Peckover, it may be stated, was not wildly interested in the dowager peeress. Not quite taking in the situation, he had anticipated that she would hang on to Gage, leaving Miss Buffkin in his willing charge. But the whole sense of the meeting was against him. Between the grasping old lady and the repudiating Gage, he had no chance.
"Go on!" commanded his friend in a peremptory whisper pushing him towards the peeress.
"Don't you love a winter garden?" that astute dowager enquired sweetly as she annexed him, and then, without waiting for his predilections on the horticultural question, proceeded to arrange for "dear Ulrica" to be personally conducted by Gage. There was no help for it, and Peckover resigned himself to the tolerance of aristocratic age and presumed inanity.
"I can't tell you," Lady Ormstork observed in the cooing tone with which she smoothed over her designs, "how delighted I am to make the acquaintance of your friend, the new Lord Quorn, and to revisit dear old Staplewick. What a charming fellow he seems."
"Oh, yes; he's a slice of all right," Peckover agreed, wondering whence the lady had formed that conclusion, since Gage's behaviour had hitherto shown more signs of being charmed than charming.
"He has," declared Lady Ormstork, "the family likeness. Particularly the nose. I saw the Quorn nose at once."
This was a somewhat trying statement for Peckover, but he manfully repressed all evidence of agitation. "Yes," he assented, "he's got the nose all right, and a bit of the Quorn lip, I'm thinking."
Looking round as it were to verify the comparison, Lady Ormstork was pleased to see the lagging pair in close and animated conversation.
"Yes, he reminds me of the late peer, particularly when he smiles," she declared with boldness, considering that she had never set eyes on a Lord Quorn in her life, nor been until a week before, within fifty miles of Staplewick.
"Oh, does he?" responded Peckover indifferently, as he suppressed a yawn.