"Oh, dear no," Lady Ormstork answered sweetly. "She is here. But we met your charming friend, Mr. Gage, just by the lodge gates, and dear Ulrica said she had been cramped up in the fly long enough, so she got out to stroll up through the park." Gage evidently experienced some difficulty in looking as pleased as a host should at the idea of his guest doing what pleases her best. "I see," he said, uneasily reflective. "Shall we walk back and meet them? It's a lovely day." "So Ulrica thought," the astutely suave lady responded. "And the park looked so tempting. Yes, a short stroll would be delightful." Accordingly they made their way down the drive at a pace which, set by the deliberate old peeress, ill accorded with Gage's impatience. Naturally Peckover had foreseen this move, and had proposed a circuitous and covert route to the house. Ulrica, quite privy to the scheme, offered no objection. "Sun's rather hot," Peckover observed, when the carriage with its guileful occupant had rolled away from them. "Let's keep under the trees." Ulrica laughed, and took without comment the path he indicated. CHAPTER XXVIII "This is a real pleasure to me," Peckover remarked, determined to get on flirting terms without wasting precious time in preliminary small-talk. "This lovely day?" Ulrica responded, with an obvious pretence of misunderstanding his drift. "Yes, it is quite a treat." "I meant," he pursued, with a stimulating glance at the fresh, pretty face, highly provocative now with a roguish smile, "a walk with you. I've been longing for this moment ever since I first set eyes on you." Her glance of amused surprise suggested that she thought he was plunging _in medias res_ with a vengeance. "Clearly," she commented, "patience is one of your virtues." "I don't know about patience," he replied. "If I've waited a long time for my chance, it has not been exactly patience, but because I couldn't get it sooner." "Everything comes to him who waits," Ulrica observed with a careless laugh, to show she was not taking him too seriously. "I hope you don't mind the change?" he suggested. "In the weather?" she asked mischievously. "Bother the weather! No. From Quorn to me." "That remains to be seen," she answered. "So far, I have no objection to it." "Same here. Lady Ormstork is a proper old grandee, but, well, naturally she's not exactly my idea of an afternoon's fun." "I dare say not," Ulrica said dryly. "Now you are," he declared boldly. She ignored the compliment together with the amorous look which accompanied it. "I have often wondered how you and dear old Ormstork were getting on;" she remarked with self-possessed blandness. "One hears of such curious matches nowadays." For a moment Peckover hardly realized the drift of the remark. Then he stopped dead. "Why, you don't mean to say," he gasped, "you thought I was making love to the old gal?"