He crossed the box to arrange matters with Lady Anne, and before the curtain rose on the last act it was settled that they should all have supper together after the play. Later, when Burke had once more resumed his seat next to Jean, Madame de Varigny, whose hearing, like her other senses, was preternaturally acute, caught a whispered plaint breathed into Nick’s ear by Lady Anne. “Now _isn’t_ that provoking, Nick, darling? Why on earth need Geoffrey Burke have turned up in town on our last evening? I was hoping, later on--if you and I were very discreet and effaced ourselves--that Blaise and Jean might settle things.” Madame de Varigny’s eyes remained fixed upon the stage. There was no change in their expression to indicate that Lady Anne’s plaintive murmur had at that moment supplied her with the key of the whole situation as it lay between Jean and the two men who were sitting one each side of her. But the following evening, when, the Staple party having left town, she and Burke were dining alone together at a little restaurant in Soho, the knowledge she had gleaned bore fruit. Burke never quite knew what impulse it was that had prompted him, as he made his farewells after the supper-party, to murmur in Madame de Varigny’s ear, “Dine with me to-morrow night.” It was as though the dark, mysterious eyes had spoken to him, compelling him to some sort of friendly overture which the shortness of his acquaintance with their owner would not normally have inspired. It was not until the coffee and cigarette stage of the little dinner had been reached that Madame de Varigny suddenly shot her dart. “So you come all the way up from this place, Coombe--Coombe Eavie?--to see Mees Peterson, and hey, presto! She vanish the next morning!” Burke stared at her almost rudely. The woman’s perspicacity annoyed him. “I came up to see my tailor,” he replied curtly. “_Mais parfaitement!_” she laughed--low, melodious laughter, tinged with a frank friendliness of amusement which somehow smoothed away Burke’s annoyance at her shrewd summing up of the situation. “To see your tailor. _Naturellement!_ But you were not sorry to encounter Mees Peterson also, _hein?_ You enjoyed that?” Burke’s eyes gleamed at her. “Do you think a dog enjoys looking at the bone that’s out of reach?” he said bluntly. “And is Mees Peterson, then, out of your reach? Me, I do not think so.” Burke was moved to sudden candour. “She might not be, if it were not that there is another man----” “_Ce Monsieur Tor-ma-rin?_” “Yes, confound him!” “We-ell”--with a long-drawn inflection compact of gentle irony. “You should be able to win against this Monsieur Tor-ma-rin. I think”--regarding him intently--“I think you _will_ win.” Burke shook his head gloomily.