CHAPTER XXXIII
Lady Ormstork received them with pleasure tinged with just a shade of vexation. "We were so disappointed at not finding you at home to-day of all days," she exclaimed. "We heard this morning of an absurd misunderstanding which we were anxious to set right without delay. And we have been waiting nearly four hours."
"You've had tea?" Gage suggested, somewhat beside the point.
"Oh, yes, thank you," Miss Buffkin assured him.
"We heard casually," pursued Lady Ormstork, "that you had gone to call at the Moat, and naturally expected you would be back soon. But no doubt,"—this with a world of spiteful significance—"Lady Agatha Hemyock made a point of keeping you there as long as she could. I know her."
"Of course," said Gage gallantly, ignoring the suggestion, "if we had known you were waiting we should have been back long ago."
"Not if Lady Agatha knew it," was the tart reply. "But never mind about that hateful woman. I have waited to see you on a more important subject."
She glanced at Miss Buffkin, who rose with an amused face and sauntered to the window. "I'll take a turn among the flowers while you are telling the tale, Lady Ormstork," she said casually. "I'm getting a little tired of it."
Both men looked longingly after her as she strolled across the lawn, but a consuming anxiety to hear the latest news of the duke curbed the desire to invent an excuse for making after her.
"The Duke of Salolja, tiresome person," Lady Ormstork began, "called at The Cracknels this morning, and upset us very much by telling us of a visit he had the impudence to pay you last evening."
"Yes; we had a pleasant hour of him here," said Gage, grimly reminiscent.
"He tells me," proceeded the lady in a tone of righteous anger, "that he has, in the most unwarrantable manner, suggested the existence of an engagement between himself and dear Ulrica. Is that so?"
"He suggested that he wasn't going to allow anybody else to be engaged to her," Peckover replied.
"Most improper!" commented Lady Ormstork. "And most unwarranted. Dear Ulrica detests him. But he is most absurdly persistent."
"Yes, he's a bit of a nailer," Peckover agreed feelingly.
"Was he very rude?" the lady inquired.
"No, he was polite; the most confoundedly polite cuss I ever encountered," answered Gage.
"I'm glad to hear that," said Lady Ormstork. "And so your interview, preposterous as it was on his part, was quite amicable?"
For a moment neither man felt equal to answering the question. Then Peckover said, "Quite amicable, only a touch one-sided. You see, it don't exactly pay to be nasty when a fellow's sitting over you with a revolver."
Lady Ormstork threw up her hands. "A revolver? Ridiculous person! Really—I hope you told the foolish man that that sort of thing was quite out of date."
"The revolver wasn't though," objected Peckover with a reminiscent shiver. "It looked quite new, with all the latest improvements and in first-class working order."
"Really?" cried the lady incredulously.
"As far as we could judge. Didn't want any closer inspection. I'm content to take a revolver's business capacity for granted."
"But surely," remarked Lady Ormstork with an amused curl of the lip, "you don't mean to say that you allowed this droll Salolja to alarm you?"
The men glanced at each other with long faces.
"We weren't exactly sorry when he said good-bye," was Gage's evasive answer.
"Oh, but this is too absurd," protested the lady.
"The funny side wasn't exactly turned to us last night," said Peckover.
"I have," proceeded Lady Ormstork coolly, "told the duke he is making himself ridiculous."
"And how did he take it?" Gage inquired with considerable curiosity.
The lady shrugged. "It is hopeless to argue with that sort of person. And naturally dear Ulrica is, from every point of view, a girl whom even a duke would find it difficult to give up hopes of. But her father, a man of great discernment and determination would never hear of such an alliance. A foreign title does not appeal to him. So, my dear Lord Quorn, you need have no fears that Ulrica is in any danger of becoming Duchesse de Salolja."
This was pretty direct speaking. "It would be a pity," Gage agreed warily, "if Miss Buffkin should be coerced into a distasteful marriage."
"There is," replied Lady Ormstork resolutely, "no chance of that. I have told the duke so in unmistakable language. And I also gave him a piece of my mind with regard to his uncalled-for interference between Ulrica and yourself. He had the impudence to suggest that you were at his bidding ready to break off your understanding with Ulrica and relinquish her to him. To him! To a man whom she detests, I simply laughed at him, as I hoped you had laughed too."
Gage started up. "You didn't tell him I was engaged to Ul—to Miss Buffkin?" he gasped.
"Naturally I did," was the composed answer.
"But—but I'm not," he protested.
Lady Ormstork gave a smile of pitying encouragement. "My dear Lord Quorn, you are not going to allow yourself to be frightened out of your engagement by the bluster of that grotesque little Spaniard?"
"But," he urged wildly. "Spaniard or no Spaniard, I am not engaged."
