reproach. "Dagmar! You said he was married."

"I—I understood father to say he was," that disingenuous young lady replied unblushingly.

Ethel, well acquainted with her sister's resourcefulness, turned from her in evident disgust. "Are you quite sure, Mr. Sharnbrook?" she inquired with purposeful determination to clutch the truth.

"I saw it in the paper," the now brightening youth answered. "There certainly was a report that he was married, or engaged, or something of that sort; but it turns out to be a mistake. He's a young chap, about thirty."

"How interesting!" Ethel murmured.

"Is he good-looking?" Dagmar inquired, with a suggestion of appropriating the new-found peer if he should be fortunate enough to touch her standard of beauty.

"Can't say," Sharnbrook smirked. "Sure to be if he's a lord," he added, with cheap sarcasm.

Dagmar crossed to Ethel and slapped her on the shoulder. "My chance, my dear; you're booked," she said in a determined undertone.

Ethel gave a repudiatory "Pooh!" and pushed her away. Dagmar walked serenely to the window. "I wonder if that is his lordship coming up the street?" she exclaimed suddenly.

Ethel ran to the window. "Where? Which?"

There was no one in view at the moment who could be supposed by any stretch of imagination to come up to even an unconventional idea of a peer of the realm, nevertheless the sanguine Dagmar pushed her sister away. The first sight of the waiting coronet was for her alone. "Never you mind, Ethel," she said roughly, "I am quite competent to look out for him. You amuse yourself with Mr. Sharnbrook."

Mr. Sharnbrook meanwhile was experiencing some difficulty in arranging a decent veil over his satisfaction. "By Jove, they've jumped at Quorn," he told himself gleefully. "If only—I say, Ethel," he said with sudden affection, to test the new phase of the situation.

Ethel pushed away the arm which had recklessly found its way round her, until lately inviting, waist.

"Don't be absurd, Mr. Sharnbrook," she protested snappishly.

"I shouldn't have been absurd just now," he retorted pointedly.

"You didn't take your chance, and you've lost it." The fact that she turned haughtily away prevented her seeing an uncomplimentary look of joyful relief in her recalcitrant lover's face. If only this Lord Quorn were a decent fellow and would back him up.

"What a time father is at that stupid club," Dagmar exclaimed impatiently. "And we have got to go to Babbleton. We've no excuse for not going now the rain has so provokingly stopped."

"Let's go and rout father out, and get back soon," Ethel suggested, not a whit behind her in eagerness.

"Come along, then, dear," said Dagmar, giving a preparatory look at herself in the glass. "Aren't you going to take your young man with us?" she added with a view to her sister's annoyance.

"Oh, you don't want to come, do you, Mr. Sharnbrook?" Ethel said with a somewhat obvious lack of cordiality.

"To Babbleton? Not exactly," replied the wary Sharnbrook with so much fervour that Dagmar laughed unpleasantly. His principal desire now was to get into the middle of a ten-acre field and sing a pæan.

"Come on, then, Dagmar," his soi-disante fiancée said with a toss of the head.

Dagmar drew back, however. "Say good-bye to your dear Jack," she suggested with ill-timed humour. "I won't look."

Ethel's face, under the fun, made Sharnbrook rejoice more than ever at the chance which, properly worked, might obviate any claim on his part to that ungratifying physiognomy. "Dagmar! How absurd you are; Mr. Sharnbrook does not appreciate the joke."

"Indeed!" her sister retorted in a voice which might, without violating the fitness of things, have been pitched somewhat lower. "I thought he was the only person who tried to see a joke in your engagement."

"Ethel!" He called her back mischievously, secure in his good fortune. "I was going to Carter's about a ring."

"Oh," she replied with a not very gracious nod, "that can wait. Catch me," she said to herself as she hurried after Dagmar, "catch me wearing an engagement ring while there is a bachelor peer in the house."

"Quorn's the man to save me," Sharnbrook murmured jubilantly as he strolled into the yard to see the designing fair ones off.

Mercy ran in to have a sight of her new mistresses from the window. A groom with a gold band round a weather-beaten hat, who looked as though he occasionally sought distraction from the monotony of stable-work in the more Arcadian occupation of gardening, came by, touching his hat to the ladies, then signing more familiarly to the landlord's daughter that he had a communication for her.

"Oh, Miss Popkiss," he said, as she opened the window. "Mrs. Dixon will be glad if you will come to the Towers to-morrow, as the other young lady is leaving to-night. One of our chaps will be in town and he'll drive you over."

"Very well, Mr. Tootal," she said archly. "I'll be ready."

Mr. Tootal glanced round and dropped from an official to a confidential tone. "I think you'll like us," he ventured to predict. "Our people are rather frauds, and stiff as boot-tops, but Lord Quorn is coming to stay, and we've hopes we shall wake up. Well, I mustn't keep old Wax-work waiting. O revoire." With a wink and an amorous flourish suggestive of future blandishments, Mr. Tootal ran off, while Miss Popkiss turned to the glass and contemplated her charms with much satisfaction. The magnificent possibilities of a life in a novel sphere were before her, and she meant to make the most of her chances. And, after all, as she told herself with her head held critically on one side, there is no knowing what a pretty girl may do if only she sets her mind to it.

So engrossed was she in the contemplation of her face and its probable effect upon the denizens of Staplewick Towers that she did not hear her father's approach.

"Do you hear, Mercy?" he cried in a tone of testy importance. "We are to have a distinguished visitor?"

"A distinguished visitor?" she repeated rather disdainfully. "Mr. Gillions, the big commercial, I suppose. It is about his time."

So far as an expansively fat face can express anything, that of Host Popkiss indicated withering scorn at such a suggestion. "Gillions! Commercial!" he repeated, in croaking contempt of even that potentate of the road. "I tell you the new Lord Quorn is going to stop here on his way to the Towers."

Miss Popkiss at once became interested. "When is he coming?" she asked with all the animation her father could desire.

"To-day," he spluttered,—"any minute. So just get things a bit smart, and let's show his lordship our best face," and he bustled off.

"Lord Quorn! Our best face!" Miss Popkiss, with the nearest approach to a flutter of which her free and easy nature was capable, yet found time for another glance in the mirror. The result was clearly encouraging. "It's the only one I've got," she observed knowingly; "but I guess it will do."

Not being, however, quite satisfied in her mind as to the rival effects of pink ribbons in her cap, or blue, she ran off to her room to institute a comparison, thereby just failing to notice the entrance of a strange guest.

CHAPTER IV

The man who, avoiding the bar, made his way straight into the coffee-room, entered with an air in which jauntiness and limpness were curiously combined. His get-up showed that curious caricature of the prevailing fashion which dressy young men of depraved, or at least untutored, judgment are prone to affect, and was, from his patent leather boots to his aggressive diamond tie-pin, in singular contrast to his dusty and rather forlorn appearance. His clothes, in spite of their over-smart cut, had the stale, creased look of garments that have been worn for several days continuously. They were, indeed, in keeping with the wearer's hunted look, resembling in character the coat of