CHAPTER XVIII—CROSS-PURPOSES
IN the task of arranging her roses in the various bowls and vases Baines had set in readiness for her, Jean found a certain relief from the feeling of terror which had invaded her. Something in the homely everydayness of the occupation served to relax the tension of her mind, keyed up and overwrought by the stress of her interview with Burke, and it was with almost her usual composure of manner that she greeted Blaise when presently he joined her.
“I’ve raided the rose garden to-day,” she said, smilingly indicating the mass of scented blossom that lay heaped up on the table. “I expect when Johns finds out he will proceed to meditate upon something for my benefit with boiling oil in it.”
Johns was one of the gardeners to whom Jean’s joyous and wholesale robbery of his first-fruits was a daily cross and affliction. Only chloroform would ever have reconciled him to the cutting off of a solitary bloom while still in its prime.
Blaise regarded the tangle of roses consideringly.
“I wonder you found time to gather so many. When I passed by the rose garden, you were—otherwise occupied.” The quietly uttered comment sent the blood rushing up into Jean’s face. When had he passed? What had he seen?
She kept her eyes lowered, seemingly intent upon the disposition of some exquisite La France roses in a black Wedge-wood bowl.
“What do you mean?” she asked negligently.
Tormarin was silent a moment.