"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 embarrassing position of a target for the shafts of the Hemyock family. "Your daughter actually refuses the ennobling 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 glasses, "to Lord Quorn." "Ah," said Mr. Buffkin with provoking foolishness. "I dare say she prefers some one lively, and I don't blame her." "But--but," urged Lady Ormstork, almost speechless with discomfiture, "do you call this person a good match?" "I should say he matches her better than the lord," was the hopeless reply. "That's right, father," observed Miss Buffkin. Lady Ormstork turned and without another word went into the gallery, the others following at a safe distance. The enlightenment of the Hemyock family as to the identity of the real Lord Quorn had been, for obvious reasons, delayed by the parties most interested in keeping them in the dark. But now that the new-found peer was not to fall to Lady Ormstork's bag, that spiteful dowager determined to let the cat out of it. "May I order my carriage, Lord Quorn?" she said in her most distinct and penetrating tones. "It is getting late." As Quorn rose in his lumbering fashion and rang the bell, the Hemyock girls who had been gaily chattering to Gage became abruptly silent, and Lady Agatha looked stonily nonplussed. "Lord Quorn?" she said, with a brave attempt at a successful smile. "Surely this is not Lord Quorn?" "I'm nobody else," Quorn assured her bluffly. "How very singular," said Lady Ormstork icily, "that you should not have known it." "Not at all," rejoined Lady Agatha promptly. "We have for weeks past understood this gentleman was Lord Quorn." "I didn't like to contradict you," said Gage on being indicated.