A Poached Peerage Part 55

A marked diversion was here created by the entrance at the farther end of the gallery of Bisgood ushering in the entire Hemyock family. Their arrival was not greeted with that cordiality which is usually desirable and customary; it was, indeed, anything but welcome to any except two of the party. As Quorn, followed by the rest, went forward to receive the visitors, Peckover and Miss Buffkin lingered behind together.

"Like to see the view from the Tower?" he suggested with a grin.

Ulrica laughed and they slipped unnoticed through a covered door. From an octagonal chamber a winding stairway led up to the tower. "Come along," said Peckover elatedly.

Ulrica with a mischievous laugh followed, and they soon emerged at the top where floated a tattered flag from a tall staff.

"How lovely," Miss Buffkin exclaimed.

"Never mind the view," said Peckover desperately. "How do you like the new Lord Quorn?"

Ulrica pouted. "I don't see myself Lady Quorn," she answered with a certain amount of decision.

"No," Peckover agreed with conviction. "He's not a bad sort, but he wouldn't be my fancy if I were a pretty girl."

"He's too glumpy for me," Ulrica declared. "And what's more I'm not going to have him."

"What'll the guv'nor say?" Peckover asked dubiously.

Miss Buffkin laughed. "Oh, father won't mind. You see," she went on confidentially, "this coronet racket isn't his idea at all. Not it."

"Yours?"

"Not likely. It is old Ormstork's. We ran across her at the Grand Oceanic at Harrogate. She hung on to us like a stoat on a rabbit. We couldn't make her game out, till one day she asked father what odds he would lay her that I didn't marry a peer. And she has been dragging me about the country ever since, till it has fairly come to pall."

"I should think so," observed Peckover sympathetically.

"I don't know," she continued, "how many n.o.ble heads I've been thrown at. But somehow I've always managed to rebound, and sometimes. .h.i.t the old lady in the eye. You see, I like a live man, not a stuffed peer, with about as much soul as a gramaphone."

"I wish I was a peer," he said ruefully. "I'm alive all right."

"So you are," she agreed, gazing round the depressing park.

"Yes," he said with a wistful touch, "you said you liked me once, when you thought I was something else."

"What was that?" she inquired naively.

"A rich chap; a millionaire."

"Well, aren't you?" she demanded.

"Not exactly," he answered rather lugubriously. "That dream's over.

We've been playing a queer game, but it has come to an end sooner than I expected. I'm a poor devil again now, and there's all about it."

For a moment Ulrica's violet eyes rested on him sympathetically. Then they looked away and seemed to be interested in the distant figure of Mr. Treacher who was slouching across the landscape.

"If people are poor," she said presently in a low voice from which all feeling was rigidly excluded, "it doesn't make any difference with me, when I like them."

Peckover jumped up. He could do no less. "Ulrica," he said and his voice trembled, "you like me? Yes, you said you did once. But I can't hold you to that for I was a regular fraud when I got you to say it."

Miss Buffkin gave a little sigh, and with a lingering glance at the uninteresting Mr. Treacher, turned towards the stairway. "All right,"

she said with an affectation of indifference. "I think I hear some one climbing after us."

The steps were steep and awkward. He had to take her hand, and at the touch his resolution (more honourable than many a better-bred man would have formed) gave way. "Ulrica," he said with a diffident tremor, "you couldn't care for a little n.o.body like me?"

She was gathering up her skirts for the descent. "I always rather liked you," she confessed.

"You wouldn't marry me?"

"What would Lady Ormstork say?" she objected archly.

"Ulrica, you are not fooling me?"

"Not much," she answered. "By the way, my real name is Barbara. Only the old lady thought Ulrica more cla.s.sy, and so it had to be Ulrica."

In an instant he had sprung to the top step and his arms were round her. "Barbara, my darling."

"Hark!" she protested struggling.

From below came Lady Ormstork's insistent call.

"Barbara, quick! Is it to be?"

"Poor old Ormstork."

"Bother her. It's your father."

"I think he likes you. You're rather his sort, and Q. isn't," she said over her shoulder as she went down the winding stairs.

At the bottom stood Lady Ormstork looking properly scandalized. Apart from her charge's escapade, her meeting with Lady Agatha had not been conducive to serenity.

"My dearest Ulrica," she said sourly, "how absurd of you to hide yourself away up in that horrid tower. Lord Quorn is hunting for you everywhere."

"I'm so glad he hasn't found me yet," was the not very soothing reply.

"Are you mad, girl?" cried the dowager.

"Not yet. If I marry Quorn you may inquire again."

Lady Ormstork's indignation was so great that she could only glare, first at Ulrica, then at Peckover. "Is this," she demanded in her most withering tones, "the sort of person you prefer to Lord Quorn?"

"All things considered, it is," answered Ulrica boldly.

"You hear that?" screamed the irate dowager to Mr. Buffkin, who had just appeared in his flight from the embarra.s.sing position of a target for the shafts of the Hemyock family. "Your daughter actually refuses the enn.o.bling alliance which I have been at such pains to arrange for her."

"I'm not exactly surprised to hear it," was the unsympathetic reply.

"Perhaps you will be to learn that your daughter has the unheard-of wrongheadedness to prefer a person of this most equivocal description,"

Lady Ormstork indicated Peckover with a contemptuous wave of her gla.s.ses, "to Lord Quorn."