not disobey. Happily a ruse suggested itself to him. He nodded to Ulrica; "See you again presently," and made off down the winding path.

Scarcely had Quorn time to pull himself together in his overmastering admiration, and frame the preamble of a rough flirtation, when Peckover came rushing back with apprehensive face.

"Well, what's the matter now?" Quorn demanded, upset by the interruption.

"Lions on the prowl," Peckover announced in a loud whisper.

"Lions?" cried the exasperated Quorn. "What do you mean. You must be dr----" Then the meaning flashed upon him, and he grew white. "Not Leos?" he demanded hoa.r.s.ely.

Peckover nodded warningly. "Both of 'em. Looking nasty. They'll be round the corner in a moment."

Lord Quorn had decided before that moment elapsed not to stay to test the truth of the statement. With an exclamation which savoured less of good manners than of abject, if wrathful, fear, he sprang without a word of leave-taking or excuse into the bushes and disappeared.

Then Peckover winked at the astounded Miss Buffkin.

"That was clever of you," she remarked with a puzzled laugh. "How did you do it?"

"Superior power of intellect," was his somewhat vague and unsatisfying explanation. "Mind can start muscle any day. Never mind that poor chap. Where did we leave off?"

"You wouldn't," she replied significantly. "If I remember rightly."

"No more I won't," Peckover exclaimed, with boldness increased by his late coup. "Wasn't I just----? I don't mind beginning again, if you don't."

His impudence made her burst out laughing. "You are absurd. And you are not treating your friend well."

"P'raps not," he returned. "But when I look at you I feel called upon to treat myself well. Besides, he'll never miss it."

"Miss what?" she asked, innocently or by design falling into his trap.

"A kiss," he answered. "You'll let me have one, Ulrica?"

Miss Buffkin was saved the trouble of dealing with the--perhaps embarra.s.sing--request, by the appearance of Gage, who came up somewhat heated and resentful, followed by Lady Ormstork, whose face wore the look which dowager peeresses wear when their plans, matrimonial and financial, succeed.