Jean glanced at him between her lashes. So that was it! He was jealous—jealous of Burke! At last something had happened to pierce the joints of his armour of assumed indifference! Her heart sang a little pæan of thanksgiving, and all that was woman in her rose bubbling to meet the situation. In an instant she had recaptured her aplomb.
“I think I rather enjoy playing with unexploded bombs,” she returned meditatively. “There are always—possibilities—about them.”
“There are”—grimly. “And it is precisely against those possibilities that I am warning you.”
“Don’t you think it’s rather bad taste on your part to warn me against a man who is admittedly on terms of friendship with you all?”
“No, I don’t”—steadily. “Nor should I care if it were. When it’s a matter of you and your safety, the question of taste doesn’t enter into the thing at all.”
“My safety?” jeered Jean softly. (It was barely half an hour since Burke had inspired her with that sudden fear of him and of his compelling personality!)
“Well, if not your safety, at least your happiness,” amended Blaise.
“It’s very kind of you to interest yourself, but really my happiness has nothing whatever to do with Geoffrey Burke.”
“Is that true?”
He flashed the question at her, and there was that in his tone which set her pulses athrill, quenching the light-hearted spirit of banter that had led her to torment him. It was the note of restrained passion which she had heard before in his voice, and which had always power to move her to the depths of her being.