To her disgust, she found herself suddenly released. "Oh, all right," said Peckover, settling his necktie. "You shan't, if you don't want to. There are other girls about who ain't so particular. Ethel's not coy." And he made for the door. In an instant she was after him. "Ethel?" she cried, clutching his arm in desperation, as she saw the lady in question coming across the lawn. "You forget Ethel is engaged." Which speech was, to say the least of it, rather disloyal. "What of it?" Peckover demanded off-handedly. "All the better. You allow engaged persons may kiss." "Yes, each other. Ethel is engaged to Mr. Sharnbrook." "Oh, Sharnbrook won't mind," he returned, with more truth than politeness. Dagmar's clutch increased in force. "Mr. Gage," she exclaimed, in almost horrified protest, "you are never going to be so thoughtless as to wreck two people's happiness?" "I wasn't aware of it," he replied, somewhat sarcastically. "Oh, but you are," she urged vehemently. "Jack Sharnbrook is wrapped up in Ethel." "Finds the wrap a bit too warm to be pleasant," Peckover observed. "Sooner than see John Sharnbrook's happiness wrecked," the suddenly emotional and altruistic Miss Dagmar proceeded, "I would make any sacrifice. Mr. Gage," the moment was critical, and her grasp now intense, "you shan't make love to her. Promise me you won't, and--and you shall have a kiss, even before we are engaged." Footsteps sounded on the gravel just outside the window. "All right," Peckover responded cheerfully. "I promise to let her alone if she lets me alone. I'm not the man to stand in Sharnbrook's light." His arm was round her and his lips three inches from hers, when a vigorous exclamation of disgust from the window made it expedient that even they should pretend to be engaged in quite another of the varied but limited number of occupations which necessitate the heads of two persons being close together. Nevertheless Dagmar found time, before the window opened to admit Gage, who had come down for an hour, and Ethel, to say hurriedly but with none the less fell intent, "Remember your promise. You will be true to me, now?" Miss Ethel, rendered thoughtfully emulative by the evidences of her sister's progress, contented herself with tossing her head peremptorily and disdainfully at her treacherous sister. Further activity on the part of the young ladies was, however, postponed by the announcement of tea. Gage lingered behind to say a word to his friend. "Beats me," he observed sourly, "what's the matter with this peerage. Always thought a lord had it all his own way. Instead of that, the girls talk about the weather and the flower-beds to me, and they drop into your arms one after the other." "They're a bit calculating all the same," Peckover remarked with a sense of failure. "I don't know that we might not just as well have been talking about the weather." But John Arbuthnot Sharnbrook came in whistling and radiant. CHAPTER XXII