“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. ***** Blindly Jean plunged through the dense mist that hung outside, her feet sinking into the sodden earth as she fled across the wet grass. She had no idea where the gate might be, but sped desperately onwards till she rushed full tilt into the bank of mud and stones which fenced the bungalow against the moor. The sudden impact nearly knocked all the breath out of her body, but she dared not pause. She trusted that his search for the hidden sugar basin might delay Burke long enough to give her a few minutes’ start, but she knew very well that he might chance upon it at any moment, and then, discovering her flight, come in pursuit. Clawing wildly at the bank with hands and feet, slipping, sliding, bruised by sharp-angled stones and pricked by some unseen bushy growth of gorse, she scrambled over the bank and came sliding down upon her hands and knees into the hedge-trough dug upon its further side. And even as she picked herself up, shaken and gasping for breath, she heard a cry from the bungalow, and then the sound of running steps and Burke’s voice calling her by name. “Jean! Jean! You little fool!... Come back! Come back!” She heard him pause to listen for her whereabouts. Then he shouted again. “Come back! You’ll kill yourself! Jean! Jean!....” But she made no answer. Distraught by fear lest he should overtake her, she raced recklessly ahead into the fog, heedless of the fact that she could not see a yard in front of her--even glad of it, knowing that the mist hung like a shielding curtain betwixt her and her pursuer.