By the time the meal had drawn to an end, his earlier suspicions had been lulled into tranquillity, and over the making of the coffee he became once more the big, overgrown schoolboy and jolly comrade of his less tempestuous moments. It almost seemed as though, to please her, to atone in a measure for the mental suffering he had thrust on her, he was endeavouring to keep the vehement lover in the background and show her only that side of himself which would serve to reassure her.
“I rather fancy myself at coffee-making,” he told her, as he dexterously manipulated the little coffee machine. “There!”—pouring out two brimming cups—“taste that, and then tell me if it isn’t the best cup of coffee you ever met.”
Jean sipped it obediently, then made a wry face.
“Ough!” she ejaculated in disgust. “You’ve forgotten the sugar!”
As she had herself slipped the sugar basin out of sight when he was collecting the necessary coffee paraphernalia on to a tray, the oversight was not surprising.
It was a simple little ruse, its very simplicity it’s passport to success. The naturalness of it—Jean’s small, screwed-up face of disgust and the hasty way in which she set her cup down after tasting its contents—might have thrown the most suspicious of mortals momentarily off his guard.
“By Jove, so I have!” Instinctively Burke sprang up to rectify the omission. “I never take it myself, so I forgot all about it. I’ll get you some in a second.”
He was gone, and before he was half-way down the passage leading to the kitchen, Jean, moving silently and swiftly as a shadow, was at the doors of the long French window, her fingers fumbling for the catch.
A draught of cold, mist-laden air rushed into the room, while a slender form stood poised for a brief instant on the threshold, silhouetted against the white curtain of the fog. Then followed a hurried rush of flying footsteps, a flitting shadow cleaving the thick pall of vapour, and a moment later the wreaths of pearly mist came filtering unhindered, into an empty room.