"And may I ask," continued the dowager, addressing herself to the bothered and daunted Peckover, "how it was you came to renounce your title?" "I made it worth his while," Gage explained shortly, determined to be off with the galling honour. The real Lord Quorn in his corner gave a long whistle of semi-enlightenment. "I never had it," protested the unhappy Peckover. The duke, bristling, took a step forward. "Lord Quorn!" he snapped his fingers loudly and contemptuously. "It is no matter. You are at least a suitor of this lady?" Happily Lady Ormstock saved Peckover from replying to the delicate suggestion. "Not unless he is Lord Quorn," she declared resolutely. "I tell you," cried Peckover desperately, "I am not Lord Quorn." "Then you are a fraud," Gage asserted roughly. "I never said I was Lord Quorn," urged Peckover. "You never said you weren't," rejoined Gage. The fiery blood of the Saloljas was beginning to weary of these polemics and to be impatient for its cue. "It is no matter," he said with loud, painfully loud, authority. "I take it"--to Peckover--"that you are Lord Quorn, and you have, for reasons inexplicable to a Spanish nobleman been pleased to divest yourself temporarily of your rank. You have addressed yourself to this lady--as Lord Quorn or by a humbler name, it matters not. I have the honour to request a few words with your excellency in the garden." His excellency's countenance expressed a strong disinclination to any such _al fresco_ conference. Indeed, so far was he from complying with the duke's haughty and peremptory invitation that he sat down on a chair which stood handy. "Not much," he said vernacularly. "I'm not taking any just at present, thanks all the same." He felt himself comparatively safe where he was. Even a Spanish duke of vindictive and homicidal idiosyncrasies could scarcely have the face to murder him coolly in a room before four non-accessory witnesses. Whether the duke realized that the refusal contained a certain admixture of defiance is uncertain. Anyhow, he took two strides with his short legs, and, at uncomfortably close quarters, repeated the invitation.