"Lord Quorn," was Peckover's prompt reply.
"What?" cried Gage in bewilderment.
"Milord Quorn, eh?" said the duke, transferring his bristling attention to the latest participant in that questionable distinction.
"Impossible!" exclaimed Lady Ormstork, obviously judging by appearance, which certainly did not go far to suggest a member of the peerage.
Quorn laughed again, less comfortably this time under the observation of the duke. "Of course I'm not," he said, in a tone which lost in the utterance its original intention of irony. "How can I be, except in these gentlemen's imagination?" For he had a shrewd idea, as things were going, that, at the moment, the title carried certain unpleasant contingent liabilities with it.
The duke pursed his face into a quizzical sneer. "No, I do not think you are milord Quorn, my good fellow," he concluded, taking Lady Ormstork's view of the badly groomed object of his scrutiny.
"He is Lord Quorn," Peckover insisted vehemently, "if anybody is."
"Of course," retorted Quorn with withering point, "I am Lord Quorn when it is necessary."
The duke, manifestly tiring of the question of identity and resolving (possibly Castilian fashion) to settle the point for himself, was about to resume his somewhat drastic argument with Peckover when Ulrica interrupted the genial intention.
"I believe this person is Lord Quorn," she said, with pointed reference to the real man. "He told me so himself just now in the garden. He said the other was an imposter and advised me to have nothing to do with him."