Lady Ormstork shrugged. "Anyhow, Ulrica is under the impression she is betrothed to you. I have even gone so far as to inform Mr. Buffkin of the engagement, being, as you will understand, responsible to him for Ulrica's well-being. You cannot in honour even pretend to be induced by threats to repudiate it. You have your own reputation as well as Ulrica's to consider. That is why I spoke so straight to the duke this morning."
Her tone was resolute and conclusive. Gage knew not whether to look upon it as a well-arranged piece of bluff or as his dying knell.
"It's all very well," he replied wildly. "I'm very fond of Ulrica and all that. But the traditions of the Salolja family have, from time immemorial, pointed to killing their rivals on sight. There's not much use to either of us in my being engaged to Ulrica if I'm to be shot next minute."
"Even if you anticipated such a contingency," Lady Ormstork replied coolly, "it would not justify you as an English nobleman in jilting Ulrica. It is a point of honour. You see that, don't you, Mr. Gage?" she demanded, suddenly turning to the deeply interested Peckover.
"Just so," he answered with a start. "Only it's poor fun having your wedding and your funeral on the same day."
"I do not," Lady Ormstork declared, "understand such pusillanimity. After all," she urged, "you are man to man. Why should you be more afraid of the duke than he of you?"
"I've no homicidal traditions in my family," Gage explained.
"A jealous Spaniard is the very devil," supplemented Peckover, whose experience of foreign temperament was derived from penny serials and half-crown melodrama.
"Fact is," added Gage, "what I want is a good time, without any fuss or bother from Spanish dukes or anybody else. I'm willing to do the right thing, so far as it can be done without friction."
"A somewhat shallow, not to say unromantic, view of life," was Lady Ormstork's sarcastic comment. "I must confess it never struck me that the Duc de Salolja carried such terror in his absurd person.
"He carries a revolver on his absurd person," was Peckover's pointed rejoinder.
"Ulrica will under no circumstances be allowed to marry him, even if she wants to," the lady declared, changing her tone. "I have announced to her father that she is going to be Lady Quorn, and am certainly not going to take upon myself the odium of suggesting that Lord Quorn has been frightened out of the match by the first ridiculous little Spaniard who chooses to flourish in his face his family traditions and a—possibly unloaded—revolver."
"We didn't go into that question," Peckover remarked with a reminiscent shiver.
"The whole business is too droll," said Lady Ormstork with an amused smile. "But of course we cannot submit to the duke's impudent coercion. It is, however, easily obviated. I will take the matter in hand, since you seem reluctant to do so. I am responsible for dear Ulrica's welfare and happiness. It is my business to see the sweet girl does not fall a prey to a foreign fortune-hunter. Yes, dear Lord Quorn, you may leave the matter with absolute confidence in my hands. You may depute me, as Mr. Buffkin has already done, to deal with the Duc de Salolja."
Gage did not receive the assurance in the spirit in which it was so confidently given. On the contrary he looked more uncomfortable than ever.
"All very well," he said, after an embarrassed pause, "but the more you insist on sticking me up the more he'll feel called on to knock me down. Eh, Percival?"
"Right you are," was Peckover's gloomy response.
"I'll take care of that," Lady Ormstork assured him.
"He won't go for you; he'll go for me," urged Gage.
"Not he. I'll draw him off," said the lady.
"Suppose he won't be drawn off?" suggested Peckover.
"Trust me," replied Lady Ormstork, grandly confident of her powers. "Diplomacy counts for much."
"Strikes me it will count revolver shots if we aren't careful," said Gage dryly.
Lady Ormstork drew back her mouth in a pitying smile.
"My dear Lord Quorn! This is unworthy of you," she declared. "Do think of Ulrica. Have you so little regard for her? Is not she—superb creature!—worth a little daring?"
"Certainly," Gage assented doubtfully.
"All you want to do," continued the lady, following up her successful appeal, "is to show a bold front, and the terrible Duke of Salolja will run away."
"Think so?" asked Peckover, his secret hopes reviving.
"I am sure of it," said their visitor, rising. "There, I am certain you never meant, dear Lord Quorn, to repudiate in earnest your understanding with the dear girl. Ulrica will be the loveliest and most queenly peeress in the kingdom. And with her immense wealth, the alliance is most desirable in every way. Don't give the wretched, preposterous duke another thought. Do, like a sensible man, dismiss him from your mind. And if he should have the impudence to intrude here again show him the door and tell him to go back to his own——"
"Perhaps you'll do that for us, Lady Ormstork," said Peckover, whose restless eyes had been kept on the window. "There he is."
The others looked round with a start. There sure enough was the Duke of Salolja, stalking, with as long strides as his short legs would allow, across the lawn, obviously in pursuit of the fair Miss Buffkin.