He seized her hands insistently. There was no doubt about his earnestness and she could hardly laugh at him now. "I like you well enough," she answered. "Darling!" he cried with genuine rapture. "Then you'll marry me? Won't you? Say yes. You're your own mistress. Say you'll marry me?" "How can I?" she laughed evasively. "I've got to marry Quorn." "Because he's a lord?" She nodded. "Is that all?" She shrugged. "You like me best?" "You're more my sort," she was fain to answer. "But it is no good." Then suddenly breaking away she said, "I've just seen another of my admirers, a real Spanish duke." "Oh, that chap! I've heard of him," said Peckover with sovereign contempt. "Well, you wouldn't look at him again?" "I daren't," she replied. "I was afraid he'd see me." "You leave him to me," said Peckover in his grand manner. "I'll settle the Dook. I'll slice the top off the Spanish onion. Ulrica, you'll have me? Hang the title. Have the man you like." She looked at him. He was very different from the reckless little fugitive who had once tried to put an end to his existence at the _Quorn Arms_. Prosperity, high living, and a general good time had transformed him, smartened him up, and, backed by a certain native shrewdness, made him fairly presentable. Still---- Ulrica laughed. Her ideas and original breeding were but middle-class in spite of her wealth and expensive education. But for certain successful speculations on the part of Buffkin _père_ (who knew his striking limitations, and wisely kept in the background) there would have been nothing very unequal in the mating of his daughter with Peckover. And, after all, in spite of the transmuting power of wealth, of changed circumstances and surroundings, human nature has always a tendency to seek and revert to its old level; to find most pleasure and ease in the society of those who are as it once was. So it was that she made answer to her eager wooer. "I like you well enough, but a rich girl can't choose as she likes." "I should have thought," he urged, "she can like where she chooses." "So she can," Ulrica rejoined. "But she can't marry him." "I'm just as much a gentleman as Quorn," he argued. "He happens to have the title, but I might have had it and fitted the part just as well as he," he added with hidden truth. "So you might," she agreed. "But you haven't got it. And that makes all the difference." "I'll get one if you'll marry me," he pleaded, vaguely optimistic on the subject. Then he fancied he heard Gage's voice outside. "I say," he urged with desperate affection, "here they come. Quick. If you love me give me a kiss." "I don't know that I do," she objected, her voice rising to a half scream of remonstrance as he clutched her. "Give me the benefit of the doubt," he insisted drawing her face towards him.