CHAPTER XXI
It was, however, unfortunate that Miss Ethel had to leave her lover and her sister together. Peckover, baulked of a kiss in one direction, was by no means above trying for one in another; and, while Ethel was getting off with the old love, thought he might as well utilize the opportunity in getting on with the new. And Miss Dagmar, save in the matter of temper, was quite as interesting an object for his attentions as her sister. What was considerably more to the point, her manner suggested that she was even more susceptible to his fascinations than Ethel.
"Well," he observed with a leer, "while they are settling their differences we've got to amuse ourselves, eh?"
A wild desire to cut her sister out on the spot took possession of Miss Dagmar. Lord Quorn was for the time out of the question, and even if he were available, she was certain that she would give herself a far better time by marrying the richer man.
"How shall we do that, Mr. Gage?" she asked, with an archly provocative glance at him.
"Well," responded Peckover, by no means at a loss, "suppose we try how much we can get to like one another in ten minutes."
"I'm afraid——" she began, when suddenly she became aware that his arm was round her waist.
"Don't be afraid, Dagmar," he entreated.
"I am," she returned, releasing herself. "I'm afraid you are a deceiver."
"Oh, no," he protested, far from displeased, however, at the accusation.
"You have just been making love to Ethel."
"Nothing to speak of," he assured her lightly. "You see," he added, more amorously, "I did not know you cared for me."
"Oh, Mr. Gage!"
"I didn't," he maintained, wilfully misunderstanding her protest. "I dare say I ought to have, but I didn't."
"And now"—she laughed meaningly—"you think you have discovered my secret?"
The last word nearly brought a whistle to Peckover's lips, but he suppressed it in time. "Yes," he urged, "if I am right, if I have discovered it——" he paused to get a look at her face, and something more.
"Yes?" she murmured.
"Let's make the most of it," he suggested. "Give me a kiss."
"Oh, no, it wouldn't be proper," she objected, holding back.
"Quite proper," he assured her. "There's nobody looking."
"I don't quite see," said Dagmar thoughtfully, "how the fact that nobody is looking makes it proper."
"Well," argued Peckover, "if nobody is looking I don't see how it matters whether it is proper or not."
"But it does," she maintained, holding off.
"So long as it's agreeable to both parties," he urged; "we've no one to please but ourselves. Of course," he added airily, "if you've any rooted objection to kissing——"
"It is," said Dagmar hastily, "a question of what is right and what is wrong."
Peckover began to think this was dry work. "You think kissing wrong, then?" he suggested.
"Unjustifiable kissing," Dagmar declared.
"Unjustifiable?" Peckover repeated, with the suspicion of a yawn. "Seems to me if both parties don't object the act is justified."
Dagmar glanced reflectively at the clock and calculated how many minutes more remained to bring him to the point. "Not necessarily," she rejoined with provocative archness. "There are certain people who may kiss each other, and the rest may not."
"That's no reason why they shouldn't try," argued Peckover, warming again under the influence of the fetching glance. "That's just where the fun comes in. You ought to kiss your mother and your grandmother or your sister, or your aunt, or your——"
"Or your fiancée," Dagmar supplied quietly yet promptly.
"Naturally," he agreed, "but that doesn't count."
"Doesn't it?" Dagmar enquired in a tone of surprise.
"You see, it's expected of you," he explained. "There's—much more of a catch, the poets tell us, in the unexpected."
Dagmar was beginning to grow desperate. Ethel's next (and nearly due) innings might hold the unexpected for her. "There are some things," she observed demurely, "which are made much more delightful by being looked forward to."
"That's right enough," he assented, catching an inviting gleam from her eyes. "But it's poor fun looking forward to a thing you aren't going to get. You know what I'm looking forward to?" He pointed the question with a leer.
"Oh, Mr. Gage," she protested artlessly, "how can I know?"
"By my teaching you," he answered promptly putting forth an endearing arm, which, however the lady deftly avoided.
"No, no," she declared, as bewitchingly as her limitations allowed. "It is not right, as we are."
It was a pretty broad hint, but the sands of opportunity were running low, and Miss Dagmar meant business.
"As we are?" the philanderer echoed, with a short laugh of discomfiture. "No, it's certainly not right or even possible when we are so far apart."
Dagmar fancied she caught the hateful sound of her sister's voice. "That's what I mean," she said, covering her desperation that a touch of demureness. "We might be close enough to——"
"Right!" Peckover exclaimed eagerly, making a spring towards her.
On this occasion she did not seek to elude his grasp, possibly considering that the time for that was past. She contented herself with keeping her inviting cheek at a tantalizingly safe distance from Peckover's lips till he wearied of the struggle.
For that spoilt child of Fortune was not used to opposition about trifles on the part of the fair sex. "This is dry work. What are you afraid of?" he protested impatiently.
"You really mustn't. We are not engaged," was the artificially agitated reply.
"That doesn't matter," he insisted. "Who'll be any the wiser?"
Matrimony, not wisdom, was Miss Dagmar's concern just then. "I couldn't let you," she declared, with a cunning suggestion of duty overriding inclination. "I couldn't—unless——"
To her disgust, she found herself suddenly released. "Oh, all right," said Peckover, settling his necktie. "You shan't, if you don't want to. There are other girls about who ain't so particular. Ethel's not coy." And he made for the door.
In an instant she was after him. "Ethel?" she cried, clutching his arm in desperation, as she saw the lady in question coming across the lawn. "You forget Ethel is engaged." Which speech was, to say the least of it, rather disloyal.
"What of it?" Peckover demanded off-handedly. "All the better. You allow engaged persons may kiss."
"Yes, each other. Ethel is engaged to Mr. Sharnbrook."
"Oh, Sharnbrook won't mind," he returned, with more truth than politeness.
Dagmar's clutch increased in force. "Mr. Gage," she exclaimed, in almost horrified protest, "you are never going to be so thoughtless as to wreck two people's happiness?"
"I wasn't aware of it," he replied, somewhat sarcastically.
"Oh, but you are," she urged vehemently. "Jack Sharnbrook is wrapped up in Ethel."
"Finds the wrap a bit too warm to be pleasant," Peckover observed.
"Sooner than see John Sharnbrook's happiness wrecked," the suddenly emotional and altruistic Miss Dagmar proceeded, "I would make any sacrifice. Mr. Gage," the moment was critical, and her grasp now intense, "you shan't make love to her. Promise me you won't, and—and you shall have a kiss, even before we are engaged."
Footsteps sounded on the gravel just outside the window.
"All right," Peckover responded cheerfully. "I promise to let her alone if she lets me alone. I'm not the man to stand in Sharnbrook's light."
His arm was round her and his lips three inches from hers, when a vigorous exclamation of disgust from the window made it expedient that even they should pretend to be engaged in quite another of the varied but limited number of occupations which necessitate the heads of two persons being close together. Nevertheless Dagmar found time, before the window opened to admit Gage, who had come down for an hour, and Ethel, to say hurriedly but with none the less fell intent, "Remember your promise. You will be true to me, now?"
Miss Ethel, rendered thoughtfully emulative by the evidences of her sister's progress, contented herself with tossing her head peremptorily and disdainfully at her treacherous sister. Further activity on the part of the young ladies was, however, postponed by the announcement of tea. Gage lingered behind to say a word to his friend.
"Beats me," he observed sourly, "what's the matter with this peerage. Always thought a lord had it all his own way. Instead of that, the girls talk about the weather and the flower-beds to me, and they drop into your arms one after the other."
"They're a bit calculating all the same," Peckover remarked with a sense of failure. "I don't know that we might not just as well have been talking about the weather."
But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook came in whistling and radiant.